Payments News Update – October 17, 2025
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT:
Reuters – October 13, 2025 (subscription may be required)
Visa and Mastercard have agreed to pay a combined $199.5 million to settle a nearly decade-old class action that accused them of forcing merchants to swallow some of the costs of fraudulent transactions involving counterfeit, lost, or stolen cards.
A proposed settlement was filed on Friday in the federal court in Brooklyn, and requires approval from Chief U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie.
Merchants first sued the payment networks in 2016, alleging they violated antitrust law by moving in lockstep to change rules on chargebacks, which are reversed payments triggered by customer disputes. The shift exposed businesses to greater costs without any reduction in transaction fees. . . .
Law360 – October 10, 2025 (subscription required)
A Chicago federal judge has agreed to allow a coalition of merchant groups to take part in a key hearing later this month that could decide a banking industry legal challenge to the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, a law banning swipe fees on tax and tip payments.
In a Thursday minute order, U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Kendall said the Illinois attorney general may cede some argument time for the merchant coalition to use in defending the law at the Oct. 22 hearing, which will focus on dueling summary judgment bids in the case.
The order comes as a win for the National Retail Federation, Illinois Retail Merchants Association and several other allied organizations that make up the coalition. Their participation had been opposed by the law’s banking industry challengers as a procedural foul that would muddy the waters of the case. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT:
Payments Dive – October 14, 2025
Visa this week will revamp its discount rates for fees on credit card transactions, and industry consultants fear that many merchants will be caught off guard by the change.
Starting Friday, Visa will demand more data from retailers, restaurants and other merchants that want to receive certain discounts on the interchange fees paid for processing card payments, per the card network’s Commercial Enhanced Data Program.
For years, the card network giant has looked the other way as merchants often entered dummy data into transaction fields to get discounted rates, but those days are gone. . . .
PYMNTS – October 13, 2025
For much of the last decade, crypto existed in a parallel universe. Its champions spoke the language of disruption and decentralization, promising to rebuild the global financial system from the ground up.
But while enthusiasts coded and evangelized, the rest of the world remained skeptical watching headlines of volatility, hacks, and the spectacular collapse of players like FTX.
Now, in a quieter but more consequential phase, crypto is taking a new path: legitimacy through association. The most ambitious companies in the sector are no longer trying to replace the old financial order; they’re partnering with it. . . .
Digital Transactions News – October 13, 2025
Adyen NV and Worldpay are among processors that have signed up to participate in a new platform from Mastercard Inc. aimed at boosting approval rates for card transactions.
Announced Monday, the Payment Optimization Platform seeks to boost approval rates using AI engines trained on transaction data, the card network said in its announcement of the service.
The new service, which is in pilot, comes as e-commerce approval rates generally range from 85% to 95%, depending on a variety of factors, according to industry data. Rates for in-person transactions generally run somewhat higher. Higher approval rates can mean more revenue for merchants as well as for acquirers and processors, which generally collect fees based on a percentage of the transaction total. . . .
Payments Dive – October 10, 2025
Banks stand to benefit as much as fintechs in a new era of open banking, with consumer financial data flowing freely between the two, generating new insights about the market, fintech executives said Thursday.
“The big misunderstanding is that it’s fintech versus bank, and we definitely don’t see it that way,” said Ryan Caldwell, the founder and chief executive of MX Technologies, a Lehi, Utah-based data aggregation company.
“There’s this confusion that it’s data going one way, as if there’s just data leaving the bank. That’s not what’s happening.” . . .
The Times – October 9, 2025
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, has released a product to allow more retailers to accept bitcoin as a “hedge against everything that we’re seeing in the economy.”
Dorsey, chief executive of the payments company Block, hopes small US businesses using its Square sales system will adopt a new bitcoin payment wallet.
Retailers using the bitcoin network can now convert a percentage of their daily card sales into bitcoin with zero fees, Block said. Then, on November 10, businesses will start being able to accept bitcoin as payment and convert as much as 50 percent of daily sales revenue into the currency. . . .
Newsweek – October 9, 2025
In an increasingly cashless world, buying a new fall sweater or splitting drinks with friends has been left to e-commerce.
PayPal is a leading platform for both online commerce and peer-to-peer money transactions. The company was a pioneer in the fintech space, launching its first version of an electronic payment system in 1999. Since then, it has acquired several companies, including Venmo, an app that allows users to easily split bills and transfer funds from their banks, in 2012.
As the global economy and tech world continue to evolve, PayPal remains at the forefront of customer-led innovations that help users manage their money safely and efficiently. . . .
Digital Transactions News – October 9, 2025
Action in the payments industry on stablecoin plans appears to be perking up since President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law this summer, legislation whose rules are expected to spark more action by mainstream payments players on issuing and accepting the digital currency.
One example emerged Wednesday with the news that Fiserv Inc., one of the world’s largest payments processors, will work with Bank of North Dakota on a stablecoin venture called the Roughrider coin.
The venture, which involves a state stablecoin, represents the first such collaboration to launch on Fiserv’s digital-asset platform, the company says. . . .