PayThink

The Beltway debate between the retail and financial sectors over the electronic payment system has flared up again. While retailers are lobbying Congress to extend government price controls to credit card interchange rates, separate bills would repeal Durbin Amendment ceilings on debit card interchange and strengthen merchant security standards.

Starting in 2010, regulators warned banks about the risks associated with rising interest rates. The problem has turned out to be just the opposite: persistently low rates.

More than 40% of consumers with complaints about debt collections say they were asked to pay debts they didn't owe. There are a host of reasons for the problem, including inscrutable legal disclosures.

Pokémon Go has taken the US by storm, to put it mildly. For an app that was released very recently, it already has more users than Twitter and is beating Facebook on daily engagement.

Despite the hurdles facing technology giants in offering payments services, they remain keenly interested in the sector and more traditional service providers should stay on alert.

Large incumbents can effectively pursue and cultivate disruptive innovation without buying a disruptor. Here's how.

In many emerging markets, daily financial transactions—buying groceries, paying a utility bill, cashing a paycheck or billing a customer—are notoriously difficult. Banking institutions are few and far between, and large swaths of the population have little or no access to them.

Regulators sought to limit improper contact between lenders and appraisers, but policies of the two mortgage giants encourage the kind of practices that contributed to the housing crisis.

Now is the time to correct the mistakes of interchange price controls that harm consumers and community financial institutions to the benefit of merchants.

When Amazon launched Amazon Dash buttons, many observers predicted that the concept would completely upend the retail model. But recent market research shows that fewer than half of Amazon Dash purchasers have actually used the button.