Growth in contactless and peer-to-peer payments, e-commerce, and value-added services were among the highlights discussed with stock analysts late Tuesday during Visa Inc.’s third-quarter earnings call for the card company’s fiscal year 2024. Visa’s Tap-to-Pay contactless payments technology has penetrated multiple markets, accounting for 80% of all face-to-face Visa transactions …
Read More »Discover Posts a Strong Quarter As Executives Stay Mostly Mum About Performance
For the second consecutive quarterly earnings call, executives at Discover Financial Services had little to say about the company’s financial performance, plans going forward, or anything else. With a proposed $35.3-billion merger with Capital One Financial Corp. hanging over them, Discover executives again took no questions, and equity analysts were …
Read More »A Card Issuer Trade Group Turns Up the Heat in Its Anti-CCCA Campaign
The Electronic Payments Coalition’s attack this week against the Credit Card Competition Act calls out retailers Target Corp. and Walmart as greedy mega-corporate stores that stand to profit at the expense of consumers should the legislation pass. The aggressive tone of the EPC’s “high six-figure” campaign, unleashed this week, signals …
Read More »FundKite Moves Beyond Business Financing With Its Launch of a Merchant Services Division
FundKite, a fintech that provides financing to small and medium-size businesses, has broadened its services with the launch of a payment-processing division. The move will enable FundKite to expand its services beyond offering capital to merchants by providing them with a one-stop processing and financing shop, the company says. In …
Read More »How the Supreme Court Has Set up an Intense Struggle Over Sellers’ Debit Card Costs
Decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court are supposed to settle matters, but a verdict the high court delivered early Monday has the potential to stir up debit card pricing questions for some time to come, some observers say. The justices, in a 6-3 decision, ruled a case brought by a …
Read More »What Would a Credit Card ‘Holiday’ Look Like?
In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt shut down financial institutions for a week, called a “bank holiday,” to restore calm after a run on banks. This comes to mind after a federal judge recently indicated she won’t approve a settlement between the major card brands and merchants over the fees that …
Read More »U.S. Mobile Payments Volume to Reach $797 Billion in 2025 and other Digital Transactions News briefs from 6/28/24
Data from eMarketer, a research firm, indicates mobile payments at the point of sale in the U.S. market will total $670.5 billion this year, up 21.4% from 2023, and will grow nearly 19% to reach $797 billion in 2025. Volume will cross the $1-trillion mark in 2027, the firm predicts. SmartMetric …
Read More »Merchants Look Forward to Their Day in Court After Judge Brodie Rejects the Interchange Settlement
Merchants are looking forward to making their case now that a judge has rejected a proposed settlement of their two-decades-long litigation with Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. over transaction costs. Late Tuesday morning, Margo K. Brodie, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York, issued a written …
Read More »A Fight Over an Illinois Interchange Prohibition Law Is Far From Over
Groups representing Illinois financial institutions, along with the Electronic Payments Coalition, say they will fight to overturn the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, which was passed earlier this month and is set to go into effect July 1 next year. Opponents of the bill are continuing an ad campaign to …
Read More »Is eBay’s Decision to Drop AmEx a Ploy To Negotiate Lower Acceptance Costs?
EBay Inc.’s decision to stop accepting American Express cards effective Aug. 17 is generating big headlines, but some payments-industry experts question whether the decision is really a tactic to negotiate a lower interchange rate from the travel-and-entertainment card giant, given that eBay says it won’t stop accepting AmEx for about …
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