Law and Regulation

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 …

The big processor Nuvei Corp. extended its reach into open banking Thursday through an agreement with American Express Co. to sell AmEx’s Pay with Bank transfer open-banking solution. Pay with Bank transfer (PwBt) enables consumers to pay for purchases directly from their bank account online or in-store. The partnership comes …

The big Montreal-based payments processor Nuvei Corp. said early Wednesday it will process investments in private companies through KoreConX, a technology provider specializing in enabling such payments for individual investors. Interestingly, the arrangement includes the use of both card and account-to-account networks to route customers’ investments, with a $50 minimum, …

Observers of the payments industry who wonder how the Federal Reserve’s proposed rate reductions for debit card acceptance might be received by the nation’s biggest processors heard an unequivocal answer early Tuesday from at least one of them.  “Any time the cost of acceptance goes down, it’s a positive for …

Last year, credit card issuers charged consumers more than $105 billion in interest and more than $25 billion in fees, $14.5 billion of which came from late fees, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s biennial credit card market report. Credit card holders paid about 20% of their average balance …

The Federal Reserve Board’s proposal Wednesday to make a 31% reduction in the main component of its debit card interchange ceiling for large issuers touches on a longstanding sore point among merchants and has already sparked a spirited debate in the payments industry. Merchant groups, long riled by debit card …

With potential regulation of credit card interchange looming and with the unwavering demand from merchants for lower card-acceptance costs, the possibility that interchange as it’s known today may dramatically change can’t be entirely dismissed—but don’t count on its demise. That was the conclusion at the Money 20/20 trade show this …

The Federal Reserve Board is set to revisit its longstanding limit on debit card interchange on Wednesday, and most observers expect the Fed to lower it. But ask Visa Inc. about the matter—as analysts did Tuesday afternoon during the network’s September-quarter earnings call—and its top executives outwardly at least profess …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s oversight effort in data-sharing regulation is more than a year old, but with its newly proposed data-rights rule—released last week—the agency is making a substantial move in the field. Under the Personal Financial Data Rights rule, consumers would have the power to share data associated …

A day after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau floated a proposed data rights rule, reaction from the payments industry has been largely positive. The rule aims at governing the practice of sharing consumer data through open banking. The proposed rule would require financial institutions to share data at a consumer’s …