Law and Regulation

Proponents and opponents of the Credit Card Competition Act continue to press their respective cases for passage and rejection of the CCCA by Congress. Late Monday, the Merchants Payments Coalition fired the latest salvo in its campaign to pass the CCCA, a television commercial that literally shows a consumer getting …

Mastercard Inc. is confronting a slowdown in dollar volume in its home market while it pushes into vital new markets like real-time payments and open banking, its presentation of fourth-quarter 2023 financial results indicated early Wednesday. Gross dollar volume of $727 billion in the December quarter represented a 4% rise …

KioSoft Technologies has agreed to license technology from PayRange Inc. in a deal that could exceed $62 million in value over a 10-year period. The agreement stems from a settlement of a four-year dispute in which PayRange, a provider of payments technology for the laundry and vending industries, alleged KioSoft infringed its …

Most U.S. consumers—53%—concerned about a possible fraudulent transaction on their credit card statements make the first inquiry with the issuing bank, not with the merchant. That’s according to the newly released 2024 Cardholder Dispute Index released by Chargebacks911, a Clearwater, Fla.-based dispute-management company. Conducted in partnership with TSG, an Omaha, …

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 …