Debit Cards

In a year when Congress is beefing up regulation of the financial system, merchant-acquiring executives not surprisingly view the tightening regulatory environment as the key challenge facing their industry in 2010 and 2011, according to a new study from Boston-based Aite Group LLC. Sixty-one percent of executives Aite researchers interviewed …

As President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010 into law on Wednesday, at least one major merchant interest group has already fired the opening shot in what promises to be an all-out battle over the fees banks earn on debit card transactions. At the center of …

The so-called Durbin Amendment that soon will be law could cut Bank of America Corp.’s debit card revenues by up to nearly 80%, the nation’s largest debit card issuer estimates. Two major prepaid card processors that are planning IPOs and rely on growing interchange income, however, seem likely to escape …

The concept of allowing consumers to use debit cards with PINs to make purchases on the Web took a big step forward on Wednesday with the Pulse electronic funds transfer network’s announcement that it is rolling out an online PIN-debit service. With some 4,400 member financial institutions, Houston-based Pulse, which …

Driven by growth in government programs, corporate payroll cards, and health care, the network-branded prepaid card sector can expect its U.S. load volume to nearly quadruple from an estimated $120.2 billion last year to more than $440 billion in 2017, according to research commissioned by MasterCard Inc. The study, by …

Speculation has flowed freely about the effects of the controversial “Durbin amendment” on merchants, card issuers, and the payment card networks should the interchange-regulation measure become law. But data about how consumers would be affected are scarce. Javelin Strategy and Research, however, says research it conducted late last year, in …

Although many U.S. merchants and processors have met Visa Inc.’s July 1 deadline for replacing unapproved point-of-sale software applications with ones that meet requirements of the Payment Application data-security standard, or PA-DSS, many non-compliant card-processing applications remain in the marketplace, Visa says. While Visa would not release numbers on compliance, …

While a compromise hammered out on Monday moderates some of the impact of the so-called Durbin Amendment, at least one payments expert has no doubt who emerges as the winners of this latest parliamentary maneuvering: merchants. Indeed, despite some concessions, banks are still likely to see considerable erosion of the …

Debit cards are more popular than ever, but issuers see threats to the bottom line from rising fraud and more regulation. Loss rates rose 43% on signature debit cards and 24% for PIN-debit cards in 2009, according to the Pulse EFT network’s fifth-annual survey of the debit market. Meanwhile, issuers …

Sen. Richard Durbin chastised the card industry for what he called its refusal to negotiate interchange rates in a hearing held on Wednesday to investigate the fees federal agencies pay to accept cards. Sponsor of a controversial amendment that would regulate interchange fees for debit cards, Durbin also revealed during …