Pricing

Merchants want lower interchange. In their Shangri-la, interchange would be negative, meaning merchants would be paid to accept credit and debit cards. This is not unknown in the real world. For example, Australia’s national debit network for many years had negative interchange. Merchants want to be able to freely surcharge …

Several organizations representing banks and credit unions filed a lawsuit late Thursday challenging Illinois’s Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, which was signed into law June 7. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was brought by the Illinois Bankers Association, The American Bankers Association, …

While merchants, like consumers, love credit and debit cards, they don’t like having to pay to accept them. It’s human nature to want to pay less for products and services, no matter how good they are. To reduce payment-acceptance fees, merchants have brought a battery of antitrust lawsuits against Mastercard …

Merchants were granted a second extension late Tuesday for filing claims against Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. in their ongoing class-action lawsuit against the two networks over interchange costs. U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York Margo K. Brodie, who is presiding over the case, moved …

Merchants’ disdain for interchange is well documented, but one aspect of card-acceptance costs that gets drowned out by the outcry over interchange is that rising processing fees are hitting merchants harder than interchange hikes, according to some observers. Processors’ rate hikes have been running between 0.25% and 1.5% in recent …

Mastercard Inc.’s chief executive early Wednesday deplored the recent collapse of a key interchange settlement and highlighted the card company’s rapid progress in tokenization, a key technology that masks actual card data from potential cyberthieves. Pointing to a U.S. District Court judge’s rejection last month of an agreement between merchants and …

Value-added resellers and independent software vendors enticed by the attractiveness of surcharging and cash-discount programs find there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for enrolling merchants. Questions about the programs abound at RetailNow 2024, the annual conference sponsored by the Retail Solutions Providers Association and in progress this week in Las Vegas. The …

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 …

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 …

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 …