Payment Processing Industry News – October 2023

Beyond helping companies save money on credit card processing, our team here at Merchant Cost Consulting is constantly keeping our eye on all the latest news, updates, new fees, rate increases, partnerships, industry trends, and everything else in the payments world. 

Here are some of the biggest stories and noteworthy insights from October. 

Fullsteam Payments Adds New Fees and Increases Rates

Effective October 1, 2023, Fullsteam Payments increased its fees by 0.14% + $0.14 per transaction.

Fullsteam also added a new fee, called “Partner of Processing Fee.” This new 0.02% + $0.02 fee applies to a merchant’s total processing volume and transaction count per month for every merchant ID under their RB Smart Pay account. 

For more details and updates on Fullsteam Payments, refer to this page. 

Mastercard Updates Network Fees

Effective October 8, 2023, Mastercard rolled out a few new interchange fees:

• Authorization Optimizer Insufficient Fund – $0.02
• Pre Authorization Card Present Fee – 0.0075% ($0.01 minimum)
• Pre Authorization Card Not Present Fee – 0.0125% ($0.01 minimum)

You can check out all of Mastercard’s interchange rates here. 

Visa Updates and Increases Network Fees

Visa made some significant changes to fees at the card-network level. This includes new fees, updated fee names, and more—across categories like:

• Supermarket
• Restaurant
• Real Estate
• Retail
• Taxi
• Small Ticket
• Service Station
• Healthcare
• Telecom and Cable
• Insurance
• Small Merchant
• Travel

The majority of these changes went into effect on October 13, 2023. See all Visa’s new fees here. 

American Express Introduces Biometrics For Online Checkouts

Amex announced a new pilot program that will use facial recognition and fingerprint technology to strengthen ID checks and improve security for online transactions. 

When prompted to checkout with SafeKey, select cardholders in the US will have the option to enable these biometric features for verification.

Amex is planning to roll this feature out to all US cardholders by early 2024. 

Fed Proposes Revisions to Regulation II Interchange Cap Fee For Debit Card Transactions

The Federal Reserve recently issued a proposal that would change the current cap on debit interchange fees. 

This proposal would reduce the base debit interchange cap to $0.144 (down from the current cap of $0.21). It would also cut the ad valorem component from 5 basis points down to 4 basis points while increasing fraud prevention adjustments from $0.01 to $0.013.

The proposal also suggests that the board would review all three of these fees every year starting in 2025, based on data from its biennial survey of large debit issuers. 

You can view the official press release here. The PDF memo is linked at the bottom of that page. 

PayPal and Venmo Cards Are Now Supported by Apple Wallet

We hinted at this story last month. But now PayPal has officially announced that consumers can add eligible PayPal and Venmo credit and debit cards to Apple Wallet. 

Once added, they can make purchases via Apple Pay and get rewards and cashback for eligible transactions. 

FedNow Reaches 100 Participants

The Federal Reserve’s instant payment system, FedNow, has officially eclipsed 100 participants. 

The system officially went live on 7/20/23—although the pilot program started back in 2021. They surpassed 100 active participants on October 3, 2023, less than three months after launch.  

We have a complete guide on FedNow that explains what it is, how it works, and its benefits in greater detail. Check it out to learn more. 

New Acquisitions, Partnerships, and Integrations

In October, we found several major stories related to acquisitions, strategic partnerships, mergers, and integrations in the payments world—including some big names like Fiserv, Visa, and Shift4.

• Shift4 announced its acquisition of SpotOn’s sports and entertainment business. The $100 million acquisition includes a portion of SpotOn’s employees, along with all of their sports and entertainment customers. 
• In an October 11, 2023 press release, Fiserv announced its acquisition of Skytef—a Brazilian payments company. This expands Fiserv’s presence in Brazil while adding 27,000 merchants and 600 ISV partners.
• NMI, a payment gateway based in Illinois, issued a press release on October 12 to announce its acquisition of Sphere’s Commercial Division. Sphere is a cloud-based integrated payments and software technology company that typically works with organizations in industries like healthcare and nonprofit—and the sale of its commercial division will allow them to focus more on those sectors. 
• In an October 3, 2023 press release, Fiserv announced that it’s deepening the integrations between Clover POS and BentoBox, a marketing and ecommerce platform. The new integration will support Clover’s reservations, catering, menu management, and kiosk features.
• Fiserv announced an agreement with Plaid to improve secure data sharing for consumers and financial institutions. The partnership will allow consumers who bank with roughly 3,000 banks and credit unions hosted by Fiserv to access secure and credentialless connectivity to over 8,000 applications on Plaid’s network.  
• Visa announced a strategic partnership with Expel to help with cybersecurity, fraud prevention, and risk mitigation. Expel is a security operations provider that offers services for managed detection and response (MDR). 
• Lloyds Bank and FreedomPay are expanding their strategic partnership. This updated agreement gives Lloyd Bank merchants access to the Next Level Commerce platform offered by FreedomPay. 

Top Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Headlines From October

You’ll usually find at least one story in the BNPL space in our monthly news roundup. But this month, we have three noteworthy headlines worth mentioning:

• PayZen, a BNPL company in the healthcare space, launched a new debit card that patients can use for procedures. It’s a Mastercard-branded debit card that’s currently available through select healthcare systems.
• Galileo Financial Technologies expanded its BNPL service to small businesses on B2B purchases. Read their full press release here. 
• Costco Anywhere Visa cardholders now have access to Citi’s BNPL platform, Citi Flex Pay—allowing them to pay over time for a fixed fee, with no interest, while still earning cash back rewards. This applies to eligible purchases of $75 or more with payment plans of up to 24 months. 

Fiserv and Worldline Both Announce Q3 Results

Two big names in the payments industry both released Q3 earnings results this month. We’ll look at some key insights and noteworthy takeaways from each below.

Fiserv Q3 Highlights:

• 12% growth in organic revenue (vs. 10% in Q2)
• 20% growth in merchant acceptance organic revenue (vs. 18% in Q2)
• 26% growth in Clover (vs. 23% in Q2)
• 14% growth in Carat (vs. 16% in Q2)
• 6% growth in organic revenue from payments and networks (vs. 9% in Q2)
• 6% increase in fintech organic revenue (vs. -1% in Q2)

You can read the full results and access the earnings webcast here. 

Worldline Q3 Highlights:

Worldline’s call was more about strategic changes and economic outlook, including a macro slowdown across Europe. 

They did adjust their fiscal year organic revenue growth estimates to 6-7%, which is a reduction compared to 8-10% prior estimate. 

Read more from Worldline here. 

Other Top Stories From October

Here are a few more miscellaneous payment industry updates that we found and think you’ll find interesting, too:

• Worldline launched a new feature—FlexCommissions—that lets ISOs customize revenue-sharing profits on a daily, weekly, monthly, or any other basis that fits their needs. Read more. 
• Nuvei, a Canadian-based fintech company, rolled out an upgraded payments solution for B2B payments in Canada. Read more. 
• Squarespace introduced more ways to sell online in its 2023 Refresh. This includes online courses, client invoicing, Squarespace Payments, and Acuity scheduling. Read more. 
• Adobe estimates online holiday sales in the US to reach $221.8 billion this year, with more than $12 billion on Cyber Monday alone. Read the full report here. 

Like what you’ve seen here? Subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest payment industry news delivered straight to your inbox every month.