C|C Payments Blog

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...

Payments News Update – October 15, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: European Banks Debate Rival to US Payment Giants Politico EU – September 30, 2021 Europe’s biggest banks will decide if it’s in their interests to take on the U.S. payment duopoly of Mastercard and Visa as soon as next month, as political pressure grows to break American dominance in this space. Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, BNP Paribas, ING, Santander, UniCredit...

Payments News Update – October 1, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Alibaba Apps Start Offering WeChat Pay Option After Government Orders Reuters – September 28, 2021 China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has begun offering payment services from Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat on a number of its apps, after the government ordered major tech firms to stop blocking each other’s services and links. Local tech blog 36Kr reported on...

Payments News Update – August 26, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Outgoing NY Governor Signs Bill to Limit Overdraft Practices at State-Chartered Banks Banking Dive – August 20, 2021 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill Thursday aimed at helping consumers avoid bank overdraft fees. The law requires New York-regulated banks to process checks in the order they are received, or from smallest to largest, to prevent customers...

Payments News Update – August 13, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Merchants Redouble Their Efforts to Push the Fed on Debit’s Routing and Pricing Rules Digital Transactions News – August 11, 2021 With a Federal Reserve deadline hitting Wednesday for comments on decade-old debit card regulations, large merchants are firing some last-minute salvos in hopes of influencing the Fed to make major revisions to rules governing...

App Store Competition Bill Contains A Loophole

Although Congress has already had a busy 2021 pushing antitrust legislation that targets large digital technology platforms, even more legislative battles are looming on the horizon. Earlier this year, bipartisan members of the House introduced six antitrust bills designed to curb the perceived power of tech platforms, some of which were also introduced in the Senate.[1] Those bills have made it through the...

Payments News Update – July 30, 2021

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Why Biden’s Executive Order Is a Green Light for Us Open Banking Finextra – July 28, 2021 On July 9 2021, President Biden didn’t just throw a bone to US open banking, he underwrote the mortgage, laid the welcome mat, and set the table to officially welcome open banking to the neighbourhood. Yes, open banking is nothing new to the US. With numerous American...

Developments in Merchant Surcharging: Hold the Champagne

Those following the payments industry press on surcharging may have noticed headlines touting recent events in state legislatures and in the courts, which deceptively suggest that the state laws prohibiting merchant surcharging are falling away.  But, as is often the case, the devil is in the details and the positive headlines mask a more sobering reality.   Colorado Governor Jared Polis, for example, recently