Regulation

BB&T Corp. is launching a prepaid card that costs slightly more per month than some competing products — but lacks many back-end fees that have caught the ire of advocacy groups.

The powerful senator who sponsored last year’s amendment to the Dodd-Frank Reform Act regulating debit card interchange is confident his provision will stand, even as the House begins deliberations aimed at changing the provision, or at least delaying its enactment.

Credit unions now have another reason besides good member service to ensure their ATMs are shipshape — potential $500,000 fines.

Cardtronics Inc. executives during a conference call with analysts Feb. 10 cast their company as a potential beneficiary of financial reform that, as proposed, would require issuers to attach more than one unaffiliated payment network to their debit cards.

Many South Koreans may have to pay more in income taxes this year if the government removes the relief it granted 12 years ago on credit card spending when it announces its taxation policy next month.

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers are expected to press the case of credit unions and community banks asking for the Federal Reserve to ease off proposed price restrictions on debit interchange during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee next week.

A former Illinois attorney - disbarred in 2002 after being accused of embezzling from a debt collection service - was sentenced to three years in prison this week for impersonating a former legal colleague in court.

Warning lawmakers that the Federal Reserve Board’s proposed new debit-interchange rules likely would thwart national job growth, the American Bankers Association and 55 other state and community banking associations urged members of Congress in a Feb. 8 letter to “intervene immediately” to block the rule’s implementation.

Credit card issuers in South Korea have stopped charging customers cash-advance handling fees, a spokesperson for the Credit Finance Association of Korea confirms to PaymentsSource.

Visa Inc. will allow merchants to offer discounts or other incentives to steer customers to a particular form of payment, including to a specific network brand or to any card product such as a “nonreward” Visa credit card, under terms of its settlement of an antitrust suit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, the card brand announced last week.