Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Judging from new Federal Reserve data, April was a month of joy for merchants and credit card issuers as consumers spent more on their credit cards, but for consumer advocates and financial advisors it may have been a month of angst as they saw foolish consumers take on too much …
Read More »With New York’s BitLicense Final, Finance Boss Wants Payments Out of the ‘Disco Era’
New York State’s controversial BitLicense—the nation’s first regulations for virtual currency—are now final, and they’ve got some people on the cutting edge of payments worried about government interference. But Benjamin Lawsky, the official who oversaw the BitLicense’s development, said Wednesday that he hopes intelligent regulation can help modernize what he …
Read More »Mobile Devices for Remote Capture Leave Scanners in the Rear-View Mirror
The use of smart phones and tablet computers to photograph and deposit checks through online-banking apps surpassed scanner-based remote deposit capture several years ago, but 2014 was a record breaker, according to new findings from research firm Celent, a unit of the Oliver Wyman Group. Some 2,100 banks and credit …
Read More »Virtual-Currency Observers Assess the Legacy of New York’s Departing Financial Boss
Payments executives today are trying to assess the legacy of Benjamin Lawsky, New York State’s controversial top financial regulator who proposed the first regulations on virtual currencies. Lawsky, who became superintendent of the state’s Department of Financial Services in 2011, announced Wednesday that he plans to step down in June …
Read More »With Ripple’s Settlement, the Feds Send a Message to Cryptocurrency Providers
By Jim Daly The federal government sent a message Tuesday that the new virtual-currency providers are subject to the same regulations as long-established money-transfer firms when it announced that Ripple Labs Inc. would pay a $700,000 civil penalty and take remedial actions in lieu of criminal prosecution. The announcements came …
Read More »Forecast Indicates 800 Million U.S. Cards Could Have EMV Chips by Year’s End
By Jim Daly U.S. credit and debit card issuers will have about 150 million more EMV chip cards in circulation by year’s end than predicted last summer, according to the latest forecast from an industry group promoting the conversion of U.S. card payments to smart cards. The Payments Security Task …
Read More »A New Harris Survey Shows That Consumers Feel the Love for Visa and PayPal
By Jim Daly Grizzled veterans of the payments industry may not have warm and fuzzy feelings for card networks, but the view can be different from consumers’ eyes. In its 27th annual study of brands, a newly released Harris Poll EquiTrend report ranked Visa Inc. as the No. 1 payment …
Read More »Costco Gets a Lift by Adding Card Acceptance to Food Courts
By Jim Daly Warehouse retailer Costco Wholesale Corp. has been in the news recently because it is replacing American Express Co. with Visa Inc. and Citigroup Inc. as its major-brand payment card partners. But a little-noticed change in its U.S. stores’ food courts shows what can happen when a retailer adds …
Read More »How New York Transformed from an 18th-Century Laggard Into a Payments Leader
It isn’t often that a municipality is recognized for its work in the payments space. But that’s what happened Tuesday when NACHA, governing body of the automated clearing house network, gave a New York City department its George Mitchell Payments System Excellence Award for transforming the city’s decentralized, inefficient and …
Read More »Will Increasing Regulation of the Acquiring Industry Abroad Affect the U.S. Market?
By Jim Daly The Canadian government’s move last week to strengthen its Code of Conduct for the payment card industry and the European Union’s approval in March of rock-bottom interchange rates for credit and debit cards has observers wondering if more regulation is in store for the U.S. merchant-acquiring industry. …
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