Pricing

In testimony today before a committee of the Australian house of representatives, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia stoutly defended the RBA's action last year to regulate credit card interchange rates in that country, claiming it has saved merchants some $447 million (US) in the past year and …

A little-known maker of switching software with very well-known clients is counting on a major upgrade in memory horsepower it is helping to pioneer to drive down transaction-processing costs while dramatically boosting the amount of data networks can handle. San Rafael, Calif.-based Kabira Technologies Inc. may not have the immediate …

The lead attorney in a recently filed small-business class action against Visa, MasterCard, and a number of their member banks over interchange is optimistic his lawsuit will succeed even though a suit by some California small businesses challenging interchange on antitrust grounds was dismissed this week. In separate statements, Visa …

Starting Aug. 19, sellers on eBay that accept payment through PayPal Inc.?as virtually all eBay sellers do–will have to accept all forms of funding, including credit card funding, eBay Inc. announced Friday. Currently, eBay sellers have the option of maintaining personal PayPal accounts on eBay, which allow them to refuse …

The new chief executive of Visa U.S.A. could meet with a top official of the National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition as early as September to discuss interchange and other issues, according to a spokesman for both merchant organizations. John Philip Coghlan, the former Charles Schwab & Co. …

Despite an apparent willingness by the new chief executive of Visa U.S.A. to meet with merchant representatives on such thorny issues as interchange pricing, some observers say the bank card association's basic position toward the retailer community is unlikely to change. John Philip Coghlan, who took over yesterday as president …

Consumers generally prefer PIN-based debit to signature debit, and are less frequently subjected by banks and merchants to fees for PIN-debit usage, according to a recent survey. At the same time, the number of banks offering rewards incentives to consumers for PIN-debit usage, already a small minority, is declining, says …

Merchant complaints about credit card interchange pricing, which culminated last week in a class-action antitrust suit against the bank card associations and major banks, rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the interchange mechanism works, says a former Visa U.S.A. executive and payments-industry expert. The pricing system, indeed, allows for …

The merchants that last week filed a class-action antitrust suit against major banks and the bank card associations seek more than to collect damages for what they regard as anticompetitive behavior. Indeed, according to the lead attorney representing them, they hope their case will lead to sweeping reform of the …

PayPal Inc.'s new payment technology for small and medium-sized merchants, introduced last week (Digital Transactions News, June 20), is aimed at boosting the online payment processor's market share with these merchants both on auction sites and through their own Web sites, PayPal executives say. The San Jose, Calif.-based company, a …