Law and Regulation

Long-time payments players who like to scoff at Bitcoin as an unproven payments instrument will have to reckon with the robust vote of confidence buyers and sellers of the 7-year-old digital currency have given it over the past few days. Bitcoin’s U.S. dollar value breached the $700 level late Sunday …

• A bill by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, to replace 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act” would hurt consumers and Main Street businesses,” the Merchants Payments Coalition said, because the measure would do away with the financial reform law’s Durbin Amendment that regulates debit card interchange and sets debit card transaction-routing requirements. …

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the author of the fee-capping Durbin Amendment, is well-known as a champion of merchants, but now he’s taking up the cause of small banks and credit unions. Durbin on Tuesday sent a letter to Visa Inc. chief executive Charles Scharf asking for information about a new …

A trade group of independent ATM deployers on Thursday issued a report blasting the federal government’s Operation Choke Point targeting high-risk merchants, and the nation’s leading retailer association called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the PCI Security Standards Council on antitrust grounds. While mostly affecting a few merchant …

The latest battle between merchants and the major card brands has been brewing behind the scenes for months but went public Thursday when an advocacy group for big-box retailers charged that a new twist on network rules is slowing the progress of mobile payments. The controversy involves regulations long maintained …

• The Texas Attorney General’s office and PayPal Holdings Inc. last week settled the office’s allegations that PayPal’s Venmo person-to-person payments service compromised customers’ privacy and security; PayPal agreed to improve disclosures, ensure that Venmo users know who can see their transaction information, and pay the state $175,000. “We are …

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., made his name in the payments business with an amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that put a cap on the debit card interchange big banks can earn. Now, he’s investigating the nation’s rocky EMV rollout with separate inquiries concerning snarled certification queues and the …

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sued Visa Inc. on Tuesday claiming that Visa is trying to make the retailer use signature verification for some EMV debit card transactions and route those transactions over Visa’s network rather than Wal-Mart’s preferred PIN-debit networks. The suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, …

As federal regulators increasingly zero in on data breaches, lawyers at a payments conference on Wednesday warned that organizations that suffer breaches are likely to have a tougher time avoiding legal liability in the years ahead. And the PCI Security Standards Council disclosed some of the major changes in its …

Mobile payment and marketing provider LevelUp is continuing its fight against a rival over an alleged patent infringement and the New York Attorney General has filed suit against Northern Leasing Systems Inc. alleging deceptive business practices. In 2015, Boston-based LevelUp’s parent company, SCVNGR Inc., filed suit in U.S. District Court …