Debit Cards

• While House Republicans have stripped from the Financial Choice Act a provision that would have repealed the Durbin Amendment, the effort to get rid of the law’s debit-interchange caps and routing rules is still alive. As the House voted to pass the Act, a trio of Congressmen spoke in the House on Thursday …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews The U.S. transition to the EMV chip card standard has been a long and troubled road, but statistics released by the international standards body behind EMV indicate encouraging progress. As of the end of 2016, 52.2% of major-brand payment cards in the United States—some 675 million …

The Android Pay mobile-payments service from Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit is now live or about to go live in Canada, payments companies and media outlets reported Wednesday. Canada’s Interac Association national debit network said that its Interac Debit service will be available for Android Pay mobile payments beginning June 5 …

Global shipments of chip cards surpassed 2.1 billion in 2016, a 4% increase from 2015, says the Smart Payment Association. “Following significant EMV rollout programs in the United States and China, 2016 saw shipment volumes begin to normalize to reflect growing market maturity in most major global markets,” said Sylvie …

The decision to strip repeal of the Durbin Amendment from a Dodd-Frank overhaul bill puts a brake on the movement to get rid of the amendment’s debit card rules, but that may not necessarily be the end of the matter. Leading advocates for repeal vow to keep fighting, while a …

Two major retailer trade groups late Wednesday celebrated an apparent decision by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to quash a provision that would have repealed the Durbin Amendment. The provision was part of the Financial Choice Act, a bill Congressional Republicans are pushing to overhaul the 2010 Dodd-Frank …

While much of the corporate world has high hopes for a business-friendly bent from the Trump Administration, two policy analysts on Wednesday poured cold water on some of the payments industry’s fondest hopes for regulatory relief. One such hope, to scrap a 1,689-page rule regulating prepaid cards, was sinking fast …

Call centers remain a prime target for criminals looking to perpetrate fraud. In 2016, call-center fraud jumped 113% from 2015, according to Atlanta-based Pindrop Labs’ annual Call Center Fraud Report. Fraudulent activity took place with one in every 937 call-center calls, compared to one in 2,000 calls in 2015“With tools …

Mastercard Inc. reported Tuesday that it switched nearly 17% more transactions in the first quarter than it did a year earlier. Most of the growth came from overseas, but some of it resulted from more U.S. PIN-debit volume, company executives said. Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard said it switched 14.7 billion transactions …

• Opponents and proponents of repealing debit card interchange controls known as the Durbin Amendment prepared for a hearing on the Financial CHOICE Act Thursday with dueling press releases. The National Retail Federation, as reported earlier this week by Digital Transactions News, led a meeting of retailers interested in keeping the …