News Update

Crypto and Alternative Payments Could Open New Revenue Doors for Acquirers, Agents

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Kevin Woodward June 12, 2026 Acquiring, Competitive Strategies, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Digital Currency, E-Commerce, Mobile Wallets, Point-of-sale, Pricing, Transaction Processing

With large payments companies beginning to incorporate cryptocurrency and alternative payment methods into their processing flows, the opportunity for sales agents and their acquirers to sell another payment-acceptance method is growing. That’s the takeaway from a panel discussion this week at the Southeast Acquirers Association conference in Miami Beach, Fla.

“For decades, the payments industry has always been primarily focused on traditional credit and debit acceptance,” Mark Standfield, chief strategy officer at AltoPay, a Miami-based payments provider, said. “Globally, we’re now seeing … alternative payment methods. This includes real-time payments, digital wallets, stablecoins, and cryptocurrency.”

Both of the largest card brands, Mastercard Inc. and Visa Inc., have made crypto forays. Mastercard has added settlement windows and alone runs more than 100 card programs globally that link to stablecoins. It moved deeper into the digital currency with its agreement in March to acquire BVNK, a London-based stablecoin platform, for $1.8 billion. Visa this week said it is working on tokenized deposits that could enable banks to convert traditional deposits into digital money, Digital Transactions News reported Thursday.

And several entities launched their own stablecoins, including PayPal Holdings Inc., Fiserv Inc., and MoneyGram, with Shift4 Payments Inc. launching a stablecoin-settlement platform in 2025.

Though consumer use of cryptocurrency and alternative payment methods may not be anywhere near the volume of credit and debit card payment activity, it is viewed as a burgeoning aspect.

“Between the international travelers coming here who want to use their native payment methods, and the sheer volume of wealth Americans hold in crypto, it has become a necessity,” panelist Chris Benabu, chief growth officer and cofounder of Suede, told attendees. “Merchants need to accept these rails because that is where the money is. People have money in checking accounts, but they also have money in crypto and APMs. It’s just another essential tool that should exist in a merchant’s ecosystem.”

Technical issues that once plagued the integration of new payment methods have diminished with the use of application programming interface coding that lets disparate software platforms exchange data securely. To accept a cryptocurrency at an in-store checkout, a merchant need only make a QR code available for the crypto consumers to scan.

Acquirers and sales agents can help educate merchants about this option and others, says Jay Sykes, founder and chief executive of Bead Pay Inc., a Dover, Del.-based alternative-payments provider.

“Crypto is not new,” Sykes said. “Bitcoin arrived on the scene in 2009, primarily as a peer-to-peer cash system born during a period of very low confidence in traditional financial systems. Why was adoption historically slow? It came down to a lack of understanding. Merchants won’t accept what they don’t understand.”

Cryptocurrency use, however, has grown in the ensuing 17 years, he said. Between 50 million and 60 million U.S. consumers own crypto, Sykes said. “To put that into perspective, about 70 million Americans hold an American Express card, and around 50 million have a Discover card. These users aren’t coming down the line—they are already here.”

Any participant in a new payment method has to have an incentive to use it. For consumers, that typically is ease of use and faster payments. For merchants, it means the potential to get new customers and reduce payment-processing fees. For acquirers, it means more revenue.

Sykes said many alternative payment methods, including cryptocurrency, often have lower processing fees than traditional credit and debit payments. “Traditional merchant acquisition focused almost exclusively on credit and debit cards,” he said. “Introducing these alternative rails serves as a legitimate customer-acquisition tool for the merchant. You aren’t just lowering their cost per transaction, you are introducing entirely new transactions from customers who otherwise wouldn’t have shopped there.”

In most instances, the pricing models and agent residuals for these payment products are designed to match those of the traditional card-processing infrastructure, said Gustavo Jimenez, chief executive and cofounder of North Miami, Fla.-based Blokko.

“You should view this as an incremental, high-value capability—much like adding a proprietary gift card program or a loyalty solution that directly drives top-line revenue for the business,” Jimenez said. “Because the reporting and financial models are identical to what merchants are used to, it removes operational fear. It makes it easy to explain, easy to digest, and highly lucrative for the agent.”

