Decoupled debit programs may yet yield rewards for merchants, especially as they look for ways to circumvent payment networks and spur loyalty among consumers. That’s the take from a new report, “Decoupled Debit: The Start of Mainstream Adoption?” issued by Mercator Advisory Group Inc. Decoupled debit is not a new …
Read More »Retailer Groups Ask Supreme Court to Affirm Rejection of 5-Year-old Interchange Settlement
By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews As the U.S. Supreme Court gets nearer to considering the 2012 interchange settlement, the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association asked the court to let stand an settlement. The trade groups, which for the most part represent large retailers, argue, in part, that the …
Read More »PayByPhone Adds Apple Pay and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• The National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand an appellate court’s ruling last June striking down the controversial 2012 settlement between merchants on the one side and Visa, Mastercard, and some big banks on the other in a long-running antitrust class …
Read More »SignaPay Launches Cash Discount Program and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• Merchant processor SignaPay Ltd. announced the official launch of its PayLo software, which allows merchants to collect what the company calls a “small” service fee on each transaction processed on merchants’ point-of-sale terminals. The fee is waived if the customer uses cash or a gift card. SignaPay says the software is …
Read More »Canadian Small Businesses To Get an Interchange Cut From Mastercard
Small merchants that belong to the 109,000-member Canadian Federation of Independent Business will get interchange reductions of 12.5% or more on Mastercard purchases beginning April 3 under a deal announced Thursday by the CFIB and Mastercard Inc. The new rates will be available to CFIB members through all Canadian merchant …
Read More »A Payments-Industry Divide Opens in the Debate About Dumping the Durbin Amendment
By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews For more than six years, most of the debate about the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment has been relatively straightforward. Merchants like Durbin because they pay less in debit card acceptance costs under the amendment’s interchange price cap affecting card issuers with more than $10 billion in assets. …
Read More »PayPal Plans To Raise Prices on Various Cross-Border Transactions in March
By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews PayPal Holdings Inc. on Wednesday announced updates to its user agreements for consumers and merchants, and among the numerous changes are 0.5% price increases for several types of transactions involving U.S. sellers and foreign buyers. Beyond the price hikes, other changes include a new non-discrimination clause for …
Read More »Do Surcharge Bans Suppress Free Speech?
A layman would have a hard time equating a ban on credit-card surcharges with repression of free speech, but that was the crux of the argument Jan. 10 between lawyers for merchants and the state of New York as they debated for about an hour before before the U.S. Supreme …
Read More »Operation Choke Point Hard To Justify, Sessions Says, and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• More than 100 new merchants have signed a letter to U.S. House of Representatives leaders, bringing the total to 768 since the letter began circulating in November, urging them not to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment, which put a cap on debit card interchange and set debit transaction-routing requirements. Dodd-Frank is …
Read More »Supreme Court Divided on Surcharge Case Merits and other Digital Transactions News briefs
• The U.S. Supreme Court seems divided over whether New York’s ban on credit card surcharges is a form of speech regulation as a group of merchants challenging the state’s anti-surcharge law assert, Reuters reported. The National Retail Federation said the case is about “being able to show the cost of using …
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