By John Stewart Five years after it became the law of the land, the Durbin Amendment remains as controversial as it was then, with virtually no agreement in sight on such questions as whether merchants have cut prices in response to interchange savings or whether consumers have paid more for …

Durbin Amendment aside, American payment cards have mostly escaped the type of regulation affecting cards in other countries. Can that last? The United States is increasingly becoming an island in a widening sea of payment card regulation. Just last month, Canada’s federal government updated its 5-year-old Code of Conduct for …

Security Notes Shopping is an emotional experience. Shops lure us, play us, and make us shop and pay against any and all rationality. Only now, technology is about to redress that imbalance. The biggest impact will be felt by ordinary commodities. No one gets overly excited about buying eggs or …

In less than one grim month, American Express lost two cobranded partnerships and a major court case involving its merchant-acceptance rules. But the 165-year-old payments company is far from finished. As cold as this winter was in most of the country, it was considerably chillier at American Express Co. The …

  The Merchant Financial Cyber Partnership, a unique coalition of eight financial-services trade associations and 11 merchant groups, wants Congress to make it easier for retailers and financial institutions to share information with each other related to data breaches. Merchants and financial-services companies often are bitter foes when it comes …

In an unsurprising ruling, a three-judge panel on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial rule implementing the Durbin Amendment’s debit card provisions in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act. A federal district judge last July overturned the rule, saying the Fed hadn’t followed Congress’s intent. Judges …

For Retailers, An Unsettling Settlement Retailers and their trade groups opposed to a $5.7 billion settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange are not going gentle into that good night now that U.S. District Judge John Gleeson has approved the controversial deal. Defendants in the 8-year-old litigation, …

Capping years of complex litigation, a federal court on Friday approved a controversial multibillion-dollar settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange rates. With his imprimatur, Judge John Gleeson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has brought apparent—but only apparent—finality to a …

To drive innovation and adoption, providers should stay close to the pain points of their customers. To achieve mass adoption of mobile payments, retailers, banks, and vendors must be prepared to serve a radically different customer, says Souheil Badran. Souheil Badran is senior vice president and general manager at Digital …

By Jim Daly An injunction that puts New York State’s ban on merchants’ credit card surcharges on hold could be a prelude to a bigger legal assault on states’ surcharge restrictions. If pro-surcharging merchants prevail, their actions could add some oomph to a provision in the pending settlement of unrelated …