The Beneficial Ownership Rule Is Ending
The Beneficial Ownership Rule may be ending, but effective due diligence is not. For payments companies, the real opportunity is to build smarter, risk-based KYB processes that reduce unnecessary friction while still identifying who owns, controls, and ultimately stands behind a business. Read RPY Innovations’ latest perspective.
What Will Your Sponsor Bank Ask Next?
Sponsor-bank oversight has changed in the past two to three years. What was once a periodic compliance exercise is now a more detailed operational review of how sponsored payment programs function every day.
Is Your AML Program Ready for Independent Review?
An independent anti-money laundering audit never seems to arrive at a convenient time. The request is likely to come with only a few weeks’ notice and a long list of documents, reports, testing samples, and interviews. It may be requested by a sponsor bank, triggered by a new product launch, or required as part of a state examination or funding event.
At that point, the question is no longer whether the company has an AML policy. The question is whether the AML program is fully in place and operating effectively.
Squarespace’s New Pricing, The Impacts of Visa’s CEDP Program
Historically, commercial and corporate credit cards have carried higher base interchange rates than personal cards because they offer lucrative rewards to the businesses that use them. To offset these high costs, payment processors and platforms relied on Level 2 and Level 3 data programs. By passing extra transaction details to the card networks, platforms could secure a discount, allowing them to offer small businesses a relatively flat processing fee that included both consumer and business cards.
That dynamic changed in early 2026 under Visa’s new Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP).
Visa’s Digital Commerce Authentication Program (DCAP) to Adopt or Not
DCAP took effect in April 2026 and represents a major shift in how the payment industry balances fraud prevention with a frictionless checkout experience.
From Level 2/3 to CEDP: Navigating Visa’s New Era of Enhanced Commercial Data
At this week’s ETA Payment Facilitation Committee meeting, we’ll take a deep dive into Visa’s new Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP), a fundamental shift now in active enforcement. CEDP retires the Level 2, Level 3, and Large Ticket programs and replaces them with a unified, data-driven framework designed to reward accuracy, consistency, and completeness of enhanced data on commercial and small-business card transactions.
It’s Just Not the Same Game
When my career first began in Acquiring, we simply sold electronic payments to merchants who were otherwise just focused on cash and checks. It was a reasonably easy business. But, as an industry, we’ve never really stood still for long.
Acquiring Industry Enters a New Phase of Structural Change
Acquirers will need to pivot from purely “processing” to “platform + value-added services (fraud, data, embedded payments)” if they want to maintain margins. We have a lot to consider in this past moving industry and economy.
Fintech Charters on the Rise
2025 may well become the year of the charter in fintech. According to various reports, more than twenty applications from fintechs and non-bank players have been filed this year alone for new bank charters, conversions or acquisitions. This is an all time high.
Can Acquirers Help Merchants Assess Tariff Costs?
The acquiring industry has long focused on payments, yet its data holds untapped potential for trade intelligence. By integrating SKU-level information, country-of-origin data, and tariff schedules, acquirers could offer merchants tools to model “landed cost” scenarios. This would show how tariffs affect profit margins or pricing strategies. Think of it as a new kind of risk dashboard, where payment analytics meet supply-chain foresight.