Law and Regulation

The buy now, pay later craze, which took flight during the Covid pandemic, has turned into a $70-billion-plus segment of the payments industry. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t stirred controversy among acquiring-industry executives, some of whom manage versions of the point-of-sale credit product. That clash of viewpoints emerged Wednesday …

New Jersey has implemented a law that prohibits merchants in the state from profiting from credit card surcharging and requires merchants to clearly disclose any surcharges to consumers. The law, which was passed by the New Jersey legislature in June and went into effect immediately upon New Jersey Governor Phil …

Feedzai, a U.S. fraud-detection and -prevention company, will offer its services in Latin America through a partnership with Dock, a payments provider specializing in services for that region. TreviPay, a U.S.-based business-to-business payments provider operating in 32 countries, introduced a service to support cases where buyers ask to be invoiced …

Discover Financial Inc.’s top brass early Thursday stressed that the company’s top priorities are regulatory compliance, customer experience, and long-term growth. The declaration, from temporary chief executive John Owen, was meant to reassure equity analysts and came in the wake of merchant-overcharge and banking-compliance issues that led up to the …

John Owen, a retired banker and member of Discover Financial Services Inc.’s board of directors, has been appointed interim chief executive and president, replacing Roger Hochschild, who resigned Monday after five years running the company. Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover announced Hochschild’s departure following the card network’s disclosure in an earnings call …

The U.S. Payments Forum has published a free white paper, “Regulation II Clarification for Debit Routing,” on the Federal Reserve’s announcement earlier this year that effective July 1 issuers must support network choice on card-not-present transactions, in addition to card-present, in accordance with the 2010 Durbin Amendment. Payment-card manufacturer CPI Card Group Inc. has …

The Waffle House restaurant system has adopted chainwide contactless payment capability, including mobile-wallet acceptance, through the Oracle Payment Cloud service. A startup called iWallet said it will adopt FedNow for mobile check deposits. The Federal Reserve launched the FedNow real-time payments service last month. MarginEdge, a bill-payments provider, launched a mobile bill-payment app for restaurant operators …

Early Warning Services LLC, which operates the Zelle peer-to-peer payment network, announced early Friday it has appointed Cameron Fowler as chief executive, effective October 2, 2023. Fowler replaces Albert Ko, who left the company in May to become CEO of Auctane, which provides shipping software and operates such brands as …

Instances of electronic benefits transfer (EBT) fraud have become more prevalent in the United States as criminals become more brazen and increasingly prey on society’s most vulnerable. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries are one of the largest targets for EBT fraud. Last year, SNAP distributed over $113.9 billion to …

Debit card networks are gearing up for an expected flood of new online transactions in the wake of a Federal Reserve rule clarification that took effect more than a month ago to require that issuers enable network choice for online as well as in-person transactions. The latest example emerged late …