Law and Regulation

Veteran payments practitioners will recall that, “in the beginning,” issuers paid interchange to merchants to incent them to accept credit card payments from the incipient Visa and Mastercard networks.  By the inception of electronic draft capture (circa 1980), that acceptance was growing to a critical-mass level nationwide, and by the late …

News late Wednesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is inquiring into a newly popular alternative for going public comes as payments firms increasingly turn to the method in lieu of a traditional public offering. Reuters reported late Thursday the SEC is contacting Wall Street financial institutions to ask …

Shift4 Payments Inc. said it will process all payment transactions at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. The deal follows Shift4’s expansion into stadiums and other venues through its recent acquisition of VenueNext Inc.Payments provider SignaPay Ltd. announced a partnership with Valor PayTech to provide Valor’s countertop, handheld, and PIN pad equipment …

The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t shuffle of interchange-rate changes planned for April may have betrayed a rare introspective moment at the payment networks—which are long used to imposing their fees and rules on the rest of the payments ecosystem at will. And that makes it hard to resist wondering what might be …

Launched in 1989, Digicash introduced the first cryptocurrency. In the 1990s, it was considered leading-edge payments technology. But physical and digital currencies are payment networks. In payment systems, good technology is neither sufficient nor generally the biggest hurdle. No matter how good the technology, without critical mass they’re worth little.  …

The news that the U.S. Department of Justice is probing debit card routing practices at Visa Inc. follows on a long history of such investigations and could portend a more serious attitude by regulators to address longstanding merchant complaints about network routing and pricing. “This is one more heavy step …

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Visa Inc.’s practices regarding online and in-store debit card acceptance, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal. The probe is centered on whether Visa has restricted merchants’ ability to flow transactions over less-costly networks, according to sources who spoke to the newspaper.Fintech Enova International said it acquired Pangea …

With 21 states having legalized sports betting in one form or another, major payments processors sense a growing opportunity. The latest development comes from Virginia, where Nuvei Corp. said Wednesday a subsidiary has been granted a sports-betting vendor registration by the Virginia Lottery. “The company can now offer its innovative payment …

Payments provider Priority Technology Holdings Inc. reported fourth-quarter revenue of $106.1 million, up 8.1% year-over-year. Excluding Priority’s RentPayment business, which the company sold in September, revenue grew 12.3% from $94.5 million.Payments provider Flywire Corp. launched Flywire eStore, a platform that supports e-commerce for Flywire clients and their customers. The move follows Flywire’s decision last …

With the Covid-19 pandemic still imposing a huge financial weight on the nation’s small businesses and families, many legislators are understandably eager to pursue policies they feel will ease that burden. But lawmakers must be careful that they are looking at policies that really will help. Unfortunately, some sectors—in this …