Digital Transactions: With Time of the Essence, Arguments for and Against the CCCA Intensify
After Durbin’s remarks, the Merchant Payments Coalition, a merchant lobby that supports the CCCA, issued a statement agreeing with Durbin’s call that the bill be voted on by year’s end. “We agree with Senator Durbin completely,” MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said in a statement. “The sponsors of this legislation were promised a vote, and it’s time to make good on that promise. Small businesses and families can’t afford to suffer another day under these outrageous fees.”
READ MORE +
Payments Dive: Durbin Bashes United Airlines in CCCA Fight
“The sponsors of this legislation were promised a vote and it’s time to make good on that promise,” National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said in an emailed release. Kantor is also a member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, which has backed the bill, doing battle against banks’ lobbying organizations, including the Electronic Payments Coalition.
READ MORE +
Punchbowl News: The Political Viewer's Guide to Washington's Credit Card Wars
Here are the key groups to watch as the credit card war plays out. The merchants: Doug Kantor, general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores; Stephanie Martz, chief administrative officer and general counsel at the National Retail Federation and Jennifer Hatcher, chief public policy officer and senior vice president of government and public affairs at the Food Marketing Institute. Kantor is one of Washington’s longest-serving fighters in the credit card wars, pushing for card reforms and lobbying congressional staff since before Dodd-Frank. Martz leads swipe fee strategy for the country’s single largest merchant lobby organization, while Hatcher represents food and grocery retailers, specifically.
READ MORE +
WBZ Radio: Nightside With Dan Rea
MPC Executive Committee member and NRF Senior Director Dylan Jeon tells Boston radio station, “The vast majority of our members prefer cash” because of high swipe fees that have “reached the point where they simply cannot absorb that.”
READ MORE +
Payments Dive: Credit Card Bill May Slide Into 2024
Doug Kantor, (MPC Executive Committee member and) general counsel for the trade group NACS, acknowledged the campaign to pass the CCCA is likely to be pushed into 2024 at this point. His association, which represents convenience stores and fueling stations impacted by card “swipe” fees, has been seeking to build support for the bill on Capitol Hill. There’s a good chance it will have to be next year now, given the fall this year was different from what anyone expected, Kantor said in an interview Wednesday. ... “Merchants remain very motivated to get the Credit Card Competition Act passed and will keep at it until they do,” Kantor said.
READ MORE +
Forbes: Loyalty Points Don't Need Protection, But Here's What Does, Say Merchants
There's been a lot of discussion about the effect of the Credit Card Competition Act on loyalty programs. Will this law really kill credit card rewards? "Absolutely not. This is a scare tactic banks and card companies have used every time swipe fees have been regulated around the world and rewards haven’t gone away anywhere. It has even been fact-checked by Verify.com as completely false. If you watch TV commercials, you know rewards are banks’ top marketing tool to get you to take a Visa or MasterCard from one bank versus another. Get the Capital One card. Get the Chase Sapphire card. There’s no way they’re going to give that up." -- MPC Executive Committee member and NACS General Counsel Doug Kantor
READ MORE +
Spectrum News: As Americans Begin Their Holiday Shopping, Congress Considers Legislation on Swipe Fees
“We're just arguing for a fair and level playing field so that merchants can really have a choice, which they don't right now, between routing their transactions on two different networks so that if they want to, they can choose the network that, in theory would be less expensive in that scenario,” says Stephanie Martz, Chief Administrative Officer of the National Retail Federation (and MPC Executive Committee member. Martz says the competition between payment networks for business would drive down swipe fees, benefiting consumers. She explained that during the holiday season alone, Americans will pay $21 billion in swipe fees, which amounts to just under $20 per person. “And it's costing households $1,000 a year right now in additional costs, because of the cost of those swipe fees that retailers have to pass along to consumers,” says Martz.
READ MORE +
NACS Daily: Swipe Fees Drive Up Thanksgiving Costs
Rising credit card “swipe” fees will contribute significantly to the cost of celebrating Thanksgiving this year regardless of whether families stay home, eat out or travel, said the Merchants Payments Coalition.
READ MORE +
Digital Transactions: A New York Times Op-Ed Video Favoring the CCCA Sparks a New Tussle Over the Bill
The Merchants Payment Coalition, which supports passage of the CCCA, says the information presented in the New York Times video is “straightforward, factual, and correct,” according to Doug Kantor, MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores general counsel. “Any time people know more of the facts is good for the CCCA,” Kanor says. “The EPC doesn’t like people knowing the facts about problems with the credit card system today.” Kantor added the EPC’s claim that passage of the CCCA would harm card-network data security is not a new argument. “Data from the Federal Reserve shows that network competition lowers fraud rates and that the rate of fraud on the Visa and Mastercard networks is [eight] times higher than that of competing networks,” he says. “Networks will have better fraud protection if allowed to compete.” Kantor points out that after passage of the Durbin Amendment, which capped debit card fees, some debit networks began adopting data encryption as a point of differentiation, which forced other networks to follow suit. “If the CCCA is passed, it will be a race to the top [for networks] in terms of service and security,” Kantor adds.
READ MORE +
New York Times: Your Rewards Card is Actually Bad for You, And For Everyone Else
Opinion video explains why credit card swipe fees mean “all of us are paying more” to “subsidize rewards that go primarily to the wealthy” and “screw over poor people.” The “best deal” to address the issue is the Credit Card Competition Act.
READ MORE +