Issuing/Originating

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact consumer finances and financial habits. On the one hand, since the onset of the pandemic, the bank deposits of American households have been at a record high, partially due to limited spending on entertainment and travel, reduced in-person shopping, and the receipt of …

Diebold Nixdorf Inc. launched its Vynamic Retail Platform that includes functions such as checkout, loyalty program management, retail management, and compliance.Visa Inc. said it completed its $2.15 billion acquisition of Tink, an open banking platform. Announced in June, the acquisition gets Visa access to 3,400 financial institutions in Europe. Stockholm-based Tink will operate …

Consumer spending in the United States, in terms of February retail sales excluding auto, was up 8.7% over February 2021 and 17.3% over February 2019, according to Mastercard Inc.’s SpendingPulse report, which monitors in-store and online retail sales.President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to work out a common …

Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. will raise interchange rates for online merchants starting next month, while also lowering the rates for some small-merchant categories, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Mastercard’s fee changes alone will result in a net increase of about $330 million yearly, according to the Journal story, …

As Russian armed forces continue their assault on Ukraine, Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., and American Express Co. late Saturday said they are suspending all operations in Russia, following up on actions taken by the networks nearly a week earlier. Meanwhile, reports began to filter out of Russia that at least some …

Block Inc., parent company of Square Inc., has become the latest payments provider to come under the scrutiny of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB, as well as attorneys general from multiple states, have requested information from Block related to how the company handles complaints and disputes from customers …

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC said transaction volume on EPN, its automated clearing house network, increased 9.6% in 2021. The Clearing House and the Federal Reserve, the only ACH operators in the United States, each handle approximately half the commercial ACH market, TCH said.Buy now, pay later provider Sezzle Inc. said Yapstone …

With card issuers making it easier to dispute a transaction in the two years since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, observers say it has become harder for them to distinguish good customers from bad customers, especially when a transaction is disputed post-purchase. The latter case is when friendly fraud can occur, …

Visa Inc. will decrease interchange rates by 10% for small businesses accepting consumer credit cards in April, according to a Reuters report. The reduced rates will apply to online and card-present transactions and only to merchants with $250,000 or less in Visa consumer credit volumes, Reuters attributed its information to an …

The actions taken by the SWIFT payments-messaging network and by Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine will have an impact, but a muted one, observers say.  The 49-year-old SWIFT system, which on Saturday said it is banning Russian banks, has not barred all …