Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
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 …
Read More »Fiserv’s Accel Debit Network Now Supports Visa’s Common AID in Addition to MasterCard’s
Hard on the heels of its announcement last week that it will support MasterCard Inc.’s so-called common application identifier (AID) on chip debit cards, processor Fiserv Inc. followed up on Monday by disclosing that its Accel network also will support Visa Inc.’s AID. The news means that Accel is the …
Read More »First Data’s Star Network Casts Its Lot With Visa’s Identifier for Chip-Card Transaction Routing
Payment processor First Data Corp.’s Star electronic funds transfer network on Wednesday said it would license Visa Inc.’s so-called common application identifier (AID) that will facilitate chip-based debit card transactions compliant with the transaction-routing requirements of the Durbin Amendment in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act. The agreement with Visa could give Star, …
Read More »EMV Chip Cards and Revenue Streams Worry Independent ATM Deployers
The coming of Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards along with pressures on interchange and surcharge revenues are the top three concerns of U.S. ATM independent sales organizations and other retail deployers, according to survey results from the ATM Industry Association. The trade group’s annual survey of what’s on its members’ minds …
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