The European Commission, the European Union’s antitrust regulator, fined Mastercard Inc. €570.6 million ($648.2 million) for restricting merchants’ ability to sign with an acquirer in another EU single-market country with interchange rates lower than rates in the merchant’s home country before December 2015, when regulations capped EU interchange. The Commission …

Fraud, acquisitions, and interchange dominated the top 10 list of news articles posted to DigitalTransactions.net in 2018. Starting with a $6.2 billion pact between Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., on one hand, and defendant banks, on the other, stemming from 13-year-old litigation over credit card interchange, to American Express Co.’s …

Cash discounts are all the rage as merchants seek to lower payment card acceptance costs. But critics say cash discounts all too often are surcharges in disguise. Few topics last year drew more interest from independent sales organizations and merchant acquirers than cash discounts. Sessions about the pricing strategy were …

A number of U.S. payments providers have expanded overseas in recent years, and now more may have an incentive to do so if recent research showing robust growth in merchant acceptance is any indication. The number of physical stores or outlets accepting payment cards worldwide reached 69.2 million last year, …

European merchants could see their costs to accept Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. payment cards issued outside of Europe decline by 40% under separate proposals submitted by the two leading card networks to settle competition concerns raised by European Union antitrust authorities. The European Commission, the administrative arm of the …

Three years ago, Mastercard shelled out big money for a U.K. technology firm. As faster payments take hold in the States, the rationale for that deal will soon be put to the test. Back in July 2017, the Federal Reserve issued a challenge to the U.S. payments industry: create a …

Amazon.com Inc.’s strategy to push its Amazon Pay wallet into physical stores could depend crucially on its ability to cut payment-processing costs and generate marketing advantages for merchants, including Groupon-like incentives, experts tell Digital Transactions News. The new strategy has been in the works at least since 2017 but reached …

U.S. consumers have made the credit card their favorite online and face-to-face spending method, with 31.5% using it online and 40% choosing it for in-store transactions last year, according to the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2018. Released late last week, the report also found that debit cards and digital wallets, …

Cardtronics plc said it is the exclusive ATM provider to 121 RaceTrac convenience stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The ATMs bear the Credit Union of Texas brand. Worldpay Inc. announced a multiyear agreement to be the exclusive provider to the National Association of Convenience Stores Payment Processing Program, which …

ISOs have been slow to jump on the bandwagon for digital currency because the list of barriers to mainstream use remains too long. Merchants such as Overstock.com and Newegg.com may be leading the charge to accept Bitcoin and myriad other crypto­currencies, but if crypto is to make serious progress toward …