Law and Regulation

More than 30 million phishing attacks were launched against online stores, payment systems, and banks during the first 10 months of 2023, according to the latest report from Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow-based cybersecurity and antivirus provider operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. E-commerce platforms bore the brunt …

A new federal lawsuit against Apple Inc. alleges the iPhone maker restricts competition in peer-to-peer payments by hampering rivalry with its own Apple Cash app. The restrictions, the suit charges, include provisions against what the suit calls “feature competition,” such as cryptocurrency payments, that could moderate pricing for peer-to-peer payment …

The People’s Bank of China and the National Administration of Financial Regulation, China’s financial regulatory body, on Monday greenlighted Mastercard Inc.’s joint venture, Mastercard NUCC Information Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd, to commence domestic bankcard clearing in China. The approval process took about three years. In February 2020, China’s central bank …

Small businesses claim they have legitimate concerns that their larger counterparts will be the beneficiaries of lower card acceptance costs should the Credit Card Competition Act become law, argues the Small Business Payments Alliance, a trade organization recently formed by the Electronic Payments Coalition. Among the concerns about how the …

Banks in Zelle, the peer-to-peer payment network operated by Early Warning Services LLC, have been issuing refunds to consumers duped by fraudsters into sending money using the network, according to a report Monday by Reuters.  The reimbursements, which the banks have reportedly been paying out since June 30, represent a …

The political battle over the Credit Card Competition Act has heated up as the Small Business Payments Alliance (SBPA), a recently formed merchant trade group, has come out in opposition to the proposed legislation. The group argues that, if passed, the CCCA would harm small businesses. The SBPA, which held …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late Tuesday said it is expanding its efforts to increase oversight of large, non-bank technology firms with a proposed rule that would subject companies that issue digital wallets to the same regulations as those that cover wallets from financial institutions. The proposed rule, which would …

The Federal Trade Commission and the state of Florida reached a settlement with Chargebacks911 in a lawsuit they filed in April alleging the company and its owners use multiple unfair techniques to prevent consumers from winning chargeback disputes. The settlement would prohibit them from providing chargeback mitigation services to high-risk clients that use affiliate …

More than 10 years after Visa Inc. wrote its rules permitting surcharging on its credit cards, questions remain among acquirers, especially those selling or considering surcharge programs for their merchants. Now, as more merchants mull surcharge or cash-discount programs to alleviate some of their card-acceptance costs, and with recent changes …

According to recent research, American households carried a whopping $17.1 trillion in total debt as of the second quarter of 2023. The herculean effort to become debt-free continues to weigh on the shoulders of millions of Americans. We’ve seen the landscape of the U.S. workforce change drastically over the past …