The Green Sheet Online Edition
November 10, 2025 • 25:11:01
News Briefs
Visa, Mastercard to pay merchants $199.5 million to settle antitrust suit <- click to read full story
Visa and Mastercard agreed to pay a combined $199.5 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit brought by merchants over the EMV liability shift introduced in 2015 and 2016. The shift made merchants financially responsible for chargebacks tied to counterfeit card fraud if they had not adopted EMV chip-enabled terminals—costs that had previously been absorbed by issuing banks.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2016 by several supermarkets and a liquor store, alleged that Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover acted in violation of antitrust laws by coordinating the transition in a way that forced merchants into costly upgrades without reducing interchange or other associated fees.
Although no wrongdoing was admitted, Visa agreed to pay $119.7 million and Mastercard $79.8 million into a common settlement fund. AmEx and Discover had already settled separately for $32.2 million. The settlement was finalized only after five separate mediations, according to court filings, and must still be approved by both the affected merchant class and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Attorneys for the merchant class described the settlement as "an excellent outcome" that balances the potential upside of continued litigation against the substantial time, cost and risk involved. Visa and Mastercard said they chose settlement to avoid prolonged litigation, not because they agreed with the allegations.
AWS outage could spark payment-dispute time bomb <- click to read full story
A major global outage at Amazon Web Services on Oct. 20, 2025, was expected to create weeks of fallout for merchants, processors and financial platforms due to a projected surge in chargebacks and billing disputes. The disruption originated in AWS's US-EAST-1 region and was linked to failures in both DNS and database APIs, causing widespread downtime for apps and platforms including Venmo, Snapchat, Robinhood and multiple UK banks.
Although AWS restored services within hours, payments experts warn the ripple effects will be far more costly and prolonged than the outage itself. Monica Eaton, founder and CEO of Chargebacks911 and Fi911, said outages like this "don't just cause downtime—they trigger a chain reaction across the payment ecosystem." Failed authorizations, duplicate charges, and missing confirmation pages create confusion for customers, who often dispute a charge rather than seek merchant support."
She urged merchants to act immediately rather than wait for issuers to process disputes, recommending steps such as auto-detecting duplicate transactions, messaging affected customers before they contact their banks, and documenting timestamps for representment evidence. "The outage will end long before the disputes do," she warned. "Any business treating this as a one-day incident is already behind."
The incident highlights the growing dependency of fintech and commerce infrastructure on cloud services.
Fed may open payment rails to non-banks <- click to read full story
The Federal Reserve is exploring whether to grant direct access to its payment systems to nonbank fintech firms, a move that could reshape how payments clear and settle in the United States. Fed Governor Christopher Waller revealed the initiative during a payments innovation conference in Washington, D.C., describing the potential creation of a new type of "payment account" — or "skinny master account" — that would allow legally eligible nonbanks to access basic Fed payment services without becoming full financial institutions.
Today, only banks and credit unions with master accounts can directly access the Fed's payment rails, including Fedwire and the National Settlement Service. Fintechs must instead rely on sponsor banks, creating dependency and additional cost. Waller suggested that for some high-volume payment firms, access to a simplified version of a master account could remove barriers to competition and innovation.
The proposed accounts would differ from traditional master accounts in several ways: no interest would be paid on balances, funds would likely be capped, and account holders would not receive daylight overdraft privileges or discount-window lending access. Waller emphasized that the Fed is only in an exploratory phase and that many risk, regulatory and operational questions remain unresolved.
The Fed's slow pace in modernizing payments complicates expectations. Although FedNow launched in 2023 as a 24/7 instant-payments service, legacy systems like Fedwire still operate only 22 hours per weekday, excluding weekends and most holidays. A proposal to extend Fedwire's operating hours to six days per week would not be implemented until 2028 or later.
Merchants, banks press their cases over Illinois interchange law <- click to read full story
The legal battle over Illinois' first-in-the-nation law banning interchange fees on sales tax and worker tips intensified this week as attorneys for merchant groups urged a federal judge to dismiss banks' attempts to overturn the law. The Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, originally set to take effect in July 2025, was delayed one year after the Illinois Bankers Association filed suit arguing the law is preempted by federal banking statutes and would create operational chaos.
Merchant advocates countered that Visa and Mastercard, not banks, actually set interchange fees, meaning banks cannot claim exemption. They argue merchants should not pay swipe fees on tax and gratuity amounts that never become revenue, calling the practice "unfair" and "economically irrational."
A preliminary injunction has already shielded nationally chartered banks by affirming federal preemption, but state-chartered banks and credit unions remain in limbo pending the final ruling. Banks warn the law would require recalibration of POS systems, confuse consumers and create inconsistent card acceptance policies across states.
Merchants argue rising bank profits prove reform is overdue, while financial institutions claim forced routing will increase fraud and reduce consumer rewards. If Illinois' law survives, other states—including New York, Colorado and Texas—are expected to follow, potentially creating a fragmented regulatory landscape for card transactions nationwide.
Cyber confidence in supply chain exceeds reality, researchers find <- click to read full story
New research from global cybersecurity firm NCC Group reveals a dangerous gap between business confidence and actual preparedness when it comes to supply chain cyber threats. The State of Supply Chain Security Report, based on surveys of 1,010 cybersecurity leaders across eight countries, found that 94 percent of organizations are confident they could respond to an attack—even though 45 percent experienced a supply chain-related breach in the past year and nearly half of those incidents disrupted operations.
Despite this optimism, only 34 percent of respondents said they have full visibility into third-party cyber risks, and the same percentage reported conducting regular supplier risk assessments. The report suggests many firms place unwarranted trust in vendors rather than verifying protections, creating an environment where ransomware groups easily exploit weak links.
NCC CEO Mike Maddison called the results "a wake-up call," noting that modern supply chain attacks have halted hospital systems, grounded airlines and shut down manufacturing plants. Yet 21 percent of businesses surveyed believe they would not be seriously affected even if a key supplier went offline for five days—an assumption researchers say is wildly unrealistic.
The survey also found growing concern about AI-driven cyber risks, with 59 percent of respondents calling artificial intelligence the top emerging threat to supply chain security.
Governments are responding with tighter regulations, including the EU's NIS2 Directive and the UK's forthcoming Cyber Security Resilience Bill. However, NCC Group warns the expanding patchwork of rules may be difficult for multinationals to navigate—and could widen the visibility gap.
PayPal goes all-in on agentic commerce <- click to read full story
PayPal is taking a major step into AI-driven "agentic commerce" through dual announcements involving partnerships with Mastercard and OpenAI. First, the company revealed it will integrate Mastercard Agent Pay into the PayPal wallet, enabling AI agents to complete transactions on behalf of users wherever PayPal is accepted. Second, PayPal is adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an emerging open standard co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe that allows AI agents to interact with merchants and checkout systems securely.
The move positions PayPal as an early leader in a new model of commerce in which consumers issue commands to AI systems—such as ChatGPT—and the AI handles product discovery, comparison and checkout. Mastercard said the integration removes the need for merchants to adopt new technical frameworks, because payments will be routed via existing PayPal credentials.
A consumer example provided by Mastercard illustrates the shift: a shopper asks an AI assistant to find running shoes, selects a recommended pair from a merchant that accepts PayPal, and instructs the agent to complete the purchase. The AI then triggers a PayPal checkout flow autonomously, requiring only user verification.
PayPal confirmed a broader partnership with OpenAI to bring its merchant network into ChatGPT. The integration will allow PayPal to power payments for sellers using OpenAI's Instant Checkout and will give millions of ChatGPT users the ability to complete purchases with PayPal in a few taps, using bank accounts, cards or balances. 
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