Interchange fees

A showdown between megabanks such as JPMorgan Chase and the likes of Apple and PayPal could be the prelude to a broader fight.

In a post-Brexit move, Mastercard is raising interchange rates for card-not-present transactions on U.K.-issued cards when spent with European merchants.

The fees banks charge to merchants have skyrocketed because people are making more purchases using their credit cards during the pandemic. Lawmakers can cap these fees before they further eat into retailers' profits.

The U.K. Supreme Court has rejected Mastercard’s attempt to force individual lawsuits over claims the card brand overcharged consumers and negatively impacted competition for more than a decade.

More lending regulation and interchange restrictions are on tap, says Intrepid Ventures' Eric Grover.

The pandemic has altered a variety of consumer behaviors, and that could make a difference in what sort of interchange and interest revenue financial institutions see in their credit and debit portfolios as they close out 2020.

Deposits have piled up, curtailing overdrafts and other fees. The trend could force lenders to find other ways to make money — or start cutting to the bone.

As the pandemic has stretched on further into 2020, with more lockdowns and economic disruption predicted heading into the fall and winter, continuing to offer fee waivers has not always proved financially viable.

Advocates of allowing merchants to add a surcharge to defray the cost of credit card interchange have had to overcome network bureaucracy, state laws and even ingrained habits among the merchants themselves.

The industry will have to grapple with pressure on net interest margins, interchange income and credit quality, said CUNA Mutual's Steve Rick during a virtual conference.

A new study from WalletHub finds nealry 40% of parents are planning to spend less in advance of the upcoming academic year.

Big banks will need to show how well they can withstand three different scenarios before they can pay dividends; the German payments company is still looking for $2 billion of missing funds.

Merchants prevailed in a long-running legal battle with Visa and Mastercard in the U.K. over whether interchange fees the payment card networks charged for years in Britain were anticompetitive, which could increase scrutiny on U.S. card interchange rates.

H&R Block intends to break off the relationship since the parties have been unable to restructure compensation to reflect new interchange fee caps at Axos.

Visa is delaying previously announced interchange and fee changes until April 2021, except for changes in the supermarket category, which will remain on the same schedule.

Stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns have led to a sharp decline in consumer use of credit and debit cards.

Interchange fees are a major part of the costs merchants pay to accept payment cards. While merchants seek relief from fees during a time in which their businesses face serious damage from stay-at-home edicts because of coronavirus, the credit card companies and banks quickly began to dig in their heels.

With coronavirus presenting significant challenges for retailers and the technical challenges of imposing interchange fee changes in the networks, Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover are holding off on the updates.

It's still unclear how the coronavirus pandemic will alter payment habits over time — will consumers avoid cash out of fear of germs, or will they favor it as the one payment option that nearly all merchants accept? An impending change in interchange rates may tip the scales in cash's favor.

The coronavirus stimulus package has resurrected calls for the U.S. government to offer a central bank digital currency, public mobile wallets and postal banking—controversial ideas that are hard to pull off, but exist outside the U.S. and could dent interchange fees and private stablecoin projects like Facebook’s Libra.