In one of the stranger twists arising from the controversial settlement to credit card interchange litigation, the federal judge overseeing the massive case on Thursday gave lawyers for two feuding merchant groups a week to propose changes to a Web site that urges merchants to opt out of the …
Read More »Retailer Genesco Sues Visa To Recover $13 Million in Disputed PCI Fines
Sports apparel and accessories retailer Genesco Inc. has gone to court to challenge $13.3 million in fines levied by Visa Inc. for alleged violations of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard. Genesco’s may be the first retailer lawsuit filed against a card network over the PCI security standards, according …
Read More »EFT Networks and Discover Strike a Deal That Could Resolve a Chip Card Controversy
With help from Discover Financial Services, regional electronic funds transfer networks this week took a major step toward ending a dilemma over how merchants can route PIN-debit transactions made on chip cards through EFT networks and still meet the Durbin Amendment’s transaction-routing requirements. Previously, the main routes available for …
Read More »The FTC Warns of Fraud and Consumer Privacy Issues as Mobile Payments Gain Traction
The Federal Trade Commission is becoming concerned that consumers who use the many emerging mobile-payments services won’t always be protected from fraud and privacy violations. In a staff report released this week entitled “Paper, Plastic or Mobile? An FTC Workshop on Mobile Payments,” the FTC lists a series of recommendations …
Read More »With No Argo-Style Rescue Coming, Bergeron Calls It Quits at VeriFone
Dogged by seemingly unrelenting bad news that now includes possible violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran, leading point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. late Monday said its long-time chief executive officer Douglas G. Bergeron “is stepping down,” effective today. The company named its chairman, Richard McGinn, as interim chief …
Read More »The Fed Takes a Pass on Proposing Changes to Its Durbin Debit Card Regs
The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday released another report on debit card revenues and expenses and says it does not plan to propose changes to its controversial debit regulations implementing the Durbin Amendment in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act. Dodd-Frank requires the Fed to report on the debit card market every two …
Read More »Illinois Cites Square and NetSpend for Not Having Money-Transmitter Licenses
A spate of cease-and-desist orders by the state of Illinois against unlicensed money transmitters has ensnared eight payments companies, including such prominent ones as Square Inc. and NetSpending Holdings Inc. An agency quietly issued orders against both firms in January that seemingly would prevent them from doing business in the …
Read More »PCI Council Releases Mobile-Acceptance Guidance, But No Word on Certification of Apps
The PCI Security Standards Council on Thursday released yet another set of data-protection guidelines for mobile payments, this one aimed at merchants using smart phones and tablet computers to accept credit and debit cards. Although it touches on many points, the guidance especially focuses on the software running on …
Read More »Visa Offers a ‘Generic, Unbranded’ AID to Make EMV Durbin-Compliant
Visa Inc. on Monday became the latest payments network to offer the U.S. debit industry a solution for the problem of how to route EMV debit transactions in compliance with federal law. The proposal comes after debit networks on Thursday spurned a solution that MasterCard Inc. floated two weeks …
Read More »In an Open Letter, Debit Networks Reject MasterCard’s EMV-Durbin Solution
It took less than two weeks for the Secure Remote Payment Council (SRPc), a consortium of U.S. electronic funds transfer networks, to reject MasterCard Inc.’s offer for EFT networks to use its proprietary Maestro application identifier (AID) to allow processors to route EMV debit transactions according to network choices …
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