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December 24, 2018 • Issue 18:12:02
2018 – Year in review

Oil (now part of ExxonMobile) added a debit feature to its
proprietary credit card. (The feature was dropped before
Mobil merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil.)

Target Corp. breathed new life into the concept with its
2007 introduction of the RedCard. That was followed
by CurrentC, a decoupled debit-based mobile payment
network. It was launched by a consortium of retailers in 2012
and shuttered four years later. More recently, at least two
companies serving state-regulated cannabis businesses,
CanPay and Hypur, have introduced mobile payment apps
that use decoupled debit in an end run around card brand
rules banning cannabis-related transactions from their
networks.

Meanwhile, a number of more traditional merchants are
adding payment functionality to mobile loyalty apps
By Patti Murphy and encouraging customer adoption with discounts.
Cumberland Farms, a convenience store chain with 700-
s 2018 draws to a close and 2019 approaches, plus locations in New England and New York, offers a
merchant services providers are assessing what discount of 10 cents per gallon to customers who pay for
was and what may be the shape of things to gas with its SmartPay mobile app.
A come. And several trends stand out as worthy of
consideration. Among them: the expanding role of financial This year, the big push has been on cash discounting.
technology firms, combating payments fraud, data security ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) have been
and ongoing merchant concerns over the cost of payment positioning cash discounting as a way to help businesses
acceptance. reduce payment acceptance costs without hindering
their own opportunities to drive residuals. Most ISOs
Cost control with cash discounting, decoupled debit and MLSs selling cash discounting say it has been a
lucrative undertaking. Matt Nern, vice president for sales
Merchant grousing over the cost of payment acceptance and marketing at SignaPay, an ISO that introduced cash
is nothing new. The complaints have led to litigation that
has taken many twists and turns, including a proposed discounting to merchants in 2017, related earlier this year
that about 60 percent of new merchants the Irving, Texas-
agreement earlier this year that would have Visa and
Mastercard pay out $6.2 billion to settle claims that based ISO signs each month now opt for cash discounting.
merchants were being overcharged on interchange. They
have also led to legislation, in the form of the Durbin
Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which paved the
way for federally mandated caps on debit interchange. And Contributed articles inside by:
complaints have led to innovation, as in the emergence of
cash discounting and decoupled debit programs. Steve Norell ............................................................................................32
Adam Atlas ..............................................................................................36
Decoupled debit programs, through which consumers
authorize nonbank card issuers to initiate debits against Brandes Elitch ........................................................................................38
their checking accounts via the automated clearing house TOC on page 3
system, have been around since the 1980s when Mobil

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