Pricing

After the current U.S. Congress was sworn in, a predictable chorus of merchants, lobbyists, and lawmakers demanded new interchange price caps and other government mandates to decrease credit card interchange fees for merchants. The tired attacks on credit cards are an easy narrative that focuses almost exclusively on the cost …

Intuit Inc. said its Intuit ProConnect unit has partnered with Practice Ignition, a service provider to accounting firms, to provide payments and other services to tax-preparation professionals. Intuit in February sued Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., alleging the networks’ interchange pricing models constitute unlawful price fixing.Payments provider i3 Verticals Inc. said it has acquired two …

App-based technology for point-of-sale transactions has been a preserve of POS system providers like Square and Clover, but now smaller independent sales organizations are looking for a piece of that growing pie. Early Thursday, VizyPay LLC announced VizyPOS, an app that can control such functions as cash discounting and real-time …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Buy now, pay later provider Splitit Payments Ltd. announced new merchants Giant Bicycles, Super73, Mate Bike, Michael’s Jewelry and others now offer the installment payment service. Spliltit also reiterated that its service can be used with credit cards.Boutique marketplace Jane has integrated Klarna for buy now, pay later transactions.Fintech Rapyd said it is waiving up to …

Responding to pressure from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and other critics, Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. are delaying planned adjustments to their credit card interchange rates until April next year, Bloomberg News reported. The rate adjustments had been set for next month and involved an estimated net $889 million in increased fee income for …

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 …

The U.S. Senator who gave his name nearly a decade ago to a law that caps debit card interchange made it plain Thursday he now has the rates merchants pay for credit card acceptance squarely in his sights. Commenting during a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he heads, …