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NewsBriefs

This article contains excerpts from news stories recently posted under That's nearly a 28 percent increase
Breaking Industry News on our homepage. For links to these and other over the $116 million in total losses
full news stories, please visit www.greensheet.com/breakingnews. reported during all of 2020. Fiserv
php. surveyed 1,000 consumers on their
holiday shopping plans and found
Visa takes aim at cashless ATMs 55 percent were concerned about de-

A Visa bulletin concerning cashless ATMs, published in livery delays and out-of-stock items.
December 2021, caused a stir in the ATM and cannabis industries. At issue is Seventy percent were concerned sup-
ply chain issues would impact their
a prevalent scheme involving POS devices posing as ATM terminals and rout-
ing sale transactions through debit card networks to make sales look like ATM ability to purchase electronics.
cash withdrawals. BNPL draws government scrutiny
This practice violates Core Rules and Product and Service Rules for both its Growing adoption of buy now, pay
payment card and debit card networks, Visa representatives stated. André G. later (BNPL) options at checkout
Herrera, chief compliance officer at Hypur and former commercial banker and prompted the Consumer Financial
payments executive with 30 years of compliance experience, said Visa's recent Protection Bureau to request infor-
communication comes as no surprise. mation from leading BNPL providers
about debt accumulation, regulatory
Gift card sales rise, as does fraud arbitrage and data harvesting practic-
Consumers, concerned that supply chain challenges would crimp holiday es. Initiated in December 2021, CFPB
shopping plans, were expected to purchase more gift cards in the 2021 holiday orders seek details on deferred pay-
ment options at point of purchase,
season than previously. That's a key takeaway from survey results released by
Fiserv. In a related development, the Federal Trade Commission reported that stated Rohit Chopra, CFPB director.
consumers lost at least $148 million to gift card scams in the first nine months
of the year. Describing BNPL as a new form of
layaway, Chopra claimed the prac-
tice can speed transactions as well
as consumer debt. "We have ordered
Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, and
Zip to submit information so that we
can report to the public about indus-
try practices and risks," he said.
Square is no chip off this block

H&R Block doesn’t like the idea of
Square renaming itself Block Inc.
The tax-prep company filed a lawsuit
against

Block asserting that the payments
company’s new name infringes upon
the H&R Block family of trademarks.
Square changed its corporate name
to Block Inc., effective Dec. 10, 2021,
although its official NYSE ticker sym-
bol remains SQ. It also left intact its
various service offering names, like
Square POS and Square Capital.

“The goodwill and brand identity
that [H&R] Block has carefully culti-
vated and nurtured over the last 65
years is under attack by the Silicon
Valley fintech company,” H&R Block
stated, noting that the new Block Inc.
“competes directly with Block in sev-
eral areas of financial services,” in-
cluding tax preparation services.

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