Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Mobile-payments processor Obopay Inc., which is increasing its fee to send money to 25 cents from 10 cents effective Aug. 7, says it has not had complaints from users despite the more than doubling in the transaction price. “We're pleased we got it right,” says Gregory Holmes, president of Obopay …
Read More »House Committee Passes Interchange Bill, But Scraps Panel of Judges
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee passed the controversial Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 on Wednesday on a 19-16 vote, but with a significant change. The marked-up bill no longer includes a provision that would have established a three-judge panel to arbitrate interchange pricing should merchants and the bank …
Read More »Gasoline Marketers Underwhelmed by New Visa Interchange Rates
With complaints from fuel marketers reaching a crescendo, Visa Inc. introduced on Thursday a sweeping new credit and debit card interchange rate structure for gasoline that leaves sellers better off for many consumer credit card transactions over $30. In conjunction with the new rates, the card network also announced it …
Read More »FTC, DoJ Are Leery of Bills That Would Regulate Interchange Rates
Congress may be taking the week off for its annual Fourth of July recess, but the interchange fireworks are sure to resume after lawmakers return next week. Banks and the payment card networks, which oppose the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 in the House of Representatives and its …
Read More »A New Card Swipe Device Could Move PayPal Closer to POS Payments
A seemingly unremarkable magnetic-stripe card reader from a software company specializing in payment applications for users of eBay Inc.'s online merchant marketplace and its PayPal payment system is just hitting the market, but it could mark another advance for PayPal into the world of point-of-sale payments. The reader and its …
Read More »Online Merchant Counsels Retailers on Controlling Payment Costs
Internet merchants looking to cut their acceptance costs may have more control over this expense than they believe, according to Jon Kuhlmann, managing partner at Grapevinehill Inc., a Danvers, Mass.-based online seller of footwear with $13 million in annual sales. Though all merchants have complained increasingly about the cost of …
Read More »Durbin Adds Senate Bill to House Effort to Rein in Interchange
The other shoe dropped on bank card interchange Thursday afternoon when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced a companion bill to the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 pending in the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee. Durbin's bill, including its name, is nearly identical to the House version introduced …
Read More »A Senate Letter Ratchets up the Heat on Networks over Interchange
A bipartisan letter last week from four U.S. senators to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. demanding information about how they set interchange rates is ratcheting up the pressure on the card networks, and it could represent another step on the U.S. road to joining about 20 other countries that either …
Read More »Payment Issues Figure Among Reasons for Checkout Abandonment
Various issues with payment methods loom large among reasons consumers give for abandoning the checkout process on e-commerce sites, according to a survey released on Wednesday by PayPal Inc. Some 22% of 355 consumers who had abandoned shopping carts at a mix of large and small merchant sites before completing …
Read More »GAO Report Sheds Light on Federal Card-Acceptance Costs
The federal government took in $27.1 billion in payments through credit cards in fiscal 2007 and paid at least $433 million in merchant discount fees, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Agencies that were able to break out their interchange costs …
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