Law and Regulation

The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate heard testimony Wednesday from witnesses both for and against regulation of credit card interchange. Speakers represented a supermarket chain, merchant groups, Mastercard and Visa, and a bank. The hearing showed that “while more Democrats than Republicans likely would support greater intervention in the …

Buy now, pay later provider Afterpay said retailer Rite Aid now accepts the installment payment option online and intends to offer it in-store in coming months.MoneyGram International Inc. rebutted claims by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the company is a “repeat offender” with respect to “consumer harm,” citing the fact that the …

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC announced it will soon introduce tokenization for checking account and routing numbers on transactions financial institutions run over TCH’s RTP real-time payments and EPN automated clearing house networks.Of 80 mid-tier U.S. financial institutions surveyed by Volante Technologies, 37% of these not already connected to The Clearing …

Electronic payments options for legal cannabis sales broadened their reach with Thursday’s deal between Aeropay, a digital payments provider specializing in cannabis sales, and Flowhub, a point-of-sale platform for legal cannabis dispensaries. The deal will enable more than 1,000 dispensaries using Flowhub’s POS software to accept ACH payments. To initiate …

Payroc World Access LLC announced the acquisition of Worldnet, a payment gateway designed for independent software developers. Terms were not disclosed.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York Attorney General have sued MoneyGram International Inc., alleging the remittance company “failed to deliver funds promptly to recipients abroad.” MoneyGram responded by calling the claims …

Despite predictions that buy now, pay later loans will account for $680 billion in transactions by 2025, or about 12% of all e-commerce sales, the industry remains on a potential slippery slope when it comes to consumer protections, says a paper issued Monday by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at …

Be careful what you wish for. For years, payments processors have contended that state and local lawmakers and regulators would enact better regulations if they were better-informed about how payments work. The good news is that’s now happening, said Kim Ford, senior vice president of government relations at Fiserv Inc. …

Payments companies have sensed increasing regulatory pressure since the Biden Administration’s inauguration last year, and now experts who follow developments in Washington, D.C., are confirming it. After a relatively “light touch” during the Trump Administration, “the [regulatory] pendulum has come back this way” toward a harder look at payments practices, …

The commerce platform Bolt has agreed to acquire the cryptocurrency provider Wyre to enable consumers to spend crypto at Bolt merchants, which will receive fiat currency. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close before year’s end, were not disclosed.In related news, payments platform Nium said it has partnered with cryptocurrency specialist BitPay to allow …

At least a couple of banks—Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.—are proponents of expanding the Zelle peer-to-peer payments service to retail payments, The Wall Street Journal reported. Owned by Early Warning Services LLC, itself owned by seven of the largest U.S. banks including BofA and Wells, Zelle offers account-to-account payments. The …