Discover Rules Out E-Wallet Fee

By David Heun and Daniel Wolfe

Published March 21, 2013, 3:03 p.m. EDT

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Updated March 21, 2013, 2:05 p.m. EDT

1 Min Read

MasterCard plans to charge a digital-wallet fee to third-party payment providers as part of a new registration process, a move Visa's CEO called "totally appropriate" — but Discover says it is on a different path.

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"Our objective is to partner with PayPal, not to tax them," Diane Offereins, executive vice president of payment services at Discover Financial, said during a March 21 interview on Fox Business. "We're going to partner rather than add a fee."

Visa CEO Charlie Scharf said March 20 at a conference that the company's relationships with digital wallet providers "have changed. And if they changed enough that we think it warrants us to change something with us, we will do that."

Visa later told Reuters it has no plans to put such a fee into effect.

Discover has a deep partnership in place with PayPal for the alternative payment provider's digital wallet plans. PayPal has already inked several deals directly with merchants to accept PayPal payments at the point of sale, and a deal with Discover will additionally allow all Discover merchants to accept PayPal payments.

Associate Editor

David Heun is an associate editor for technology at American Banker.

Interim editor-in-chief, Digital Insurance

Daniel Wolfe is interim editor-in-chief of Digital Insurance and director of data services at Arizent, which publishes DI and American Banker. In... Read full bio

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