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 …
Read More »Priority Technology Blames a Mastercard Subscription Rule for Its $19.5 Million Revenue Hit
Merchant processor Priority Technology Holdings Inc.’s fourth-quarter revenues fell by $19.5 million, a drop of 16.5%, in the face of a new Mastercard Inc. rule change tightening consumer notices on subscription billings. “This decline was being driven by one factor and one factor only,” Priority chairman and chief executive Thomas …
Read More »Chase Replacing Prepaid Liquid Card With a Bank Account
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. is discontinuing its Chase Liquid general-purpose reloadable prepaid card and replacing it with a checking account called Chase Secure Banking, which has many of the same features but requires the customer to open a Chase bank account. Launched in 2012 and aimed mainly at …
Read More »Instagram Testing Shoppable Ads With PayPal as Its Payments Partner
So-called shoppable ads could get a big boost if a tap-and-buy test announced Tuesday by Facebook Inc.’s Instagram social network succeeds, a test in which PayPal Holdings Inc. is the payment processor. Other social networks and Internet sites have rolled out or begun testing shoppable ads, including Pinterest, Snap Inc.’s …
Read More »FIS And Worldpay: Merger Mania Probably Isn’t Over, Analysts Say
Close observers of the payment-processing industry predicted Fiserv Inc. would start a merger wave when it announced its $22 billion deal to acquire First Data Corp. in January. That prophecy seems to have come true with the even bigger $43 billion FIS-Worldpay merger announced Monday, and the consolidation wave probably hasn’t …
Read More »First Data Rejected Overtures From ‘Party A’ Before Accepting Fiserv’s Merger Offer
First Data Corp. began talking with a potential merger partner identified only as ‘Party A’ more than a year before Fiserv Inc.’s $22 billion takeover offer for the big payment processor was announced, according to a proxy statement Fiserv and First Data filed this week. The lengthy document—more than 300 …
Read More »EVO Plans To Pump Up U.S. Growth While Eyeing Further Foreign Expansion
Merchant acquirer EVO Payments Inc. plans to reinvigorate its lagging U.S. e-commerce business while still pursuing expansion opportunities abroad, its chief executive said Wednesday. Atlanta-based EVO is one of the smaller publicly traded payment processors, and it has a unique business model. Its roots are in the U.S., but today …
Read More »Fed Delay Causes NACHA To Postpone a Third Processing Window for ACH Transactions for Six Months
Automated clearing house governing body NACHA reported Tuesday that a third daily processing window for ACH transactions will be delayed by six months. The window, a component of NACHA’s years-long, multipronged effort to facilitate same-day clearing and settlement of ACH transactions, is now set to go live March 19, 2021, instead …
Read More »Lyft Eyes Ways To Lower Payment-Processing Costs as It Preps for an IPO
With $2.28 billion in losses over the past three years, ride-share provider Lyft Inc. is looking to cut costs—and payment-card acceptance expenses won’t be spared. San Francisco-based Lyft outlined several initiatives it already has started or is planning in a filing earlier this month with the Securities and Exchange Commission …
Read More »Mastercard Bails on Bidding War With Visa for Earthport, Plans To Buy Transfast Instead
Mastercard Inc. has called a halt to its bidding war with Visa Inc. over cross-border business-to-business payments processor Earthport PLC and instead plans to acquire another company in the space, Transfast Remittance LLC. Mastercard announced a tentative deal to buy New York City-based money-transfer provider Transfast Friday. Transfast is a …
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