Mastercard And Visa Gain Strength, But Did PayPal?

The deal between Mastercard and PayPal announced Sep. 6 was different for a day than the Visa-PayPal partnership announced in July. Mastercard spokesperson Robyn Cottelli says being a payment choice in PayPal’s checkout is crucial, but not the only draw.

“Our thoughtful approach to the partnership with PayPal was not just focused on prominence as a payment option, but going beyond what we’ve seen Visa announce to drive further value for Mastercard and our partners,” Cotelli tells paymentfacilitator.com.

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FTC Investigating Venmo, Potentially Raising Compliance Interpretation Issues

Venmo has gotten into trouble—of the embarrassment sort—before with aggressive compliance efforts. That was specifically when it created a list of words that could delay transaction processing, such as the word Persian. And PayPal-owned Venmo was hardly alone, with Chase was caught doing similar word scans, as a man who had a dog named Dash discovered.

But the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has now launched a formal investigation into Venmo. With the FTC, phrasing is critical. An investigation is very different than an FTC study, such as the one the FTC launched to look into practices of the PCI Council. PayPal disclosed the investigation in an SEC filing last week. What exactly is being investigated?

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Venmo/PayPal Go Overboard On Compliance

If you’re trying to use Venmo to pay someone for sitting your Persian cat or for buying a used Persian rug, don’t actually use the word “Persian” or be prepared to wait longer. And you can thank a compliance program that is perhaps going a few steps too far.

Although opting—understandably—to be vague on specifics, the PayPal-owned Venmo responded to media reports that is has coded its systems to be on the lookout for certain words, including Persian.
“There has been recent discussion around specific keywords associated with payments within Venmo that have caused us to pause the transaction and review. We understand the frustration this may cause,” Venmo said on its blog.

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Apple Wants Into P2P Payments, Talking With Chase, CapOne, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp

In an attempt to control as much consumer payments as possible, Apple is in negotiations with J.P. Morgan Chase, Capital One, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp to launch a bank-account-based P2P payments service, according to a Wednesday report in The Wall Street Journal. If successful, it’s value would be huge to Apple, but not on a per-transaction fee basis. The goldmine would be the data, the equivalent of knowing every check, money transfer and payment card transaction made by millions of its customers.

Beyond the privacy implications of a consumer goods company having so much consumer personal data—on top of whatever health data is being gathered through Apple’s Health app—there are also security concerns. The more avenues of access that exist into a bank account, the more chances there are for a glitch to withdraw more than expected or for the ultra-sensitive bank account routing numbers to leak where a cyberthief could see it.

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