Law and Regulation

The Huntington National Bank launched a secured credit card offering 1% cashback rewards and no annual fee. Secured cards require cardholders to make a one-time, refundable deposit to back activity on the card. Mastercard Inc. and BOK Financial Corp. expanded their agreement making Mastercard the exclusive payments network in BOK’s debit and …

Data compromises reported in the United States reached a record high in 2023, totaling 3,205, a 78% rise over 2022 and up 72% from the then record high of 1,860 in 2021, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s annual Data Breach Report. It is the first time the number …

Sound Payments issued a slate of updates for its point-of-sale system, including a way for retailers to categorize returns. Jacksonville, Fla.-based Sound Payments says the new return-categories feature enables merchants to catalog returns by size, reason for return, defective, and other custom variables. It also has a reporting component for …

FedNow, the real-time payments network operated by the Federal Reserve, announced late Tuesday it has 400 financial institutions participating as senders or receivers after six months of operation. The much-anticipated Fed service launched last July with 35 participating financial institutions. Participating institutions range in size from less than $500 million …

Apple Inc. will let developers enable purchases outside of its App Store, marking a change that previously prohibited such action. The move comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court this week declining to hear appeals from either Apple or Epic Games in their court saga. Epic sued Apple …

Giant payment processor Fiserv Inc. wants to take on another aspect of the business with its application for a special bank charter in Georgia. The charter for a merchant-acquirer limited purpose bank, if approved, would enable Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv to interact with card networks directly instead of operating through a …

Nuvei Corp. said it has agreed to process e-commerce transactions for Galeries Lafayette UAE, a unit of French Department Stores LLC. Linnworks, an e-commerce inventory and order-management software provider, said it is working with Lightspeed Commerce Inc. to enable Linnworks clients to connect to Lightspeed Retail. Fintech Varo Bank N.A. announced it is offering a …

On Nov. 20, 2023, Mastercard Inc. announced that its Chinese joint venture with Netsunion to process domestic payments had been approved by the People’s Bank of China and the National Administration of Financial Regulation. Was it a victory for, or a mockery of, free trade? If this landmark approval were …

The battle between merchants, on one hand, and financial institutions and payment networks, on the other, over the Credit Card Competition Act continues to heat up. The Merchants Payments Coalition on Thursday sent a letter to Congress signed by nearly 2,000 merchants, including hundreds of small businesses, calling on legislators …

The Electronic Payments Coalition has come out swinging in the new year as it intensifies its fight against the Credit Card Competition Act. The EPC, which lobbies on behalf of financial institutions and payments networks, late Monday announced it is launching an ad campaign aimed at federal lawmakers. The campaign …