News Update

The Argument Over Interchange Is Far from Settled, Observers Say

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John Stewart June 10, 2026 Acquiring, Credit Cards, E-Commerce, Issuing/Originating, Law and Regulation, Mobile Commerce, Point-of-sale, Pricing, Transaction Processing

Payments executives who may be hoping that a court ruling Tuesday will put an end to years of bitter wrangling over card-acceptance costs are likely to be disappointed, experts tell Digital Transactions News.

“This does not end the argument. It just stifles it,” says Cliff Gray, principal at Gray Consulting Ventures, a Chicago-based payments advisory. Adds Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting LLC: “While certainly significant, the settlement by no means ends the argument.”

These opinions come as a federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday ruled that a settlement reached between banks and merchants in a hotly contested, 21-year-old class-action case is “fair, reasonable, and adequate.” The court’s approval, however, is preliminary, leaving merchants hopeful and banks and processors wary. The settlement projects merchants would save $38 billion in acceptance costs over five years.

Merchants have for decades fought interchange, the cost they pay to payments acquirers and processors on each card transaction they accept. That battle has left scars, observers say. “While the settlement grants merchants modest economic relief and additional tools to pressure the networks, and allows Mastercard and Visa to eliminate a massive, existential legal risk, nobody should expect the mega-retailers to go quietly,” says Eric Grover, principal at the consultancy Intrepid Ventures.

Indeed, merchants disappointed by the outcome of the case are looking for the court to deny final approval of the settlement. “The vast majority of merchants oppose this proposed settlement,” says Doug Kantor, general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores, in a statement. “We expect many more objections to be filed that will present the court with clear evidence of the profound problems with this settlement that would make the already broken credit card market even worse.”

“We are hopeful that the judge will refuse to grant final approval, and that merchants will have their day in court,” Kantor adds.

Some observers argue the merchants may have a case, given how long the dispute has already lingered in and out of court. “Ten basis points [on interchange] is not much of a concession, given interchange pricing, especially given all the advances in the … years since this suit was initiated,” says Gray.

That could lead to further litigation, extending the case at least another two years, some experts say. “I would assume if Judge Cogan grants final approval, which is more likely than not, that major merchants will appeal it, potentially pushing the ultimate resolution out into 2028,” notes Grover. Brian Cogan is the presiding judge in the case.

For now, some observers are calculating the possible consequences if the current resolution stands. One scenario, argues McPherson, is that consumers could “face discrimination based on their choice of card, and with it the loss of their rewards, plus ever expanding- surcharges, all for the speculative benefit of lower prices in the future.”

Meanwhile, he points out, “Federal legislation restricting credit card interchange is still under consideration.”

News Update

Findustry AI Takes Aim at Chargebacks

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Kevin Woodward June 8, 2026 Acquiring, Competitive Strategies, E-Commerce, Featured, Fraud & Security, Mobile Commerce, Transaction Processing

A perpetual bane of payments, chargebacks create issues for merchants and their payment providers. Now, Findustry AI Inc. hopes its new artificial intelligence-enabled Chargeback Agent product will help ease the work of complying with card-brand dispute processes.

Led by Jonathan Razi, who sold CardX, a surcharging-services provider, to Stax in 2021, Findustry AI is pitching Chargeback Agent as intelligent enough to  automatically resolve most chargebacks.

“The pain of chargebacks is going up,” Razi tells Digital Transactions News. “There’s more card-not-present volume than before,” he says in explaining why this is an opportune time to combine artificial intelligence with the dispute-resolution process. Issuing banks also are making it easier for cardholders to initiate a dispute, and the card networks, specifically Mastercard Inc. and Visa Inc., have updated programs for handling disputes, with an emphasis on the acquiring role in monitoring them.

A screenshot from Findustry AI displays what a merchant sees in the Chargeback Agent portal.

Findustry AI’s services are available via payment facilitators and acquirers, Razi says. Kurv is a client, as is payfac Allpaid.

On the merchant side, large merchants often have teams of employees managing disputes, but smaller ones do not, Razi says. Chargeback Agent is for merchants of all sizes, he says, but may benefit smaller ones the most. “Often they are not even responding to disputes by deadline,” Razi says. Small businesses are drawn in multiple operational directions daily, and payments is just one piece of their oversight duties.

“The benefits are [that Chargeback Agent] has the intelligence to match the evidence to the card-network rules,” he says. Chargeback Agent, the first of other expected AI-enabled services from Findustry AI, is built on so-called foundation models of AI engines and then tweaked for the payments space. “You have to build all the payment workflow and the proprietary data that makes it even more accurate and high performing,” Razi says.

