Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
One of the most unusual auctions ever is scheduled for Friday, but the event is largely shrouded in mystery. Beginning at 6:00 a.m. Eastern and continuing for 12 hours, the U.S. Marshals Service will take sealed online bids for 29,657 Bitcoins that the FBI seized in its bust last October …
Read More »FDIC Consent Order Restricts The Bancorp Bank’s Dealings With ISOs And Merchants
The parent company of major prepaid card issuer The Bancorp Bank on Wednesday disclosed that the bank had entered into a consent order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that places restrictions on its dealings with independent sales organizations. The order also prevents the bank in some instances from issuing …
Read More »Though Facing Slim Odds, A Merchant Group Takes Its Durbin Case to the Supreme Court
Arguing that a federal appeals court “disregarded the plain letter of the statute,” a group of merchants and merchant associations is preparing a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case in which it is battling to overturn the Federal Reserve Board’s interpretation of the Durbin Amendment’s debit …
Read More »Government Probe of POS Rules Gets New Life as DoJ Case Against AmEx Proceeds
A U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleging anti-competitive behavior by American Express Co. can proceed, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled Wednesday. Seventeen states also are plaintiffs in the case. n The case is important because of the government’s continuing inquiry …
Read More »Eye on Bitcoin: It’s Not a Currency, the IRS Says; Jumio Launches Security Network
By Linda Punch Those looking for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to give Bitcoin legitimacy as a currency when the agency issued its guidance earlier this week were sorely disappointed. The IRS said the digital cash will be taxed like property, not currency. But the quest for legitimacy may be …
Read More »New Law Enforcement Tactic Could Snare ISOs and Acquirers in Quest To Catch Bad Merchants
A historical shift in how some federal financial law-enforcement agencies view the payments industry is under way, and it’s not one that bodes well for the industry, Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association, told attendees at the Southeast Acquirers Association conference this week in Atlanta. Dubbed …
Read More »Pulse Deal Gives Visa’s Common AID Nearly Universal Enablement for Chip Debit Transactions
Discover Financial Service’s Pulse subsidiary last week became the latest debit network to license Visa Inc.’s so-called common application identifier (AID) on soon-to-be-issued Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip debit cards. This latest agreement means Visa’s common AID will be enabled on cards that account for nearly 90% of U.S. PIN-debit transactions. The …
Read More »Banks Sue Trustwave, Target’s PCI Services Provider Before the Retailer’s Data Breach
Trustwave Holdings Inc., the leading provider of Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) services to merchants, on Monday became the target of a lawsuit arising from the massive data breach at Target Corp. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago by two banks, claims negligence on the part …
Read More »Sen. Durbin Decries Appellate Court’s ‘Giveaway’ to Banks; Merchants Mull Their Next Steps
An appellate court’s Friday decision reinstating the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial interpretation of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment with its debit card interchange cap and transaction-routing requirements continues to draw fire, but whether the merchants and retail groups that brought the appeal and lost will trudge on in court remains …
Read More »Appellate Court Upholds the Fed’s Rule Implementing the Durbin Amendment
In an unsurprising ruling, a three-judge panel on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial rule implementing the Durbin Amendment’s debit card provisions in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act. A federal district judge last July overturned the rule, saying the Fed hadn’t followed Congress’s intent. Judges …
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