Market pricing is preferable to legal settlements, which in turn are preferable to government regulation. Will the payments business ever learn that lesson? Many in the payments industry breathed a sigh of relief at Mastercard’s and Visa’s announcement in March of their landmark settlement of a longstanding antitrust suit over …

Consumers and merchants may be primed for it. New technology, consumer affinity for digital payments, and the allure of cheaper payment processing may be setting the stage for broader use of pay by bank in the United States. Paying by a bank account is not unfamiliar to most consumers. Already, …

The payments industry and the merchant community are pushing messages against and for the Credit Card Competition Act. Congress will decide who wins. Since the reintroduction a year ago of the Credit Card Competition Act, the bill’s proponents and opponents have unleashed high-octane marketing campaigns to sway legislators and the …

The National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition have lined up against the Federal Reserve, arguing that while a rate reduction on debit card transactions is welcome, the Fed’s proposed pricing does not go far enough. The two industry trade groups sent letters to the Fed last month on …

Despite some claims to the contrary, the odds are long that merchants would pass on any potential savings to consumers from the Credit Card Competition Act, payments experts say. One argument for this is that merchants price products on a line-item basis, which means the savings on a single product …

If you know anything about the payment space these days, you know that the natives are restless. Merchants have been fed up with interchange rates for years, with no shortage of lawsuits to voice their complaints. Even after winning the right to pass on interchange costs to the consumer, merchants …

The National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition have lined up against the Federal Reserve, arguing that while a rate reduction on debit card transactions is welcome, the Fed’s proposed pricing does not go far enough. The two industry trade groups sent their respective letters to the Fed on …

(Editor’s note: This is Part II of a two-part article. Part I appeared Thursday.) Interchange fees paid by merchants are the credit card industry’s second-largest revenue source. For debit cards and neobanks, these fees are a primary revenue source. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act imposed price controls on debit interchange fees …

Its blockbuster bid for Discover could position Capital One to compete not only with the largest credit and debit card issuers, but also with networks like Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx. Capital One Financial Corp.’s bombshell announcement in February that it is offering to acquire Discover Financial Services in all-stock deal …

The planned acquisition of Discover Financial Services by Capital One Financial Corp. will reshape the competitive landscape for consumer deposit accounts in the United States. Digital Transactions reported earlier that Capital One has already announced its intention to move its entire debit portfolio to the Discover Network once the deal …