Payments

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, announced he will not seek reelection in 2026, concluding more than four decades in Congress. The Illinois lawmaker leaves behind a notable imprint on U.S. financial policy, particularly regarding swipe fees.

The Treasury will phase out the use of paper checks for most government payments in about six months. The Trump administration says the move will improve efficiency and reduce the cost of payment processing.

Wall Street veteran Frank Bisignano pledged at a Senate Finance Committee hearing that he doesn't plan to privatize Social Security.

In comments to reporters, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., underscored what she said was a conflict of interest between Elon Musk's DOGE's actions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and his business interests with X Money.

President-elect Donald Trump is nominating Frank Bisignano, the chief executive officer of fintech and payments company Fiserv Inc., to be the commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has significantly raised the transaction threshold for its larger participant rule — which defines which firms will be affected — from 5 million annual payments to 50 million.

The Federal Reserve chair said Fed researchers continue to explore central bank digital currencies to stay current on international payments developments, but emphatically denied that the central bank is considering creating one of its own.

A proposal from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to extend the same protections as credit cards to the fast-growing BNPL industry aims to protect consumers, but it could also stunt the nascent industry's growth, experts say.

Max Levchin, CEO of the buy now/pay later lender, said recent tests show young adults prefer interacting with intelligent chatbots over phone-based agents, but the company doesn't foresee major cost savings from generative AI for a few more years.

Payments fraud is the most expensive kind, at $450B; anti-financial-crime execs are the most worried about real-time payments, a survey from Nasdaq and Oliver Wyman found.