Law and Regulation

Responding to complaints about problems in implementing a new federal law requiring acquirers to report merchants’ electronic payment transactions, the Internal Revenue Service announced on Wednesday it will delay penalty provisions and withholding requirements for a year, until Jan. 1, 2013. Acquirers still are required to file the new 1099-K …

  Already the subject of new debit card regulations, the payments industry is coming in for more scrutiny from the federal government. A Federal Trade Commission official told attendees at a merchant-acquiring conference on Thursday that the government has formed a task force to monitor third-party payment-services providers. The feds’ …

  Many community bankers say their payment revenues are declining, and they are bracing for hits from higher expenses from complying with regulations and from fraud while at the same time trying to ramp up new services such as mobile payments. The findings come from the Independent Community Bankers of …

A trade group of ATM independent sales organizations on Wednesday filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. alleging that network rules illegally forbid them from imposing lower surcharges for ATM transactions that go over the rails of unaffiliated electronic funds transfer networks. Those anti-discrimination rules require …

The unceasing controversy over the Durbin Amendment and its debit card interchange price controls continued Wednesday when two members of Congress declared they would introduce legislation to repeal the measure. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives might very well pass the bipartisan proposal, but its survival chances are much lower in …

Apriva Inc., a major processor of payment transactions from vending machines, this week told machine owners that it is working to assure their card-acceptance costs will remain stable despite the uncertain status of a program it has with Visa Inc. that gives them an interchange break if they install hardware …

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U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin on Tuesday said he is aware that new Visa and MasterCard interchange schedules will cause some merchants to pay much more in interchange when a consumer uses a debit card from a big bank to pay for small purchases. Durbin said the Federal Reserve Board should …

  It’s back to the future, and in many cases higher merchant-acceptance costs for transactions at or under $15, with the bank card networks’ new debit card interchange schedules that will take effect Saturday. That’s the same date that regulated interchange pricing under the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank …

The new federal regulation requiring processors and acquirers to report merchant electronic payment transactions to the Internal Revenue Service is proving to be a major challenge for the industry, but at the same time could turn into a revenue generator for acquirers, according to a researcher. The requirements originated with …