Progressive Grocer: Retailers Enthusiastic About Reintroduced Credit Card Competition Act
“Credit card swipe fees burden working Americans and Main Street by fanning the flames of inflation,” asserted MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor. “The average family pays $1,200 more each year in higher prices because of the price-fixing of these fees. It’s time to pass the Credit Card Competition Act to bring fairness and competition to the broken credit card system.”
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Digital Transactions: The CCCA Gets New Life Thanks to a Presidential Endorsement
“The President recognizes the drain on affordability swipe fees create,” says Doug Kantor, an executive committee member at the Merchants Payment Council and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. “The [Trump Administration] has been aware of this bill for a long time and follows these issues closely.” Trump’s endorsement of the CCCA “improves its chances of passage dramatically,” Kantor adds.
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NACS Daily: Congress Reintroduces Credit Card Competition Act
“From President Trump endorsing the bill to Senator Durbin making a push for passage on the Senate floor, momentum to finally bring competition to credit card swipe fees is at the highest level we’ve ever seen and is building quickly,” NACS General Counsel and Merchants Payments Coalition Executive Committee member Doug Kantor said. “When Donald Trump, Roger Marshall, Dick Durbin, Lance Gooden and Zoe Lofgren all agree on something, that’s a clear sign that this is a non-partisan issue that impacts American families across the political spectrum. These fees have driven up costs for small businesses and prices for consumers for far too long. The time to pass the Credit Card Competition Act has come.”
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Mass Market Retailers: FMI Celebrates Congressional Sponsors for Reintroducing Credit Card Competition Act
Swipe fees average nearly $1,200 per American household, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition.
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Payments Dive: Credit Card Competition bill wins Trump support
The credit card competition bill would pass Congress if it were able to reach a vote, predicted Doug Kantor, an executive with the Merchant Payments Coalition and general counsel of the National Association of Convenience Stores. Both organizations have battled card networks over swipe fees for years. The average U.S. family pays $1,200 each year in higher prices due to “the broken credit card system,” the MPC said Tuesday in a press release praising the bills’ reintroduction.
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Detroit Free Press: DTE Energy to charge a credit card fee, while seeking to raise rates
Last month, the Merchant’s Payments Coalition estimated that the amount banks charged merchants to process credit cards ― sometimes referred to as swipe fees ― during the holidays alone would be nearly $20 billion nationwide. The coalition ― which is made up of retailers, supermarkets, restaurants, drugstores, convenience stores, gas stations, online merchants, and other businesses ― said it aims to reform the U.S. payments system "to make it more transparent and competitive." The $20 billion figure, the group added, was based on an average 2.35% rate. Swipe fees are the "highest operating cost after labor throughout the year" for most merchants, according to the coalition. And since the pandemic, starting in 2019, they’ve risen 70%, reaching a record $187.2 billion last year.
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Gifts and Decorative Accessories: Visa, Mastercard Shift More Debit Card Fraud onto Merchants, Fed Report Says
“The latest report shows the consequences of the Federal Reserve failing to keep up with its job as a regulator,” said Doug Kantor, executive committee member of the Merchant Payments Coalition and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. “Rather than updating its regulations, the Fed has allowed Visa and Mastercard to punish merchants with increasing fraud losses, while banks extract huge profits far out of proportion to their costs. It has been nearly 15 years since the Fed wrote its regulations, and this report underscores the long-overdue need for an update to ensure that fees are reasonable and that there are incentives to reduce fraud.”
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PPC Land: Banks profit six times their costs as merchants absorb 50% of debit fraud
Doug Kantor, Executive Committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition and General Counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores, stated in a December 22 release that the data demonstrates "the consequences of the Federal Reserve failing to keep up with its job as a regulator." Kantor emphasized that rather than updating regulations, the Fed has allowed Visa and Mastercard to punish merchants with increasing fraud losses while banks extract profits far exceeding their costs.
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Payments Dive: Fed report stirs debit fee debate
The Merchants Payments Coalition pointed to the report as evidence of the need for the Federal Reserve to follow through on a plan to lower the cap on debit card fees, saying the report shows fees charged by banks and networks are not “reasonable and proportional” to their costs, as required by federal law.
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Digital Transactions: The Fed’s Biennial Debit Report Sparks Merchants’ Ire
Merchants’ shouldering of an increasing portion of debit fraud losses is a year’s-long trend that needs to be reversed, says Doug Kantor, a Merchants Payment Coalition executive committee member and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. “Visa and Mastercard have been pushing more of the fraud burden on merchants since (Regulation II) went into effect and that’s a problem,” Kantor says. “The Fed has not kept up with the facts on the ground [when it comes to regulating debit cards].”
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