Because AI services are known to have varying capabilities, Findustry AI accesses multiple ones as warranted. “In a workflow we make multiple calls to multiple models,” Razi says. Each model is good at different aspects and Findustry AI has mapped out these differences.

Once a merchant is alerted to a new dispute, staff enter the Findustry AI portal, which can be built into an acquirer’s portal, and view it. Chargeback Agent collects the evidence from the merchant, and, because the AI service has been trained on the card-network dispute rules, it knows the specific evidence to collect for each reason code, eliminating the manual-review step. Findustry AI uses APIs, a programming code to enable disparate platforms to exchange data, to supply transaction data to Chargeback Agent.

From there, the agent drafts a response letter using text that has been proven to produce favorable outcomes. Merchants can review, edit, or approve the response with one click. Submitting the response is the third step. Findustry AI says every human-made edit to all the responses is fed back into the AI engine so it can learn.

Merchants can customize how much autonomy they want to give Chargeback Agent, Razi says. For example, a merchant can designate Chargeback Agent to handle all elements of disputes of less than $300, but require a human review for those of more value.

News Update

Cash App Tags Debut, Starting with a Wand

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Kevin Woodward June 5, 2026 Competitive Strategies, Debit Cards, Featured, Marketing, Mobile Commerce, Mobile Wallets, Near-Field Communication (NFC), Point-of-sale, Transaction Processing

Imagine waving a wand and making something appear in your hands. While it’s not magic, the Cash App Wand could make that happen.

Announced Thursday, Cash App Wand is the first in a series of Cash App Tags, which are NFC-enabled, physical payment accessories that let consumers pay without having to use a phone or card. Cash App is part of Block Inc.

Unlike many of the wands seen in recent viral videos, the Cash App Wand does not hold a contactless card. Instead, a small NFC-enabled chip is housed in the wand, which is only 4.29 inches long and 1.71 inches at its widest part. And this device is only usable with a Cash App account.

The Cash App Wand is the first in a planned series of devices using a Cash App Tag.

Available now for $25, the wand is the first of multiple styles Cash App intends to offer. Limited runs of other Cash App Tag-enabled devices will be available in coming weeks, Cash App says, with general availability later this summer.

In addition to having a Cash App account, users also must have an active Cash App Card. The tag is activated by opening Cash App on a mobile phone and linking the tag to their Cash App Card. One the tag is activated, a contactless transaction made with the wand takes less than a second, Cash App says.

Cash App says idea for the wand form factor got its footing in the autumn of 2025, before what is assumed to be the earliest viral video on Jan. 21 of Becca Bloom on TikTok using a homemade wand to shop. Bloom laminated a credit card between two sheets of yellow paper in the shape of stars, People.com reports.

“If anything, it’s validation: customers independently arrived at the same idea we did, which tells you something real about what Gen Z finds whimsical and worth carrying,” a Cash App spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News. A recent Cash App survey of Gen Z consumers—those born between 1997 and 2012—found that 38% of them purchase collectibles, accessories, or limited-edition items at least monthly.

“We see a unique opportunity here to make payments visible and social for the first time,” Thomas Templeton, Block’s hardware lead, says in a statement. “Early testers have told us that they’ve loved carrying the Wand and showing it off at checkout, so we believe there’s a real appetite for this among our customers.”

The Cash App Tag will make it easier for users to pay with Cash App without having to access the wallet they carry or on their smart phone. “The card form factor is limited since it’s often buried in a wallet and invisible. The same goes for digital wallets. Cash App Tags are designed to be seen,” the spokesperson says.

In addition to security measures covering activation of the Cash App Wand, lost or stolen ones can be reported in the app and deactivated instantly. Users also can choose to lock the Cash App Tag in the app, which also is available for the Cash App Card, and unlock it in the app when they want to use it. Cash App Tag’s link  to the Cash App Card means transaction alerts, customer service, fraud monitoring, and Zero Fraud Liability services are included. Cash App Tags are accepted wherever Visa contactless transactions are available.

