Credit Cards

Merchants in the United States paid $224 billion in card-acceptance costs in 2023, the highest toll for merchants in any country in the world, according to payment consultancy CMSPI’s State of the Industry Report. Interchange fees alone accounted for $143 billion of that total. Since 2009, U.S. merchants’ like-for-like payment …

Airline payments powerhouse UATP says it will offer buy now, pay later services from Klarna AB. Meanwhile, CellPoint Digital has signed Arajet, a Dominican Republic startup airline as a payments-processing client. UATP, a Washington, D.C.-based  global payments network, says its new partnership with Klarna will enable airlines to offer Klarna’s …

American Express Co. expects its pilot program enabling cardholders to add their payment information at participating online merchants will please cardholders and make for smoother checkouts. The pilot, announced Thursday, allows AmEx cardholders to add or update their card information and store it for use at a participating merchant through …

The U.S. Department of Transportation is looking into airline rewards programs with an eye on protecting consumers from potential unfair, deceptive, or anticompetitive practices, the department says. Many consumers use cobranded airline credit cards to earn points in these programs, though the DOT’s focus is on rewards, not on card-issuing …

Mastercard Inc. launched its Payment Passkey Service with payments processors and consumers in India, and says it will introduce the technology in other markets globally in coming months. The technology, aimed at online transactions, tokenizes payment credentials and enables biometric authentication of cardholders. Canada-based online travel agency justfly.com introduced a pay-by-bank feature, allowing travelers to …

Paze, the online checkout service from Early Warning Services LLC, says consumers that belong to the Sephora loyalty program can now use it to pay for transactions on the retailer’s Web site. Backed by some of the nation’s largest banks, Paze is an expedited checkout service that includes addresses and …

Onfleet, a delivery management software platform, said its new partnership with Shopify Inc., an e-commerce and point-of-sale platform, integrated Shopify online orders with Onfleet’s platform. Rentvine, a software platform for rent payments and other property-management functions, raised $74 million in growth capital from Mainsail Partners. Businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are adopting …

Processor Jack Henry & Associates Inc. reported June-quarter revenue of $559.9 million, up 4.7% from the same quarter last year. Revenue for the 12-month period came to $2.22 billion, up 6.6%. Net income for the quarter totaled $101 million, a 3.4% increase; for the year ended June 30, $381.8 million, up 4.1%. …

Merchants want lower interchange. In their Shangri-la, interchange would be negative, meaning merchants would be paid to accept credit and debit cards. This is not unknown in the real world. For example, Australia’s national debit network for many years had negative interchange. Merchants want to be able to freely surcharge …

Several organizations representing banks and credit unions filed a lawsuit late Thursday challenging Illinois’s Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, which was signed into law June 7. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was brought by the Illinois Bankers Association, The American Bankers Association, …