Law and Regulation

The Electronic Transactions Association joined seven other financial trade groups in opposing a Republican-backed bill in the House of Representatives that would levy a 5% tax on cross-border money transfers to fund President Trump’s proposed border wall. Introduced in January by U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., H.R. 85 would require …

Payments company i3 Verticals Inc. announced the acquisition of two unnamed companies at a combined price of approximately $20 million. One is in the public sector and the other is in wireless Internet-service billing. Countering the impression that most users of digital-payments services skew younger, half of first-time person-to-person payment …

Square Inc. is rapidly growing into a heavyweight player in the hard-fought market for peer-to-peer payments. The San Francisco-based company had 15 million active users in December for its P2P product, Cash App, a number that doubled from December 2017, the San Francisco-based company disclosed on Wednesday. That’s still well …

CannaTrac, a cashless mobile-payment service for the cannabis industry, released an application programming interface for point-of-sale software developers. JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told investors the bank’s JPM Coin, a blockchain-based token now in test for intrabank corporate payments, one day could be offered to consumers, Bloomberg reported. …

A bevy of fees levied by the two major card networks is offsetting much of the fee relief merchants receive from the 7-year-old Durbin Amendment, according to new findings from a payments-research firm that is studying the issue on behalf of the retail industry. While the Durbin caps on debit …

The federal court handling the long-running class-action litigation between merchants on one hand and big banks and Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. on the other announced on Friday it has granted “preliminary approval” to a settlement that could award between $5.54 billion and $6.24 billion to merchant plaintiffs. The parties …

It was a rough 2018 for leading ATM network operator Cardtronics plc, but the company’s top management predicted Thursday that 2019 will be better. Houston-based Cardtronics early last year muddled through the end of its long-standing relationship with its biggest customer, 7-Eleven Inc., which is pulling down year-on-year comparisons. At …

Two ATM trade groups said Monday they are working together to assure their members get access to banking services in what the associations believe is a risk-averse financial climate. The National ATM Council Inc. and the ATM Industry Association said they signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop a …

New Jersey’s legislature this month passed a bill requiring merchants to accept cash at the point of sale, and several big cities, including New York, are considering similar measures. But does cash really need legal protection from payment cards and mobile wallets? That’s the question public officials as well as …

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will within a few months begin testing its own cryptocurrency for wholesale payments between corporations and banks globally, according to CNBC. The new token, called JPM Coin, will be exchangeable at the rate of $1 each. The development may surprise some observers, given the harsh criticism …