Credit Cards

Card-acceptance costs and network rules weren’t the only subjects covered by the sweeping settlement revealed Tuesday involving Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and lawyers for the merchants that sued them. The pending agreement, which needs approval from a federal judge, allows for the creation of so-called merchant buying groups that would …

Merchant lawsuits challenging credit card interchange and payment card network rules that began nearly two decades ago may finally be heading for resolution under a landmark settlement announced Tuesday by Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., and lawyers for the merchants. Merchant lawyers in the massive case estimate the settlement could save …

Capital One’s proposed $35.3-billion acquisition of Discover will be a thunderclap for the debit-card, retail-banking, and payment-network markets. The Discover network has long been the number-five U.S. retail-payment network, after Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal. Since its acquisition of Diners Club from Citi in 2008, Discover has struggled as …

Synthetic identity fraud has become the fastest growing form of digital fraud, totaling $3.1 billion in 2023, up from $1.9 million in 2020, a 63% increase, according to TransUnion LLC’s 2024 State of Omnichannel Fraud Report. Criminals are using synthetic identities, which are created from a combination of real and …

Chargebacks are always an issue for merchants. While there are numerous programs and indicators to identify fraudulent ones, detecting and managing first-party fraud—that committed by legitimate customers—can be tougher to root out. In response, Mastercard Inc. is pushing its First Party Trust Program, an artificial intelligence-based service that enables merchants …

Galileo Financial Technologies said it expanded its buy now, pay later platform to enable banks and fintechs to offer new installment plans post-purchase through the consumer’s existing debit or credit card. North American Bancard launched Payment Links on its platform. These are links merchants can adopt to direct customers to a payments …

FIS Inc. said its SecurLock service, working with artificial-intelligence technology from the fintech Stratyfy, is set to increase the volume of card transactions accurately identified as fraudulent, allowing clients to stop the transactions before they are consummated. FIS said the technology “was able to deliver a significant improvement of accurately identified …

McDonald’s Corp. on Sunday showed signs it had largely recovered from a widespread system outage that began early Friday and shut down service, prevented card payments, and scrambled digital orders for hours at thousands of restaurants around the world. Now, the company is seeking the cause and promising to hold …

Processor Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bank, said it will provide a payments platform to BMO. In addition to payment services for credit, debit, and digital payment transactions, Elavon’s services to the bank include customized merchant processing services, omnichannel acceptance, fraud management, and dynamic and multi-currency conversion. Processor Stripe Inc. added support for Apple …

As online shopping continues to stitch itself into consumer behavior, efforts to reduce chargebacks also advance. The latest is Riskified’s Auth Rate Enhance service that can pre-screen orders and provide more information for its customers to make a go-no-go decision on digital orders. Auth Rate Enhance, a component of Riskified’s …