Issuing/Originating

More than 10 years after Visa Inc. wrote its rules permitting surcharging on its credit cards, questions remain among acquirers, especially those selling or considering surcharge programs for their merchants. Now, as more merchants mull surcharge or cash-discount programs to alleviate some of their card-acceptance costs, and with recent changes …

According to recent research, American households carried a whopping $17.1 trillion in total debt as of the second quarter of 2023. The herculean effort to become debt-free continues to weigh on the shoulders of millions of Americans. We’ve seen the landscape of the U.S. workforce change drastically over the past …

Gift cards are becoming a popular employee incentive, Fiserv Inc.’s “Q4 2023 Gift Card Survey” finds. Some 80% of respondents say they would prefer a gift card as a reward from their employer, while 9% say they would prefer an event or outing, and 11% would prefer some other type …

Observers of the payments industry who wonder how the Federal Reserve’s proposed rate reductions for debit card acceptance might be received by the nation’s biggest processors heard an unequivocal answer early Tuesday from at least one of them.  “Any time the cost of acceptance goes down, it’s a positive for …

Payments processor Elavon announced its global acquiring multi-currency conversion services will support transactions for the airline Virgin Atlantic. Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, says it serves more than 100 airlines among its client base. Canadian banking giant BMO said it will begin offering Visa Inc.’s Installments payments service next year. Visa launched Installments …

Last year, credit card issuers charged consumers more than $105 billion in interest and more than $25 billion in fees, $14.5 billion of which came from late fees, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s biennial credit card market report. Credit card holders paid about 20% of their average balance …

The Federal Reserve Board’s proposal Wednesday to make a 31% reduction in the main component of its debit card interchange ceiling for large issuers touches on a longstanding sore point among merchants and has already sparked a spirited debate in the payments industry. Merchant groups, long riled by debit card …

Mastercard Inc. posted strong third-quarter results of $6.5 billion in revenue, up 12% from $5.8 billion in the 2022 third quarter. The card giant’s net income of $3.2 billion increased 28% from $2.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. Mastercard cited cross-border payment volume growth of 21% in the quarter as one …

With potential regulation of credit card interchange looming and with the unwavering demand from merchants for lower card-acceptance costs, the possibility that interchange as it’s known today may dramatically change can’t be entirely dismissed—but don’t count on its demise. That was the conclusion at the Money 20/20 trade show this …

Numbers from Fiserv Inc. early Tuesday indicate the big processor’s payments and network business for financial institutions is growing at a steady clip, with September-quarter revenue in that business up 5% year-over-year, to $1.71 billion in volume. Riding that wave, the company’s top brass late Monday announced a deal with …