Compliance

With increasing numbers of alternative providers gaining licenses to provide payment services aimed specifically at businesses, Beck predicts the pressure on the banks to offer faster and cheaper services is going to substantially increase.

That’s the question executives of publicly traded banks are asking themselves as they try to make sense of new — and somewhat vague — guidance from the SEC on procedures for disclosing data breaches.

While the 'buy button' is designed to benefit merchants, issuers and the card networks alike, merchants may not be willing to risk any tradeoff in their access to customer data.

Retailer associations and debit network providers have formed the Secure Payments Partnership, designed to address the ongoing problem of payment fraud.

The Patriot Act, for example, requires all U.S. businesses to comply with regulations issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Those that fail to comply, knowingly or inadvertently, are susceptible to significant fines and even legal action, writes Peter Shore, general manager of Transpay.

Agency says it wants “smaller memberships to ensure streamlined discussions;” the bank hired a U.K. firm to help it better defend against cyberattacks.

Circle Internet Financial Ltd., one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency platforms, is looking to make a big leap into the highly regulated realm of U.S. banks and brokerages.

Visa's management faces an unwelcome choice: It can share more information about internal shortcomings or mistakes that caused payments to shut off temporarily, or get summoned to Parliament for a politically-infused public questioning.

The Atlanta bank had previously failed compliance metrics in five straight quarters before passing them last year, according to the settlement's monitor.

One thing is clear: This outage, however brief, undermines the card networks' ability to market themselves as the fundamental platforms for a new era of payments technology.