History has shown the two global card networks will never introduce real competition on their own. Time for regulators to intervene. The Fed and the FTC have made a start. The recent clarification by the Federal Reserve confirming that a more than 10-year-old law applies to online debit cards—coupled with …

The U.S. Department of Justice wants more information from Visa Inc. on its U.S. debit practices, a continuation of an investigation originally started in 2021. Visa disclosed the request in a Jan. 27 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing and said the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division made the request on …

Mastercard Inc. has made some big news in recent months, but you wouldn’t know all of it from the company’s conference call early Thursday to discuss its fourth-quarter 2022 and full-year results. Mastercard celebrated recently concluded major deals that make the global payments company the exclusive provider of debit branding …

Dealer Pay, a provider of point-of-sale technology to franchise and independent auto dealers, has updated its platform with several new features intended to deliver a better customer experience. Dealer Pay’s “send payment request” features enable dealers to collect payments directly from the customer via text messaging or email. Dealers can …

FIS Inc., one of the world’s largest payment processors, is undergoing more changes at the top. Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS will replace its existing board structure, where Gary A. Norcross, chief executive, also was board chairman, with an independent director as the chair beginning Dec. 16. Replacing him as chairman is …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has become a much more active regulator of payments and other financial industries since the onset of the Biden Administration, and on Monday the agency lent further momentum to that trend. The 11-year-old federal agency is now asking for public comment on a proposal that …

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling that the way the agency is funded is unconstitutional opens the door to rewrite its remit and take politics out of its decisions. Paraphrasing Leon Trotsky, payment systems, processors, fintechs, and financial-services firms may not be interested in the CFPB, but the CFPB is interested in …

Two of the more significant merchant-processing operators reported quarterly results Thursday morning, with FIS Inc. indicating its merchant solutions unit recorded $1.18 billion in revenue in the period ended Sept. 30, up 4% year-over-year. Meanwhile, the large payments provider EVO Payments Inc. said its revenue for the same period totaled …

The payments business has moved on from the pandemic, but it faces a host of other issues. Here’s our annual catalog of the ones causing the most headaches. Welcome to Digital Transactions’ annual catalog of headaches—the problems, pitfalls, and perils facing the business of processing digital payments. We review these …

Should an industry square off against its regulators or partner up with them? The answer shapes consumers’ access to financial products, and thus their financial lives. An acrimonious relationship stifles innovation, leaving consumers with fewer options to meet their financial needs. Unfortunately, many signs point to a lot of future …