News Update

Live Nation Wins Pause on Breakup Discovery While It Tries to Undo Monopoly Verdict

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By Dave Clark1 day ago
Live Nation and Ticketmaster logo over an image of a concert crowd

Live Nation and Ticketmaster logo over an image of a concert crowd

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have won a temporary pause in breakup-related discovery while they try to undo the landmark antitrust verdict secured by state attorneys general, with the federal judge overseeing the case staying all remedies discovery until the company’s post-trial motions are resolved.

In an order dated June 3, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that “any discovery relating to remedies will be stayed pending the Court’s disposition of the post-trial motions.” The order delays, at least for now, the states’ push to begin discovery into potential structural remedies that could include Ticketmaster divestiture, Live Nation amphitheater sell-offs, limits on exclusive contracts, and monetary relief.

The ruling comes after Live Nation and Ticketmaster asked the court to halt remedies discovery while they seek to wipe out or retry the jury verdict. In May 21 filings, the company asked Subramanian for judgment as a matter of law on all claims, or, if that fails, a new trial.

Those post-verdict filings amount to a sweeping attack on the trial result. The company argues that the jury got it wrong, the states got it wrong, the evidence was legally insufficient, the market definitions were defective, the damages testimony should not have been admitted, and the trial was infected by prejudicial evidence and flawed jury instructions.

RELATED: Live Nation Moves to Undo Monopoly Verdict, Delay Breakup Discovery

The company also asked the court to delay remedies discovery before the states could begin probing whether Ticketmaster should be broken away from Live Nation or whether Live Nation should be forced to sell off amphitheaters and unwind exclusive arrangements.

Subramanian has now granted the delay, though without ruling on the substance of Live Nation’s arguments attacking the verdict.

The court also deferred any decision on Live Nation’s proposed two-stage discovery process. Live Nation had asked that, if remedies discovery proceeds at all, it first be limited to the relief already obtained through the settlement between the company, the Department of Justice, and settling states. Only later, if necessary, would discovery expand to additional remedies sought by the non-settling states.

Subramanian declined to decide that issue now. “The Court defers any decision on defendants’ two-stage discovery proposal until the pending post-trial motions are resolved,” the order states. “At that point, if discovery is permitted, defendants may raise any objection, including to the sequencing of discovery.”

The order also notes that if any information or discovery is sought relating to Tunney Act proceedings tied to the DOJ settlement, an appropriate application may be filed under 15 U.S.C. Section 16.

The ruling is a procedural win for Live Nation because it slows the states’ effort to build the record for structural relief after their trial victory. It does not, however, decide whether the verdict will stand, whether Live Nation’s post-trial motions have merit, or whether breakup-related discovery will ultimately proceed.

The immediate effect is to freeze the remedies phase while the court considers Live Nation’s bid to erase or undermine the verdict.

The pause came after the plaintiff states urged the court to reject Live Nation’s sequencing proposal. In a May 27 letter, the states argued that Live Nation’s approach would unfairly limit them by default to discovery about relief negotiated by other parties before trial, rather than discovery tied to the jury verdict the states obtained after pressing the case forward.

“This is not consistent with the jury verdict that the Plaintiff States successfully obtained after a multi-week trial on the merits,” the states wrote. “The jury concluded that Live Nation’s anticompetitive conduct harmed artists, venues, and millions of American music fans. Justice should not be further delayed.”

The states also argued that Live Nation’s two-stage proposal would likely create more disputes, not fewer. Many of the states’ proposed discovery areas, they said, relate both to the adequacy of the DOJ settlement and to additional remedies the states may seek. Splitting discovery into phases, they argued, would invite fights over whether each request related to the settlement, broader remedies, or both.

Live Nation had framed the same discovery very differently. In its own letter, the company called the states’ proposed requests an “extraordinarily broad swath of material” covering multiple business units, updated transaction-level data, Ticketmaster and amphitheater divestiture feasibility, non-party discovery, and financial records tied to damages, civil penalties, disgorgement, and restitution.

The company argued that responding to those requests before the court resolves potentially dispositive post-trial motions would impose an enormous burden across “virtually every aspect” of its business.

Subramanian’s order gives Live Nation the stay it sought, at least as to remedies discovery. The states’ broader request to move forward immediately with discovery into structural remedies is now on hold until after the court rules on the pending post-trial motions.

That makes the upcoming motion rulings even more consequential. If Live Nation succeeds, the verdict could be narrowed, retried, or wiped out. If the states prevail, the court will then have to decide whether and how remedies discovery proceeds — including whether Live Nation can renew objections to the scope and sequencing of that discovery.

