Unwrapping Card Fees This Holiday Season

This year is poised to be an expensive holiday season for retailers, who have battled breakneck fee increases over the past three years. Between rising fees, continued growth in the online segment, and a spike in credit card usage, digital retailers could be hardest hit.

Five Common Mistakes When Evaluating the PINless Debit Business Case

Payments teams love flexibility almost more than they love incremental savings. While PINless debit can offer both flexibility and savings, when talking PINless debit, however, many merchants claim that they don’t see a large enough opportunity to invest in the solution. Unfortunately, many merchants may not be evaluating PINless granularly enough to properly evaluate the potential savings.

The Complexity of Payments: A Driver of Costs or An Opportunity for Savings?

As complexity mounts, many merchants find themselves grappling to control their expenses, leading to unnoticed elevated fees. However, some merchants are ushering in a new era of payments optimization where embracing complexity drives savings, rather than cost increases.

A Guide to Competition in the U.S. Payments Market

Does network routing competition create market efficiencies? In this article, we discuss competitive interventions within the U.S. payments landscape. We compare norms pre- and postintervention and highlight key hurdles faced by merchants in extracting the value of regulation. Finally, we map out the road ahead in terms of new challenges and potential avenues for improving the payments landscape.

Stakeholders Respond to Proposed Revision of U.S. Debit Interchange Fee Cap

For the first time since 2011, the U.S. Federal Reserve has proposed a revision to the maximum interchange fees charged on debit card transactions in the U.S.. With the comment period on the proposal now closed, CMSPI’s Insights team has analyzed the four main arguments against the rate revisions in light of public payments data.

Cutting Costs, Not Corners: The 2024 Guide to Least Cost Routing for Aussies

In today’s economy, Australian businesses are keenly aware that every dollar counts, and efficiency is king. In payments, the spotlight is shining bright on least cost routing (LCR) as a mechanism for businesses to lower payments costs without compromising on customer experience. With LCR expanding to both online and mobile wallet transactions this year, what should be top of merchants’ minds?

Making Data Deliver – A Deep Dive on BIN Data for Debit Routing Optimization

BIN-level analysis is one of the keys to developing actionable data-driven insights that can be used to reduce costs, drive competition, and optimize routing strategy. Read here how CMSPI approaches some of its optimization strategies with BIN-level analysis across a variety of use cases.

Managing Payments in 2023: Three of the Biggest Trends Affecting Grocery Merchants

With recent network fee increases and volume growth in costlier payment channels, it is more important than ever for grocers to find ways to optimize their costs of payments acceptance. Here, we review which three payments trends are impacting cost performance at America’s grocers most – and how they can adapt.

Debit Is More Important Than Ever: Evidence from the Federal Reserve Payments Study

With more U.S. debit volume becoming routable on July 1, 2023 - when the Federal Reserve’s clarification on the applicability of debit routing rights comes into effect – and the launch of FedNow in July, now is a critical time for merchants to reassess their payment acceptance strategies.

Attack on Debit – Interview with Liz Garner

We sat down with Liz Garner, Head of Strategic Partnerships at CMSPI, to find out what the attack on debit means for merchants and the payments industry.

The Attack on Merchant Debit Savings Report

The Federal Reserve ultimately clarified in October 2022 that existing law requires network competition for online transactions. This represents a big opportunity for merchants, consumers, and domestic debit networks, but there’s work to be done.

Card-On-File Merchants, Meet Debit Routing: How PINless and Network Tokens Can Impact Cards-On-File

In recent years, card-on-file transactions have become one of the most interesting segments of card not present (CNP) spending.