Credit card giant Visa (NYSE: V) announced Wednesday that its Board of Directors has appointed the firm’s new Chief Executive Officer, turning to a seasoned banking executive to do so. The change comes at an important time for Visa, struggling to maintain its competitive advantage during a changing landscape. Charles W. Scharf, who is currently the Managing Director of One Equity Partners, which manages $10 billion of investments for JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), will assume the role of CEO... 

MasterCard, Visa and several major banks agreed to pay $6 billion to settle a lawsuit involving 7 million merchants that accept both MasterCard and Visa. The deal consists of a little more than $6 billion in cash for damages. Visa will pay $4.4 billion and MasterCard will pay $790 million. The credit card companies agreed to decrease their swipe fees for eight months. The fee is paid by businesses for card transactions they process. The temporary fee discount is estimated to cost around $1.2 billion. Lawyers... 

Visa and MasterCard announced an investigation into whether a data security breach at one of the main companies that processes transactions for them exposed private customer information.  The breach occurred at Global Payments, a company based in Atlanta that helps Visa and MasterCard process transactions for merchants.  The data breach could potentially affect one million to three million credit card holders. Global Payments has provided little information on where the breaches took place, how...