The pause also prolongs the gap between the states’ vision of the case and Live Nation’s. For the states, the jury verdict should launch a structural remedies process aimed at restoring competition in ticketing, promotion, and venue markets. For Live Nation, the verdict remains legally vulnerable, and breakup discovery should not proceed while the company argues that the trial result should not stand at all.

The dispute is part of the increasingly complicated post-verdict landscape in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster antitrust case. The DOJ settlement remains subject to Tunney Act review, while the non-settling states are pursuing remedies they say must go beyond another conduct-based settlement. Those potential remedies include Ticketmaster divestiture, Live Nation venue sell-offs, restrictions on exclusive ticketing and booking practices, damages, civil penalties, disgorgement, and restitution.

For now, however, the breakup fight has been slowed. Live Nation’s effort to undo the verdict will come first.

News Update

Mastercard Adds Settlement Windows Beyond Business Days

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John Stewart June 3, 2026 Competitive Strategies, Digital Currency, E-Commerce, Mobile Commerce, Mobile Wallets, Real-time Payments, Transaction Processing

Mastercard announced early Wednesday it plans to introduce settlement options including weekends, holidays, and at times during the day of the transaction. The new settlement windows will apply to both card-based fiat transactions and those involving cards linked to regulated stablecoins, the network said.

The move would expand availability beyond traditional business-day settlement and comes as both Mastercard and Visa have deepened their capabilities in on-chain card settlement stemming from stablecoin-backed cards. Mastercard alone runs more than 100 card programs globally that link to stablecoins and moved deeper into the digital currency with its agreement in March to acquire BVNK, a London-based stablecoin platform, for $1.8 billion.

“We’re seeing growing interest from banks, fintechs, and partners, particularly for use cases that benefit from faster, more flexible and more transparent settlement (e.g., cross-border flows, treasury and payouts),” a Mastercard spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News by email. “More broadly, we already support a broad and growing set of crypto-linked card programs globally (more than 120 programs globally), working with exchanges, fintechs, and financial institutions to bring digital assets into everyday payments. We’re not sharing specific volumes or card figures at this stage.”

Information was not immediately available regarding whether new fees would apply to these new settlement windows. Mastercard said the new schedule will in particular embrace cards backed by regulated stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC, and those issued by Paxos, Ripple, and SoFi. Financial institutions and processors supporting the program include ARQ, CBW Bank, Cross River Bank, Lead Bank, and Nuvei, according to Mastercard.

“This is a major step forward in realizing the potential of stablecoins for retail payments,” says Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting LLC. He cautions, however, that Mastercard’s move “does have the side effect of taking the momentum away from direct stablecoin transactions, which is probably one of Mastercard’s goals. They do not want to see a rival set of rails compete with cards.”

The network said the new settlement windows will become available over time as more partners and stablecoins are added. “By introducing intraday and weekend on settlement options across our global network, we’re expanding how partners manage liquidity and operate in an always-on digital economy,”  says Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president, blockchain and digital assets, at Mastercard, in a statement.

 

News Update

NMI Buys Fee Navigator As Merchant Pricing Gets Hot

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NMI Buys Fee Navigator As Merchant Pricing Gets Hot

John Stewart June 2, 2026 Acquiring, Competitive Strategies, E-Commerce, Mobile Commerce, Point-of-sale, Transaction Processing

NMI announced early Tuesday it has acquired Fee Navigator, a provider of analysis for acquirers looking to price services for merchants. Terms were not disclosed.

Schaumburg, Ill.-based NMI says the deal brings merchant-pricing capabilities supported by AI, adding to an arsenal of services the processor offers to independent sales organizations, independent software vendors, and agents that sell payments processing to small and medium-size sellers. The move comes at a time when card-acceptance costs have grown into a sore point for many merchants, leading to pressure on sales agents and their processors to support pricing decisions with more precise analytics.

Fee Navigator, based in Philadelphia and founded seven years ago, says joining NMI will broaden its prospect base among ISOs and ISVs as these agents work to make accurate pricing decisions. “Merchant pricing has always been one of the hardest parts of payments to get right,” notes Adrian Talapan, chief executive and cofounder of Fee Navigator, in a statement.

