Payments News Update – December 26, 2025
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT: Fed Report Shows Visa, Mastercard Shift More Debit Card Fraud Onto Merchants
CPA Practice Advisor – December 22, 2025
A new report from the Federal Reserve shows that Visa and Mastercard shifted more of the burden of debit card fraud onto the merchants, while easing responsibility for banks. The updated figures for 2023 show that merchants paid for 49.9% of debit card fraud in 2023 — up from 46.9% in 2021.
During the same period, the amount paid by banks dropped from 33.4% to 28.3%. The report also highlights that banks subject to government regulation continue to earn outsized returns on debit transactions, averaging nearly six times their costs, with about 24 cents in revenue on costs of just 4.1 cents.
“The latest report shows the consequences of the Federal Reserve failing to keep up with its job as a regulator,” said Doug Kantor, Executive Committee member of the Merchant Payments Coalition and General Counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. . . .
Nearly 2 Dozen States Sue the Trump Administration Over Funding for CFPB
NPR – December 22, 2025
A coalition of 21 states along with the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday to prevent it from defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which says it will run out of money in a few weeks.
The consumer watchdog agency is funded by the Federal Reserve — unlike many other federal agencies — to insulate it from political whims. But under Acting Director Russell Vought, the CFPB is refusing to accept money from the Fed.
The CFPB argues that the law that established the agency says it must get funding from the Fed’s “combined earnings,” or profits made by the Fed. . . .
Visa, Mastercard to Pay $167.5 Million in ATM User Fee Settlement
Reuters – December 19, 2025
Visa and Mastercard have agreed to pay a combined $167.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to keep ATM access fees artificially high.
The proposed settlement was filed on Thursday in the federal district court in Washington and requires a judge’s approval.
The accord would pay potentially millions of ATM users who were charged an unreimbursed access fee to withdraw cash from independent, non-bank ATMs. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT: In 2025 Card Networks Reshaped Commerce While Banks Rewired Payments
PYMNTS – December 23, 2025
If there was a single through line in PYMNTS’ 2025 conversations with the major card networks, banks and FinTechs, it was that “payments” is no longer treated as a discrete function. It is increasingly positioned as an always-on operating system for commerce—one where data, security and user experience are inseparable.
No company leaned into that framing more consistently than Visa. Early in the year, Sam Hamilton, Visa’s head of AI and data, described generative AI not as an add-on feature, but as a force that will show up across the network’s value proposition. “I can’t think of one area that GenAI is not going to transform,” Hamilton said, emphasizing that the usefulness of that transformation depends on trusted inputs and governance.
Visa executives also returned repeatedly to the idea that consumer journeys are now designed “outside-in.” . . .
Fiserv Adopts Agentic Commerce Protocols From Visa and Mastercard
Digital Transactions News – December 22, 2025
Fiserv Inc. looked to position itself at the forefront of agentic commerce early Monday with the adoption of protocols from Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc.
Fiserv will deploy Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol across its payments system to authenticate, retrieve, accept, and process agentic transactions. Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol identifies trusted and malicious artificial intelligence-based e-commerce shopping agents and validates payment information used at checkout.
At the same time, the processor will leverage Mastercard’s Agent Pay Acceptance Framework, which provides a framework for AI agents to transact on a consumer’s behalf using tokenization, strong authentication, and fraud prevention, with governance. . . .