Visa Inc. will lower its merchant dispute and fraud ratios in October. Merchants that exceed the revised ratios could be placed in monitoring programs meant to control risk. Visa hasn’t announced the new standards publicly, but has informed the merchant-acquiring community. Digital Transactions News obtained some of the key new …
Read More »Retailers Riled up About Regulated Debit Interchange as Authorization Costs Decline
A prominent merchant group says that in the face of declining authorization, clearing, and settlement costs, it is time for the Federal Reserve to lower its regulated debit card interchange rate. The Retail Industry Leaders Association issued its call after the Fed last month released its latest bi-annual study of …
Read More »Investor Lawsuit Challenges Planned Fiserv-First Data Merger
A First Data Corp. shareholder filed a proposed class-action lawsuit Wednesday challenging the planned acquisition of the payment processor by Fiserv Inc. The $22 billion all-stock merger benefits First Data’s controlling shareholder, the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., “to the detriment of the company’s noninsider stockholders,” says the …
Read More »C-Stores Saw Card-Acceptance Costs Rise Faster Than Sales in 2018
Convenience stores saw their payment card acceptance costs rise nearly 10% in 2018 even though sales increased only 9%, according to data reported Wednesday by the trade association NACS. NACS, formerly known as the National Association of Convenience stores, says credit and debit card fees paid by its members rose …
Read More »Payments Companies Get off to a Strong Start on Wall Street in 2019
Publicly-traded payments companies once again have rewarded their investors, with a basket of shares from 29 firms posting a mean, or average, return of 23.6% in the first quarter to handily beat three major market indexes, according to Chicago-based Barrington Research Associates Inc. The market is rebounding in 2019, with …
Read More »Nearly a Third of Americans Don’t Mind Mailing a Check to the Government for Taxes Owed
April is a month when most Americans think about taxes. It turns out that a surprising number of them—29%—would rather mail a check to the government than use electronic methods. That’s the word from payment technology provider ACI Worldwide Inc., which in March commissioned YouGov Plc, a global research firm …
Read More »ISO Buyers Looking for Balanced, Low-Attrition Portfolios, Finance Exec Says
The economy is still humming along, but that doesn’t mean independent sales organization owners and executives are having an easy time finding capital when they need or want it. “The credit markets are tight for the payments-industry space,” Jon Engleking, chief operating officer at Super G Capital LLC, said this …
Read More »Payments Firms Need To Keep Their Eyes on Regulators And the States, ETA Lobbyist Says
Regulators and the states currently are more active than Congress on issues affecting the payments industry, according to the Electronic Transactions Association’s point person on governmental affairs. The divided Congress probably won’t pass any major payments-related legislation before the 2020 elections, says Scott Talbott, a senior vice president at the …
Read More »Cash Discounts And Surcharging Remain the Hot Topic for ISOs
They’ve been the subject of intense debate for several years now, but evidence from the Southeast Acquirers Association annual conference Tuesday shows interest among independent sales organizations in discounts for cash and credit card surcharges is as high as ever. About 800 people attended the Atlanta confab that concluded Wednesday, …
Read More »Debit Card Issuers’ Authorization Costs Fell 54% in Eight Years, the Fed Reports
Debit card issuers subject to the Durbin Amendment’s interchange price controls saw their average authorization, clearing, and settlement expense, excluding fraud, fall to 3.6 cents per transaction in 2017, down 54% since 2009, the Fed reported Thursday. The Durbin Amendment to 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act requires the Fed to issue a …
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