Payments News Update – September 18, 2026
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT: Walmart, Retail Groups Doubt Value of $200B Swipe Fee Deal
Law360 – September 15, 2026 (subscription required)
Major retail trade associations and Walmart are objecting to a $200 billion settlement over Visa and Mastercard swipe fees in New York federal court, saying the court should decertify the class or at least allow opt-outs so merchants can preserve “valuable claims that class counsel are trading away for nothing.”
Merchants have been involved in litigation with Visa, Mastercard and several banks since 2005 over rules set by the companies that the merchants said limited choice and forced them to accept higher-fee cards without the option to direct consumers to cards with more affordable rates.
U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan in June granted preliminary approval to the settlement, which was unveiled last November after an earlier deal was rejected by the court. . . .
Trade Groups Knock BNPL Rules
Payments Dive – September 16, 2026
The American Fintech Council and Financial Technology Association urged the New York State Department of Financial Services to reconsider its proposed rules for regulating buy now, pay later providers in letters to the agency Monday.
The new proposed rules could curtail consumers’ access to safe, affordable credit, the AFC contended in a press release touting its letter. If enacted, the department would require BNPL companies to assess borrowers’ income and indebtedness for each transaction, the release said.
FTA CEO Penny Lee wrote in a letter that aspects of the proposed rule “exceed the legislature’s directives and threaten to undermine the structures and features that make BNPL loans readily available and affordable to a broad range of New York consumers.” . . .
Senate Cloture Vote on Clarity Act Fails, Dealing Regulatory Blow to Crypto Industry
CNBC – September 15, 2026
The Senate on Tuesday voted to block the Clarity Act from advancing, dealing a major blow to the crypto industry’s push for a comprehensive market structure framework.
The procedural vote leaves the bill stalled on Capitol Hill after months of negotiations aimed at building bipartisan support.
Republican leaders had released a revised version of the bill Sunday, adding new ethics restrictions to address Democratic concerns about public officials profiting from crypto ventures. Those changes weren’t enough, however, to resolve the remaining opposition. . . .
1st Circ. Presses Amex on Merchant Arbitration Rule Change
Law360 – September 15, 2026 (subscription required)
A First Circuit panel on Tuesday pushed back on assertions by American Express that unilateral changes to the terms of its merchant agreement did not invalidate it, as a lower court found last year in denying the card issuer’s motion to compel arbitration in a dispute over anti-steering rules.
During oral arguments, the three-judge panel said it was also struggling with whether Amex can now argue that only an arbitrator is entitled to decide the question, when it did not directly raise that claim at the district court.
Three Massachusetts businesses — Pizza Hazel Inc., Nunan Florist and Greenhouses Inc., and Skin Rejuvenation Center and Spa Inc. — sued in 2024, alleging that Amex’s “anti-steering” policies violate federal antitrust laws by stopping them from offering incentives to use other forms of payment with lower fees. . . .
Payments Firms Put Georgia’s Limited Purpose Bank Charter to Work
PYMNTS – September 14, 2026
Bank sponsorship has been a staple of merchant acquiring in the United States.
A payments company can provide the technology, process the transaction and manage the merchant relationship, while relying on a bank member of the card networks for the access needed to acquire Visa and Mastercard transactions.
Checkout.com, for example, lists direct U.S. acquiring through its Georgia Merchant Acquirer Limited Purpose Bank (MALPB). Fiserv became the first MALPB to process card transactions in April 2025. Stripe’s MALPB received permission to begin business in May of this year. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT: UK Banks Kick Off Fundraising in Bid to Create New Payments Giant
Sky News – September 14, 2026
Britain’s biggest banks will this week embark on a process to raise tens of millions of pounds to fund the development of a new payments infrastructure vehicle that could ultimately evolve into a domestic alternative to Mastercard and Visa.
Sky News has learnt that the UK Payments Delivery Company (PDC), a newly formed entity, will on Tuesday launch an equity-raise aimed at creating the country’s future payments utility.
City sources said the fundraising would initially seek to secure in the region of £50m from industry participants such as banks along with other lenders and payment services providers. . . .
Rules Emerge to Manage On-Chain Risk in Agentic Transactions
Digital Transactions News – September 11, 2026
As spending enabled by stablecoins picks up momentum, payments players are beginning to see a need to guard against agentic transaction fraud involving cryptocurrency as the medium of exchange.
The latest example of this unfolding concern emerged Thursday. Contending that “blockchain analytics was built for a pre-agentic world,” London-based risk-management firm Elliptic released its Elliptic Standard, a set of eight rules to manage on-chain risk in agentic transactions.
The concern comes as crypto-based agentic transactions grew fully 522% between May 31 and Aug. 31, according to an analysis by Elliptic. A count of the transaction totals was not immediately available. . . .