Debit Cards

Findings from an overlooked Federal Reserve Board report from last March portend that the possible cuts in debit card interchange as a result of a major court decision last month could be even bigger than many observers initially thought. In the report, the Fed said that authorization, clearing, and settlement …

By Jim Daly The Federal Reserve on Wednesday said it would appeal the July 31 decision by a federal judge overturning the board’s rule implementing the Durbin Amendment, the section of 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act that regulates debit cards. The news came from Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, at a …

By Jim Daly B is back. That is, what the Federal Reserve Board back in 2011 dubbed “Alternative B” for implementing the transaction-routing requirements in the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment. Alternative B would have required each debit card to provide the merchant access to at least two signature and two …

In one of the most dramatic developments of the year in the electronic-payments business, a federal judge on Wednesday struck down the Federal Reserve Board’s pricing and routing rules for debit card transactions, arguing the banking regulator misinterpreted federal law. The rules, which implemented the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 …

A trade group representing most of the nation’s debit networks has agreed to allow EMV applications other than its own to work on chip cards in the United States. The new position taken by the Secure Remote Payment Council represents what the group calls a “major compromise” and opens the …

Visa Inc.’s Interlink PIN-debit network is recovering after a devastating year following implementation in April 2012 of the transaction-routing requirements in the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment. Visa reported Wednesday that Interlink transaction volume rose 25% in its third quarter of fiscal 2013 ended June 30, a sharp turnaround from the …

Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and their Canadian credit card issuers dodged a legal bullet Tuesday when Canada’s Competition Tribunal refused to quash network rules designed to protect cards from being undercut by merchants seeking lower-cost payment forms. Instead, the tribunal suggested that changing the law was the way for merchants …

Discover Financial Services has been in the spotlight over the past year because of its high-profile effort with PayPal Inc. to bring the online-payments leader’s service to millions of physical merchants. But that’s just one iron Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover has in the fire. On Monday, the Allpoint surcharge-free ATM network …

The Durbin Amendment’s pricing caps are having an impact on small issuers as well as large, and issuers overall are far from bullish about debit-transaction growth, according to a wide-ranging report released on Wednesday. Issuers exempt from the law’s interchange cap report an average income of 45 cents per transaction …

The payments industry may have solved a vexing problem related to EMV chip cards and the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment, but whether that solution will smooth the way for EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa) deployment in the United States is less clear. The EMV Migration Forum, an industry group that has been working …