A federal court’s interpretation of a merchant contract resulted in the merchant not being liable for card brand security breach assessments. It may be worthwhile to examine and revise your merchant agreement in light of that ruling. In Specs v. First Data, decided June 2019, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled …

Recent opinion provides welcome clarity on Oklahoma’s position on surcharge ban enforceability, relating to electronic payment processing By Nicole Meisner and Daniel Ungar, Attorneys, Jaffe, Raitt, Heuer & Weiss Judicial developments surrounding the legality of credit card surcharging have made keeping up with the latest news on this issue a challenge. Currently, there are several …

The Maryland legislature has passed legislation that, if signed by the Governor, will require merchant acquirers to revise their merchant applications and agreements. Under the proposed law, merchant services providers, financial institutions, independent sales organization (ISO’s), or any subsidiary or affiliate of those entities (“Credit Card Processors”) will be required to provide merchants with specific …

Developing an anti-money laundering program (AML) can prove challenging for card processing companies. While not an exhaustive list, here are 9 areas that an AML program should be sure to include: Firm Policy – A general written AML policy reflecting the fulfillment of the obligations set forth in the AML program. AML Compliance Person – …

The legality of surcharging keeps getting more confusing. Recent reports seem to indicate that New York’s law prohibiting surcharging was overturned. Unfortunately, that overstatement confuses the actual status of the statute. As you may recall, the card brand rules allow merchants to add a fee on top of the regular price for goods and services, …

The EU General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) was adopted in 2016 and went into effect on May 25, 2018. The GDPR is a framework regulation that is designed to provide a uniform regime to protect the privacy of an individual of the European Union (“data subject”) whose personal data is collected, stored, or processed. The …