NMI’s deal for Fee Navigator follows on the heels of its acquisition last month of Dwolla, a Des Moines, Iowa-based processor, though the two moves are of a piece, according to Steve Pinado, NMI’s chief executive. “With Dwolla, we expanded the ways our partners can move money. With Fee Navigator, we are adding AI-powered intelligence that helps them price, optimize, and grow their business,” he says in a statement. Terms of the Dwolla acquisition were also not released.

Pinado indicates the growing importance of pricing analytics as merchant discontent over acceptance fees grows. “Merchant pricing has become increasingly important as card acceptance costs continue to rise,” he says in a statement.

Some observers also see other connections that may have led to the deal for Fee Navigator so soon after the Dwolla acquisition. “To me, it tracks perfectly,” notes Cliff Gray, principal at Gray Consulting Ventures LLC. “NMI acquires Dwolla to broaden their alternative payments options, then acquires and leverages Fee Navigator to optimize pricing recommendations and margin opportunities, especially to low-cost alternatives like Dwolla.”

The deal will also ease and quicken pricing decisions in a highly competitive merchant-processing market, observers say. “Fee Navigator will give [NMI] something most processors, gateways, and embedded-payments platforms don’t have, automated pricing intelligence and margin analytics,” says Eric Grover, principal at the consultancy Intrepid Ventures.

Private-equity backed NMI processes for 1.2 million merchants, supporting online, in-app, in-store, and mobile payments, the company says. Fee Navigator makes recommendations to clients based on its analysis of merchant pricing, the company says.

News Update

The Illinois IFPA Implementation Date Is Extended Again

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The Illinois IFPA Implementation Date Is Extended Again

Kevin Woodward June 1, 2026 Acquiring, Law and Regulation, Point-of-sale, Pricing, Transaction Processing

A last-minute budget move will see the implementation date for the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act pushed back a year, to July 1, 2027.

Originally scheduled to become law Monday, the IFPA would have seen interchange on sales tax and tips prohibited. How it would have been implemented has been a sticking point for both advocates and detractors.

The delay is expected to be signed by Governor JB Pritzker as part of the state’s 2027 budget. The IFPA was originally scheduled for implementation July 1, 2025, but was delayed for a year.

On the payments side, the delay is a sign the act is flawed. “This second delay reflects the reality that the law was flawed from the beginning,” Scott Talbott, executive vice president of the Electronic Transactions Association, tells Digital Transactions News via email. “With the OCC ruling that the IFPA is preempted for national banks, it should be repealed.” In April the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency filed a notice about a rule to preempt the IFPA, Digital Transactions News reported.

Other payments advocates also supported the extension.

“The Illinois General Assembly’s extension of the Interchange Fee Prohibition Act’s effective date is a win for consumers and credit unions,” says Scott Simpson, president and chief executive of trade association America’s Credit Unions. “However, ongoing litigation and the recent rules from the OCC and NCUA reinforce that more action is needed. Even with an extension, if the law takes effect, Illinois’s state-chartered credit unions and community banks will be at a disadvantage as federal institutions are preempted.”

The Electronic Payments Coalition also says it appreciated the delay. “At the same time, this latest delay is yet another acknowledgment that lawmakers rushed through a deeply flawed law without fully understanding the consequences. Unfortunately for Illinois consumers, small businesses, community banks, and credit unions, delaying the chaos is not the same as fixing it. The only real solution is full repeal,” Richard Hunt, EPC executive chairman, says in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Merchant Payments Coalition, which has advocated for the measure, says the delay was unfortunate. “The law ought to go into effect at this point,” Doug Kantor, an executive committee member of the MPC, tells Digital Transactions News.

“Understand that the banks are throwing around misinformation that people get nervous about,” Kantor says. “The only issue in Illinois is the credit card industry is dragging its feet and tried to throw obstacles at it. We look forward to the law eventually going into effect.”

The National Retail Federation also is disappointed with the delay. “We share in the disappointment,” says Dylan Jeon, vice president of NRF government relations. “We look forward to picking this back up next year.” In the meantime, the NRF’s focus will be on ongoing litigation, he says.

 

News Update

Fiserv Signs up for Experian Link’s Debit Card Ownership Checker

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Fiserv Signs up for Experian Link’s Debit Card Ownership Checker

Kevin Woodward May 27, 2026 Competitive Strategies, Debit Cards, E-Commerce, Fraud & Security, Mobile Commerce

Experian plc, most known among consumers as a credit-reporting agency, says it is collaborating with processor Fiserv Inc. on Experian Link, a service to make it easier for merchants to verify a consumer’s identity with debit card ownership data.

