Payments News Update – March 20, 2026
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT: Combatants in the Fight to Overturn Illinois’s Interchange Law Gear Up for an Appeals Battle
Digital Transactions News – March 17, 2026
Three organizations representing the banking community, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with former acting members of the OCC, filed amicus briefs late Friday urging the court to overturn the decision to exempt Illinois merchants from paying interchange on the sales tax and gratuities that are part of credit and debit card transactions.
The organizations filing the briefs were the Bank Policy Institute, the Electronic Payments Coalition, the Electronic Transactions Association, the OCC, and a group of former and former acting Comptrollers of the Currency.
Amicus briefs, also known as friend of the court briefs, are documents filed by parties who are not associated with the case but have strong interests or expertise related to the matter and can provide the court with supplemental information, legal arguments, or perspectives not presented by the plaintiffs or defendants. . . .
Congress Is Debating How to Regulate Buy Now, Pay Later and States Aren’t Waiting
Competition Policy International – March 18, 2026
Millions of Americans are splitting their purchases into four easy payments — for everything from sneakers to sofas. Buy Now, Pay Later has gone from a niche checkout option to a mainstream financial product almost overnight.
But as the industry explodes in size, one question keeps coming up in Washington and in state capitals: who, exactly, is watching out for the people using it?
That question got a lot more complicated recently. Law firm Ballard Spahr published an analysis of a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, and the picture it paints is one of unresolved tension between a fast-growing industry and a regulatory system that is still trying to catch up. . . .
State Interchange Fee Laws Progress
Payments Dive – March 18, 2026
Delaware and Colorado are making headway with bills to curtail card interchange fees on taxes or tips in the wake of Illinois passing the Interchange Fee Prohibition Act in 2024.
The Illinois law banned interchange fees related to taxes and tips when consumers swipe credit or debit cards to pay for goods and services. It’s scheduled to take effect July 1.
Nearly a dozen states have pursued similar laws, with the legislatures in Delaware, Rhode Island and Colorado acting on such bills in committees this month. . . .
Mastercard, Visa Can Appeal UK Ruling That Merchant Fees Breach Antitrust Law
Reuters – March 17, 2026
Visa and Mastercard can challenge a judgment that found their default multilateral interchange fees charged to retailers infringe competition law, London’s Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday, in a long-running legal battle over the charges.
The Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled last year, in linked lawsuits brought by hundreds of merchants, that Visa and Mastercard’s multilateral interchange fees breached European competition law.
The merchants’ lawyers previously said that was the first time Visa and Mastercard’s commercial card and inter-regional multilateral interchange fees had been found to infringe competition law. . . .
Mastercard Weighs in on European Payments Sovereignty Debate
Finextra – March 12, 2026
Over the last year, Europe’s leaders have been increasingly vocal on their desire to reduce reliance on Visa and Mastercard, which between them process about two thirds of euro area card payments.
The ECB has been accelerating work on a digital euro, while big banks have been backing the European Payments Initiative to wrest control of the EU’s payments ecosystem away from the US card schemes via pay-by-bank alternatives.
Now, Mastercard Europe president Kelly Devine is addressing the issue head on, making the case for the company’s continued strong presence in the block. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT: Payments Firms Diverge on Checks
Payments Dive – March 16, 2026
Payment companies generally agreed that paper checks should be phased out in comments submitted in response to a Federal Reserve request for input, but the industry has many different ideas about how to get there, or what should replace them.
In comments submitted to the Fed in response to its December request for information about check processing, firms like payment processor Fiserv, Zelle parent Early Warning Services and bank-owned The Clearing House acknowledged that some Americans still rely on paper checks and should be given time to transition away from them.
“The shift to electronic payments has become particularly important as check fraud increases, the cost to operate check services rises, and check-processing infrastructure ages,” a comment from the bank-owned TCH said. . . .
Fintechs Dominate BNPL, But Bank-Branded Products Rank Higher, JD Power Finds
Digital Transactions News – March 12, 2026
As of January, some 37% of U.S. consumers had used buy now, pay later financing when making a purchase within the prior 90 days, a 5% increase from a year earlier, according to JD Power’s annual BNPL study. Half of these consumers were under the age of 40.
JD Power defines the past 90 days as the days prior to each respondent completing the survey, which was conducted from January 2025 to January 2026. JD Power surveyed 3,909 customers during that period.
One driver behind the increased usage of BNPL loans is the marketing muscle fintechs are putting behind the payment option, Sean Gelles, senior director, payments intelligence, says by email. Among consumers taking out a BNPL loan in the past 90 days, 97% did so through a fintech, the report says. . . .