Smaller debit card swipe fees and other changes in the recent federal financial reform bill may prove to be a blessing for merchants and consumers, but a curse for Visa, the San Francisco-based company that has dominated the plastic payment industry since its inception.

Merchant acquirers recently got a long-anticipated reporting rule. Beginning with the 2011 tax year, acquirers must report how much their merchants generate in annual charge volume.

Visa and MasterCard debit card issuers stand to lose up to $10.7 billion in interchange income a year in a worst-case scenario under new federal interchange controls that will take effect next year.

As President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010 into law recently, at least one major merchant interest group has already fired the opening shot in what promises to be an all-out battle over the fees banks earn on debit card transactions.

Not always the best of friends, the National Retail Federation and Visa Inc. saw fit on Wednesday to jointly announce that Visa had clarified its card-number storage rules to affirm that merchants may present a truncated or disguised number on a transaction receipt for dispute resolution in place of a full card number.

Although many U.S. merchants and processors have met Visa Inc.’s July 1 deadline for replacing unapproved point-of-sale software applications with ones that meet requirements of the Payment Application data-security standard, or PA-DSS, many non-compliant card-processing applications remain in the marketplace, Visa says.

Merchants, processors, and others in the card industry will have more time to review and implement new versions of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard under a new schedule announced recently by the PCI Security Standards Council.

With the political debate about proposed federal regulation of debit card interchange and card-acceptance terms raging on, analyses of the so-called Durbin Amendment’s effects are emerging.

Payments-industry partisans of all stripes got onto their soap boxes to praise or denounce U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin’s successful amendment that could pave the way for regulation of debit card interchange and acceptance terms.

The battle over interchange regulation continues to heat up, with the introduction of amendments to financial regulatory reform legislation pending in the U.S. Senate that would target the controversial fees charged to merchants.

After months of inactivity on interchange regulation, the U.S. House of Representatives judiciary committee recently held a hearing on one bill advocated by national merchant groups. And while the committee took no action, one merchant group views the hearing as a hopeful sign that legislation will be passed.

These days, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t use credit and debit cards regularly — they’re convenient and compact and often come with small cash-back incentives. But what almost no one realizes is that those benefits are far outweighed by an implicit transaction fee, set by credit card companies and their issuing banks, that costs consumers more than $48 billion a year.

MasterCard named a onetime star at Citigroup as its next chief executive on Monday, a widely expected move that could nonetheless shake up the giant payment company. The appointment of the executive, Ajay Banga, is to take effect on July 1, the company said. MasterCard hired Mr. Banga as president and chief operating officer last August and signaled early that he would succeed Robert W. Selander, who has held the top job since 1997.

Top retailers have sounded the alarm about the U.S. government's recently enacted credit card reforms, warning investors the new rules will hit their bottom lines to the tune of millions of dollars just as consumer spending is beginning to bounce back.

Interchange regulation of the kind being advocated by national merchant groups just isn’t getting much traction on Capitol Hill.

In the last several years, awareness of issues around payment card security and PCI standards has grown exponentially. As more businesses implement Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) as a necessary layer in protecting their customers' account data, this increased vigilance will help result in fewer breaches, not to mention losses for businesses, financial institutions and cardholders.

Consumers recently got some financial relief when Congress passed a bill making it illegal for credit card companies to raise interest rates arbitrarily on monthly balances. And now, some politicians think retailers should get a break, too.

The PCI Council, in an attempt to show that it can be flexible and truly is listening to industry feedback, is now on the third version of its controversial policy on audio recordings since the beginning of the year.

Visa has announced plans to offer its No Signature Required program to the majority of merchant categories in the United States beginning July 2010. According to Visa, "under the new expanded program, for domestic transactions $25 and less, retailers can accept U.S.-issued Visa cards for purchases without requiring a cardholder signature; this program has the potential to increase speed at the point of sale and enhance customer satisfaction."

Proposed regulation of interchange is stalled in Congress, but California lawmakers are investigating the controversial revenue generator for credit and debit card issuers that merchants ultimately pay. It's not clear yet, however, whether the informational hearing held this week by the California Assembly's Banking and Finance Committee ultimately will result in a law.

American Express, MasterCard and Visa have all announced responses to the devastating earthquake in Haiti - including waiving interchange fees for a period for specific US-based charities that are providing support to Haitian relief.

A rising swarm of cyber-robberies targeting small firms, local governments, school districts, churches and non-profits has prompted an extraordinary warning. The American Bankers Association and the FBI are advising small and midsize businesses that conduct financial transactions over the Internet to dedicate a separate PC used exclusively for online banking.