Announced Wednesday, the cooperative endeavor will see Fiserv’s proprietary debit card data integrated into Experian Link, and, when combined with Experian’s identity and fraud data, will help ensure a consumer’s identity. Experian Link launched in 2022 and Experian says it’s helped increase auto-approval rates by up to 10% for users.

Specifically, Experian Link will use Fiserv’s VerifyNow Advantage program to gain access to bank-account and debit card ownership data in real-time. Experian says Fiserv is the first debit data partner to make the Experian Link integration. VerifyNow is a Fiserv program to identify and authenticate consumer account owners and to verify account status in real-time.

“As [artificial intelligence] accelerates the speed and sophistication of fraud, merchants need precise, instant verification that confirms the customer behind a payment is truly who they say they are without introducing added friction,” Kathleen Peters, Experian North America chief innovation officer for fraud and identity, says in a statement. Experian is based in Dublin.

The expectation is that the integration will make it easier for users of Experian Link to reduce revenue loss from false declines. The service ties a consumer’s digital identity to the credit or debit card being presented, which provides “a more accurate, real-time view of whether a customer truly owns the card presented online,” Experian says. “With the new Fiserv collaboration enabling instant debit card ownership verification, Experian Link now gives merchants a more complete, data‑driven view of payment trustworthiness across both credit and debit card transactions.”

News Update

Fraud and Scam Initiators Are Adapting, Again, Visa Says

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Fraud and Scam Initiators Are Adapting, Again, Visa Says

Kevin Woodward May 22, 2026 Competitive Strategies, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, E-Commerce, Fraud & Security, Point-of-sale

Fraud and scam bad actors are adapting again to changes in technology and consumer behavior, but so, too, are organizations charged with preventing their misdeeds. In its “Spring 2026 Biannual Threats Report,” Visa Inc. points to four shifts in the second half of 2025 as fundamentally changing how criminals interact with consumers.

Released Thursday, the report shows on a global scale that controls are helping improve outcomes for those caught up in fraud and scams even as attack volume rises, Visa says. Other changes are that scams are the primary source of consumer harm and artificial intelligence is speeding up both the attack and defense aspects. Fourth, the economics of ransomware, though still prevalent, are changing.

Visa data shows that fraud at the device-token level decreased 9.6% in the latter half of 2025 compared to the second half of 2024, while enumeration —a reconnaissance stage for criminals to verify stolen data—dropped 16% in the same period.

The implication from this is that criminals are moving toward vectors like consumers and third-party dependencies, Visa says. “The most important question is no longer ‘how much fraud occurred,’ but ‘where is fraud migrating–and how quickly?’” Visa’s report says.

The second notable shift, the ascendancy of scams, cannot be solved solely with controls at the authorization layer, Visa says. To counter this, a multi-element response is needed, it says. Scams are when criminals trick a consumer into willingly sending them money, providing them with payment details, or providing access to their accounts, as defined by Wells Fargo.

“When the user behaves ‘legitimately’ from a transaction perspective, scam defense becomes a combined challenge of identity verification, intent assessment, and manipulation detection—often requiring coordinated action beyond a single institution,” Visa says.

Just as AI is weaving itself into productive uses, it is being used for other less-than-legal ones, too. Visa says AI is shortening the fraud cycle for both sides, the attackers and defenders.

Criminals are using AI to create more personalized and convincing attacks they can automate at scale, while organizations trying to halt that activity are able to use AI to spot anomalies sooner than without AI, stop attacks before they reach consumers or merchants, and make their identification of attacks more precise, Visa says.

Thus, “Organizations that rely on manual, siloed review models are structurally disadvantaged. The advantage belongs to those that can act in real time, coordinate across partners quickly, and automate the detect-triage response lifecycle,” Visa says.

The fourth shift, more ransomware with changing economics, may be a result that organizations are being more resilient when under threat and increasingly recognizing that paying the extortionist does not reliably  prevent a data release, Visa says.

Ransomware is becoming more of a recovery issue, not just a prevention problem, it says. Visa says this suggests a shift in approach when dealing with ransomware to treating business continuity and recovery as primary security controls instead of afterthoughts.