Contents tagged with Credit Card News

  • 7 million retailers to share $7.25 billion proposed settlement

    July 13, 2012
    An estimated 7 million retailers will be affected by a proposed settlement in the Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation case.

    According to Reuters, it has been announced that Visa and MasterCard along with their card issuing banks have agreed to settle the Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation case with U.S. retailers for $7.25 billion. If approved by the judge, it would be the largest antitrust settlement in U.S. history.

    According to reports, the settlement will include provision to allow stores to surcharge customers extra in an attempt to steer customers toward less expensive payments (although certain states laws prohibit the practice), will pay stores $6 billion and will lower interchange fees by the equivalent of … more

  • Notes from Visa's Q2 2012 Earnings Call

    May 03, 2012
    Visa posted positive double digit gains and says it will “live forever with less share than we once had” due to government regulations.

    Visa reported “very vibrant transaction growth rates in U.S. (consumer) credit” and also noted that their commercial credit card side is growing at a good clip. As expected, debit volume declined as banks deemphasized debit and removed rewards programs associated with debit cards that once played an important role in driving volume.

    Visa also said “the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division issued a civil investigative demand requesting additional information about PIN-authenticated Visa Debit and elements of our new debit strategies, including the fixed acquirer fee.” Visa says it is confident their actions … more

  • New April 2012 Interchange and Card Industry Fee Changes

    April 11, 2012
    April 2012 Interchange and Card Industry Fee Changes As you know, Vantage provides the most transparent, direct pass-through of the payment industry’s universally established Interchange, Assessment and Access fee schedules.

    This April, a whole new set of card fees are being introduced. Vantage reports on and tracks these industry fee changes as they occur on our web site and this resource is often use by reporters and market analyst as well as merchants, businesses and banks. We also post about the payments industry and card Interchange on our blog. In July 2011 we first alerted merchants to the Visa announcement to charge a new location fee.

    Vantage passed through all the Fed regulated debit rates to our clients. We posted a Vantage Study Revealing the Results of Fed Regulated Debit in October. And while Vantage clients took … more

  • Global Payments Reports “Unauthorized Access”

    March 30, 2012
    Global Payments identifies and self-reports unauthorized access into a small portion of its processing system limited to track 2 card data only (no track 1 card data, no names, no social security numbers and no bank account information was compromised).

    Global Payments reports incident does not involve our merchants or their relationships with their customers. Global Payments continues to provide uninterrupted processing services.

    ATLANTA March 30, 2012 – Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), a leader in payment processing services, announced it identified and self-reported unauthorized access into a portion of its processing system. In early March 2012, the company determined card data may have been accessed. It immediately engaged external experts in information technology … more

  • Don’t Let Your Bank Hide Fees

    March 28, 2012
    PayView Like his previous article discussing the merchant services industry, Michael Conticelli has done it again with a must read insightful report in the Ft. Myers Small Business Examiner titled “New trend in merchant statements hides rates and fees”.

    Michael specifically calls out SunTrust for purposely redesigning their merchant statements to eliminate all rate and fee detail, leaving merchants no clue as to how charges are calculated. SunTrust made the decision to keep merchants in the dark about their “surcharge fees, bill backs, annual fees, PCI fees, etc.” because when merchants “don’t actually see the rates and fees month after month” they can’t ask questions.

    Michael warns “Merchants need to be vigilant in monitoring their merchant … more

  • April 2012 Interchange Modifications Impact B2B and Small Ticket

    February 15, 2012
    Interchange

    Update 3/3/2011: MasterCard is creating new small ticket Interchange charge types as discussed below but NOT introducing new rates. MasterCard is implementing these new buckets for small ticket likely so they can track the volume separately from other regulated debit transactions. We expect that companies like USA Tech will continue to opt out of accepting MasterCard debit until they lower the small ticket debit Interchange rate.

    Vantage Card Services specializes in providing card payment processing services at direct and transparent Interchange pricing to merchants and businesses of all sizes.

    For our B2B and B2G clients, VantageB2B.com is a resource focused on the payment acceptance policies, strategies and best practices to lower cost, increase productivity and enhance security. An … more

  • Banks steer customers towards credit cards

    November 11, 2011
    According to the latest data from Visa, more people are starting to use credit cards, not for the line of credit, but as they would a debit card. And this is just what the banks are hoping for.

    Visa reported for its fourth quarter that spending on Visa-branded credit cards in the U.S. grew faster than debit cards. The initial driver may have been punitive debit pricing, and even though that strategy failed to stick, one could argue that it did accomplish getting consumers to consider other payment options including credit cards.

    Banks are increasingly promoting credit over debit in the face of shrinking debit Interchange. Both credit and prepaid cards are exempt from the recently imposed Fed regulated debit Interchange fee caps. To maximize Interchange fee income, banks will try to move … more

  • Will Bank Transfer Day Impact Merchants?

    November 04, 2011
    News story after news story are reporting the same thing – a lot more of us are switching to credit unions and community banks. This spike in activity is being attributed in part to the scandal over announcements by the mega banks to impose new cardholder debit fees. In fact, November 5th (that’s this Saturday1) – has been organized as “Bank Transfer Day”, a movement encouraging big bank customers to close their accounts and make the switch.

    For those following the Durbin Amendment’s debit card Interchange regulations, and the impact on small merchants like we are, we have to ask - what good does it do merchants to have consumers switch to financial institutions who were made exempt in the Durbin Amendment from the Fed's regulated debit rate? Bank … more

  • Visa’s Network Participation Fee scheduled for April 2012

    October 27, 2011
    On the Visa Q4 2011 Earnings Call yesterday, Visa stated "We're also moving forward with our modified debit economics, including the implementation of our network participation fee and the reduction of variable acquiring fees on debt, Visa debit and Interlink. As stated last quarter, we believe this offers merchants greater incentive to route transactions over our network and an opportunity to lower their per-unit transaction costs. As for details, we anticipate providing the specific pricing information to merchants and acquirers in January, which will go into effect on April 1." more

  • DepositGuard offers new and improved Property Rental Payments

    October 13, 2011
    DepositGuard is a payment technology platform for property rental payments that securely collects, holds and administers the deposits and pre-paid rents for vacation and residential property transactions, benefitting both renters and homeowners (including landlords, property managers and rental agents).

    Unlike other payment methods, a merchant account is not required to accept Visa/MasterCard payments and there are no fees for homeowners to use DepositGuard.

    DepositGuard is a neutral third-party account where the rental funds are parked for safekeeping. Both the renter and landlord have full visibility into the account and must be in agreement before the account can be created, changed, closed and any money released.

    DepositGaurd gives renters more control over the payment process by … more