Page 10 - GS220201

NewsBriefs

This article contains excerpts from news stories recently posted under "For some employers that were not
Breaking Industry News on our homepage. For links to these and other able to qualify or obtain a PPP loan,
full news stories, please visit www.greensheet.com/breakingnews. the ERC credit could be a big help,"
php. she said. "Our industry caters to other
businesses; when they were forced to
ETA sets 2022 policy priorities close or their business decreased, it

The Electronic Transactions Association's 2022 Legisla- directly affected our income."
tive and Regulatory Policy Priorities, published Jan. 7, 2022, in three distinct Equifax's BNPL credit scoring
documents, encourages Canadian and U.S. state and federal lawmakers to craft a potential win-win
policies that support innovation. Describing the payments industry as "inno-
vative, dynamic, competitive and highly regulated," the documents share in- Consumer interest in buy now, pay
sights on industrywide efforts to make payments safe, secure and financially later programs has exploded in re-
inclusive. ETA CEO Jodie Kelley described the association's ongoing dialogues cent years, and credit reporting agen-
with policymakers as constructive and enlightening. "So much of our engage- cies are taking notice. Equifax, one
ment with policymakers is educational, explaining how our ecosystem works of three main credit bureaus in the
and how it benefits consumers and merchants," she said. United States, heralded what it said is
the industry's first policy for includ-
Amended CARES Act helps struggling SMBs ing these short-term financing alter-

Amendments to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act natives in calculations of consumers'
(CARES Act) may help small and midsize businesses survive post-pandemic credit scores.
challenges, government sources noted. The sweeping revisions include an Em-
ployee Retention Credit (ERC), designed for SMBs that kept employees on the The new policy is expected to kick
payroll despite their own economic hardships. Heidi Chan, CFO at Access One in during the first quarter of this
Solutions, stated the ERC is meant to help offset some of the costs that her com- year. This is potentially good news
pany and other employers incurred when keeping staff employed during the for consumers and BNPL companies
pandemic. alike. Equifax reported that a study
of anonymized consumer data from
BNPL providers suggests consumers
who make on-time BNPL payments
can increase their FICO scores by be-
tween 13 and 21 points.

US retailers seek congressional
action on interchange

Emboldened by Amazon's recent
threat to pull the plug on Visa cards
issued in the United Kingdom, a
group representing U.S. retailers is
urging U.S. policymakers to "find a
way" to help bring down interchange
fees. "U.S. merchants large and small
are closely watching the Amazon-Vi-
sa developments in the UK and hope
that U.S. policymakers are doing the
same," the Merchants Payments Co-
alition stated in a letter sent to lead-
ers of the House and Senate Banking
Committees.

The MPC includes trade groups rep-
resenting all manner of merchants
"focused on reforming the U.S. pay-
ments system to make it more trans-
parent and competitive," the coali-
tion's website states. It is commonly
believed to have coined the term
"swipe fees" to describe interchange.

10