Payments News Update – April 3, 2026
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT: Australia to Ban Surcharges on Payment Cards, Cut Bank Fees
Reuters – March 31, 2026
Australian consumers will no longer face surcharge fees on card payments after the country’s central bank said it would ban the widely disliked practice as inefficient and opaque.
Wrapping up a months-long public review process, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on Tuesday announced it would remove card surcharging on designated eftpos, Mastercard and Visa networks from October 1 this year.
The RBA estimated the change would save consumers A$1.6 billion a year, though some banks and businesses have warned they would have to claw back the lost money by other means. . . .
Durbin Targets Airline Points With Bill
Payments Dive – March 27, 2026
Airline mileage collectors would gain new protections against points devaluations under a Senate bill that Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin re-introduced Thursday, calling for more oversight of airlines’ loyalty programs.
The “Protect Your Points Act” would require airlines to offer one year notice of any planned devaluation of their currency or changes to their programs’ terms of service. It would also prevent airline miles from expiring, a change that several airlines have already adopted.
The measure would give three agencies – the Department of Transportation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission – “explicit authority to ensure that airlines do not bait and switch consumers by advertising an enticing rewards program, only to downgrade points or miles value without notice,” Durbin said in a Thursday news release. . . .
BankThink – Merchants Are Increasingly Frustrated by Opaque Card Interchange Fees
American Banker – March 27, 2026 (subscription required)
The latest settlement between merchants and the card networks has been framed as a breakthrough in a long-running dispute over interchange fees, promising temporary relief after two decades of litigation.
Under the revised $38 billion agreement announced by Visa and Mastercard, card processing fees would be lowered for five years, and merchants would gain greater flexibility to choose which card types they accept.
Yet, from the merchant’s perspective, this moment represents something deeper than another round of negotiations. It signals a growing frustration with a payment system that has become increasingly opaque, unpredictable and disconnected from how commerce actually works. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT: It’s Still Card-First in the U.S.
Digital Transactions News – March 31, 2026
U.S. consumers are nothing if not habit-driven. New research from Global Payments Inc. suggests that credit and debit cards accounted for 49% of all online shopping and 71% of in-store shopping in 2025, as reported in the 2026 edition of the Global Payments Report. That is virtually unchanged from 49% and 69%, respectively, in 2024, according to the 2025 edition of the report.
That may not be the case over the next few years as the report forecasts direct use of payment cards for e-commerce spending will drop to 42% by 2030 and in-store use will decrease to 61%.
What will eat at today’s usage levels? Digital wallets, Global Payments says. . . .
Payments Roundup Newsletter – Q1 2026
Payments Roundup – March 2026
The Payments Roundup team has published their latest merchant-focused quarterly payments newsletter.
Stories this quarter cover topics including frictionless payments, faster payments, the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, in-store versus online payments evolution, chargebacks, biometric authentication, the Credit Card Competition Act, credit card interest rate caps, and pay-by-bank.
You can read and subscribe to the newsletter here: https://payments-roundup.com/.
Mastercard Looks to Unwind Biggest Ever Acquisition
Financial Times – March 26, 2026 (subscription may be required)
Mastercard is seeking to sell the real-time payments unit that it acquired from Denmark’s Nets Group in 2019 for $3.2bn in a move that would unwind its largest ever takeover deal.
The credit card giant has tapped investment bankers to lead a sale of the business that could garner interest from private equity groups, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mastercard is likely to achieve a far lower price than what it paid for the asset, some of the people said. . . .