In the heart of America’s bustling commerce, a subtle yet powerful revolution is unfolding, driven by small merchants. The strategies of offering discounts for cash payments and imposing surcharges for card transactions are at the forefront of this change. These practices, rapidly gaining traction across communities, directly challenge the entrenched …

Capital One’s proposed $35.3-billion acquisition of Discover will be a thunderclap for the debit-card, retail-banking, and payment-network markets. The Discover network has long been the number-five U.S. retail-payment network, after Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal. Since its acquisition of Diners Club from Citi in 2008, Discover has struggled as …

(Editor’s Note: This story follows up on news late Monday concerning a planned acquisition of Discover Financial Services by Capital One Financial Corp.) On the Tuesday morning after news broke that credit card giant Capital One Corp. intends to shell out $35.3 billion in an all-stock deal to acquire Discover …

Fiserv Inc., already a behemoth in merchant processing, is preparing to straddle its twin pillars of acquiring-bank relationships, on the one hand, and its own acquiring operations through a Georgia bank charter, on the other. The charter, which the big processor applied for last month, has “a very specific purpose,” …

Mastercard Inc. is confronting a slowdown in dollar volume in its home market while it pushes into vital new markets like real-time payments and open banking, its presentation of fourth-quarter 2023 financial results indicated early Wednesday. Gross dollar volume of $727 billion in the December quarter represented a 4% rise …

The Electronic Payments Coalition has come out swinging in the new year as it intensifies its fight against the Credit Card Competition Act. The EPC, which lobbies on behalf of financial institutions and payments networks, late Monday announced it is launching an ad campaign aimed at federal lawmakers. The campaign …

The Credit Card Competition Act, if it becomes law, will likely have unintended consequences for the businesses that sign up merchants for payment processing. Not all of them are good. Introduced more than a year ago, the Credit Card Competition Act has quickly become the hottest topic in the payments …

The Electronic Payments Coalition has opened a new front in its battle to prevent passage of the Credit Card Competition Act: it’s recruiting social-media influencers to join its cause. In June, the EPC put out a memo on the new tactic as part of its “Hands Off My Rewards” campaign …

With Congress scheduled to adjourn Dec. 15, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., made a last-minute push on the Senate floor late Thursday, calling for a vote on the Credit Card Competition Act before adjournment. Durbin’s remarks, which also pushed back against arguments by  card networks and card issuers that the proposed …

The latest round in the fight over interchange fees began Oct. 25. That’s when the Federal Reserve released its latest proposal on debit interchange. To recap, the Fed’s proposed rule would reduce the interchange that banks with more than $10 billion in assets would receive when their customers pay with …