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 …

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 Biden administration dashes ahead with an interdepartmental effort to design a digital dollar, following the European Union and China, which are very excited about the tight surveillance power given to government through the emerging technology of digital money. The U.S. effort, which was kicked off by a presidential executive …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s victory at the Supreme Court last month answers for now the question of its constitutionality and may quiet the agency’s critics. But make no mistake: the CFPB remains a potent agent of federal power operating with an aggressive agenda. Indeed, some payments experts fear 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 …

Eved LLC, a provider of payment management solutions for the entertainment and media industry, late Thursday launched a prepaid business-to-business card for production companies. The Visa-branded card, called EvedPay, will enable entertainment, media and production companies to load predetermined dollar amounts onto the business-to-business prepaid cards to manage spending limits …

Technology platform Humbl said it will develop a digital ticketing offering for the Oregon Blackbears, an indoor football team. Organic Payment Gateways said it has launched an Authorize.net gateway service for merchants selling cannabis seed, nutritional supplements, and cannabidiol, the active ingredient in cannabis. Authorize.net is owned by Visa Inc. ParTech Inc., which …

The onset of the covid pandemic spurred deployers and developers to bring contactless technology to the ATM, and now industry organizations are offering guidelines on the matter as deployers look to widen acceptance of contactless cards and mobile devices. Calling contactless technology “table stakes” for most consumers, the Redwood City, …

Claims by banks that merchants won’t pass along savings from the Credit Card Competition Act to consumers are grossly misleading and do not reflect the economic realities merchants face, argues the Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group representing sellers on payments-acceptance matters. Passing along cost savings or at least holding …

CPACharge an online payment service for accounting businesses that is a unit of AffiniPay, said it lined up referral partnerships with the CPA societies in New Jersey, Nevada, and Wyoming. Boston’s mass-transit system will launch contactless fare payments, possibly by early summer, according to news reports. The fintech Guavapay said it is collaborating with …