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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
