Eric Cohen’s Commentary, “Whey the Credit Card Competition Act Falls Short,” posted here Oct. 9, makes three key claims about how the Credit Card Competition Act would supposedly harm small businesses and consumers. All of them are wrong.First, he says the bill would allow merchants “to choose their own network” …

The Credit Card Competition Act is back in play. But as Congress debates the bill, a pressing question looms about its biggest requirement: Who are the Visa and Mastercard alternatives supposed to be? Senator Richard Durbin is back at it. After failing to advance the Credit Card Competition Act out …

BitPay Inc. expanded the payment capabilities of its cryptocurrency wallet Tuesday with inclusion of bill payment. BitPay users can now pay bills with digital currency at more than 5,000 billers, the Atlanta-based company says. To enable bill payment, BitPay has partnered with Method Financial, an Austin, Texas-based provider of embedded …

Discover Financial Services late Wednesday reported net income of $901 million for the second quarter of 2023, down 18% from a year earlier. Credit card loans for the quarter totaled $94 billion, a 19% year-over-year increase. As part of its earnings statement, Discover stated that “the comparative prior quarter ended …

Seeking to entice small businesses to pay for purchases using their Visa business card, Visa Inc. on Wednesday launched Visa SavingsEdge, a program that rewards small businesses that have Visa business cards with savings and discounts on business-related services from about 60 merchants. The rewards and incentives include everyday savings …

The payments business has moved on from the pandemic, but it faces a host of other issues. Here’s our annual catalog of the ones causing the most headaches. Welcome to Digital Transactions’ annual catalog of headaches—the problems, pitfalls, and perils facing the business of processing digital payments. We review these …

Chargebacks are the bane of e-commerce retailers, but new data from ACI Worldwide Inc. indicate many may have them mostly in check. Separately, Forter launched Smart Claims, a product to help better manage chargebacks. Released Thursday, the new ACI data find that overall fraud attempts remained flat at 0.01%, despite …

In response to consumer demand to use buy now, pay later installment loans for higher-ticket purchases, such as home furnishings, the big BNPL player Afterpay has increased its credit limits and repayment periods. Afterpay users can now take out BNPL loans for purchases of between $400 and $4,000 and repay …

By Tom Byrnes, SVP, Marketing If you’re an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), one of the necessary elements of the business you’re in is a relationship with a payment processor. While the rest of the technology landscape has shifted to cloud-hosted platforms, processors have clung on to their mainframe-based legacy stacks …

Consumers may not know what open banking is, but they sure like what it does. And the technology hasn’t even hit its stride yet. From real-time account verification and money movement to apps that provide lenders and landlords an up-to-the-minute overview of an applicant’s credit history, open-banking technology is the …