C|C Payments Blog

Payments News Update – April 7, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Debit Card Antitrust Case Against Visa Revived, With New Judge Reuters – April 5, 2022 A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday revived an antitrust case against Visa Inc over debit card services and reassigned the dispute to a different Texas federal court, after criticizing the slow pace of the litigation and questioning whether the trial judge was biased against the...

Payments News Update – March 18, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: CFPB’s Chopra Blasts Potential Card Hikes Payments Dive – March 14, 2022 The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said fee hikes by the card companies would add "insult to injury" at a time of inflation. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra minced no words Friday in a rare TV appearance, offering a critical view of the state...

Payments News Update – March 4, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Merchants Payments Coalition Launches Campaign to Fight Swipe-Fee Increase Slated for April ConvenienceStore News – March 2, 2022 The Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) has unveiled an advertising campaign to educate Congress and other policymakers on increasing the swipe fees credit card networks and big banks charge merchants to process...

Payments News Update – February 18, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Visa Had a Monopoly on Payments at the Olympics for 36 Years. China Put an End to That Fortune – February 11, 2022 Since 1986, Visa has served as the exclusive payment service provider for the Olympic Games, complimenting cash as one of the only two ways to pay for anything at official Olympic venues. If you’re at the Olympics and need to pay with a credit...

Payments News Update – December 17, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: UK Government Outlines Plans for Regulation of Buy Now Pay Later Industry The Spectator – December 15, 2021

The buy now pay later industry has exploded in recent years, with the industry now worth $100 billion (circa £70 billion). Also known as BNPL, it is used by shoppers to delay payments on any kind of product from champagne to clothes and kitchens, and the...

Payments News Update – December 3, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: 6 Ways the EU’s Digital Markets Act Will Change Big Tech PYMNTS – November 29, 2021 The European Union’s Digital Markets Act is coming, and Big Tech will never be the same. In theory. The rules will be voted on by the EU parliament this week, but are widely expected to pass. It’s important to remember that these rules apply to companies with a market cap of...

UK Regulator Raps Schemes for Raising Fees and Concludes that Card-Acquiring Services Market “Does Not Work Well”

By Richard Pike, Simon Yeung and Andreas Killi[1] A comprehensive government review has concluded that the card-acquiring services that enable merchants in the UK to accept card payments is not working well for a significant number of merchants. The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR; the economic regulator of the payment systems industry in the UK) published its final report on its market review into...

Payments News Update – November 12, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: If You Use Venmo, PayPal or Other Payment Apps This Tax Rule Change May Affect You CNN – November 9, 2021 If you're among the millions of people who use payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, Square, and other third-party electronic payment networks, you could be affected by a tax reporting change that goes into effect in January. Payment app providers will have to start...

Disrupting the Equilibrium? Why stablecoins may struggle to challenge existing payment schemes

Mastercard and Visa have dominated global markets for consumer payments for decades. A key reason for their success is the barriers to entry into the global general purpose payment card network market. It is hard to replicate Visa’s and Mastercard’s global acceptance, and those networks do everything in their power to maintain and increase those barriers. Certain cryptocurrencies, known as stablecoins, have the...

Payments News Update – October 29, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Report: Apple ‘Very Likely’ to Face Antitrust Lawsuit From US Department of Justice 9to5Mac – October 25, 2021 A new report from The Information today indicates that Apple is “very likely” to face an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice in the United States. The report explains that the US DOJ has “accelerated” the antitrust probe into...