Law and Regulation

As FIS Inc. prepares to dispose of a majority interest in its merchant-acquiring unit, the big processor confronts other key questions regarding potentially favorable developments in the payments business. Still, its top brass proved reluctant early Wednesday to discuss those questions, one of which touched on opportunities the proposed Credit …

With payments-industry competition rapidly getting more intense, long-established players such as Mastercard Inc. could lose out if they don’t change with the times. But Mastercard’s chief executive signaled Thursday that change is just what his company is doing. “We stand ready to compete,” declared Michael Miebach during Mastercard’s second-quarter earnings …

Visa Inc.’s top brass, during the company’s quarterly earnings conference call Tuesday afternoon, preferred to talk about fast-growing newer lines of business such as value-added services and transaction sources apart from traditional plastic credit and debit cards. But stock analysts on the call had questions about some sensitive merchant-relations issues, …

The latest battle in the war over the proposed Credit Card Competition Act has focused on the question whether the legislation would cut rewards and other benefits for cardholders. Citing research from the consulting firm CMSPI, the Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for sellers, argues that passage of the …

Growth in same-day automated clearing house volumes slowed in the second quarter, but same-day ACH is still posting impressive gains from 2022, according to the latest data from ACH governing body Nacha. Herndon, Va.-based Nacha says the second quarter saw 199.4 million same-day ACH payments, up 7.7% from 185.1 million …

Independent sales organizations can’t do much without a sponsor bank, also known as an acquiring bank, to get them access to the payment card networks. As with most business endeavors, the complexity of finding a sponsor bank has increased. It’s a challenge that attendees at the 2023 Midwest Acquirers Association …

The Federal Reserve’s instant-payment service, FedNow, is officially live with 35 banks and credit unions participating, the nation’s banking regulator announced early Thursday. The launch, which culminates four years of work since the Fed first announced its intention to build a real-time payments rail, comes as the payments industry moves …

The Federal Reserve could launch its FedNow real-time payments service as early as tomorrow, sources tell Digital Transactions News. The network, which has been under development for nearly four years, represents the regulator’s first effort to create a nationwide network for instant payments, a service that other countries, and at …

Risk-management technology provider Feedzai has harnessed artificial intelligence with the introduction of Railgun, its latest fraud-detection engine. What differentiates Railgun, according to Feedzai, is that it taps real-time data such as customer behavior patterns and the use of specific cards across merchant networks over longer periods of time. As a …

Open banking, the system enabling seamless sharing of financial data via application programming interfaces between banks and third-party service providers, has captured global attention over the past several years. In 2018, the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) marked the official open-banking era by mandating data sharing in Europe. This milestone paved …