U.S. Bancorp's acquisition earlier this week of Genpass Inc., operator of MoneyPass, a surcharge-free ATM network, is expected to dramatically expand the reach of ATMs that don't levy surcharges to cardholders. Elan Financial Services, a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp, already operates a network of 4,000 surcharge-free ATMs called FastBank Free, …

Hoping to increase its penetration in consumer bill payments to gas, electricity, and other utility companies, Visa USA today rolled out incentives for utilities to accept its cards and to encourage more card transactions. The incentives include a lower credit and check card interchange fee on certain consumer card transactions …

Merchants in the United States paid $224 billion in card-acceptance costs in 2023, the highest toll for merchants in any country in the world, according to payment consultancy CMSPI’s State of the Industry Report. Interchange fees alone accounted for $143 billion of that total. Since 2009, U.S. merchants’ like-for-like payment …

High card-acceptance fees are the root cause for why some merchants are charging consumers for cash back at the point-of-sale, a service merchants have historically provided consumers even though customers can make purchases with their debit cards at no charge, says the Merchants Payment Coalition. Driving the trend is that …

Merchants want lower interchange. In their Shangri-la, interchange would be negative, meaning merchants would be paid to accept credit and debit cards. This is not unknown in the real world. For example, Australia’s national debit network for many years had negative interchange. Merchants want to be able to freely surcharge …

While merchants, like consumers, love credit and debit cards, they don’t like having to pay to accept them. It’s human nature to want to pay less for products and services, no matter how good they are. To reduce payment-acceptance fees, merchants have brought a battery of antitrust lawsuits against Mastercard …

Value-added resellers and independent software vendors enticed by the attractiveness of surcharging and cash-discount programs find there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for enrolling merchants. Questions about the programs abound at RetailNow 2024, the annual conference sponsored by the Retail Solutions Providers Association and in progress this week in Las Vegas. The …

EBay Inc.’s decision to stop accepting American Express cards effective Aug. 17 is generating big headlines, but some payments-industry experts question whether the decision is really a tactic to negotiate a lower interchange rate from the travel-and-entertainment card giant, given that eBay says it won’t stop accepting AmEx for about …

Cantaloupe Inc. announced early Tuesday it will install its Cheq point-of-sale platform at professional soccer club Detroit City FC’s home stadium for all games and live events. Cantaloupe will begin providing POS services at the stadium in June as part of a multi-year deal. The deal builds on Cantaloupe’s acquisition …

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 …