Law and Regulation

More than a year after Capital One Financial Corp. announced its $35-billion deal to acquire Discover Financial Services, it received the last federal regulatory approvals to move ahead and has set a May 18 closing. The last two regulatory approvals, from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller …

[Editor’s Note: Following Digital Transactions News publication Friday, a U.S. District Court judge temporarily halted the layoffs at the CFPB, according to the Associated Press. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has scheduled an April 28 hearing on the matter.] A dramatically reduced Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will still operate, but with …

Ransomware demands and payments declined in 2024, thanks to a combination of better law enforcement and defenses by companies, according to BakerHostetler’s annual Data Security Incident Response Report. The average ransomware payment totaled $501,338 in 2024, excluding the largest payment, a 33% decline from the previous year. The amount of …

CPI Card Group Inc. added Web push provisioning to give card issuers the capability to more easily issue credit and debit cards directly to a consumer’s digital wallet. Gateway Funnel Pros, a developer of payment-gateway technology, said it has launched processing services for marketing agencies facing restrictions or denials from other …

Block Inc. has been ordered to pay a $40-million fine to the state of New York for what the state’s regulator on Thursday called “significant failures in its Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering compliance program, which violated the [New York Department of Financial Services’ money transmitter and virtual currency regulations.”  The …

Paying down debt is one of the top ways consumers intend to spend their tax refund in 2025, says a survey from ACI Worldwide Inc. Some 39% of consumers surveyed said they would use their tax refund to pay down credit card debt and other loans, an indication that inflationary …

Sweeping regulation that would have impacted all major mobile-payment apps in the United States appears to be headed for the dustbin following action by the House of Representatives Wednesday to vote down a bill based on regulation from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The House action follows a Senate vote …

With a renewed emphasis on retail merchants, Lightspeed Commerce Inc. is launching a tool to help retailers data and inventory forecasting. In related news, point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico says its SoftPOS software development kit achieved a PCI Security Standards Council certification. Montreal-based Lightspeed announced the its four-part plan to boost …

Fraud costs merchants in the United States $4.61 for every $1 of fraud incurred, up 32% from $3.16 in 2022, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ annual True Cost of Fraud Study. In Canada, fraud costs merchants $4.52 for every $1 of fraud incurred.  Driving the increase is that criminals are …

The e-commerce platform Shoplazza Corp. said it has upgraded its payments platform in an effort to streamline checkout and cut cart abandonment. Aurora Payments has launched a service for its Arise payment platform that replaces cardholder data with tokens issued by the card networks in an effort to cut fraud, boost approval rates, …