San Francisco Examiner: Credit Card 'Swipe Fees' Are Out of Control. The Reason is Lack of Competition
Swipe fees are far too much for merchants to absorb and must be included in retail pricing, costing the average California family an estimated $900 a year, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition.
READ MORE +
Payments Dive: What Payments Can Expect From Washington This Year
“There’s just much more activity and concern about these payments issues than has been true maybe at any other time,” said Doug Kantor, general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. ... “It’s a new Congress where there’s a lot of potential avenues, legislatively,” said Kantor, who is also an executive committee member for the trade group Merchants Payments Coalition. Last year, “the menu of what was going to occur was much more limited.”
READ MORE +
Mountain Money: Credit Card Competition Act
The Credit Card Competition Act is set to end Visa and Mastercard’s longstanding monopoly over how transactions on credit cards issued under their brands are routed for processing. Credit Card swipe fees in the US are the highest in the industrialized world. The Credit Card Competition Act was introduced to Congress in July, and its bipartisan sponsors (Senators Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Representatives Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Lance Gooden, R-Texas) are hoping for action in 2023. Over 1,802 merchants and 236 merchant trade associations have shown their support for the legislation through letters submitted to lawmakers by the Merchant Payment Coalition. Joining us this morning to help us understand this is MPC Executive Committee member and National Association for Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor
READ MORE +
Lowell Sun: It's Time for Competition Over Credit Card 'Swipe' Fees
These fees average over 2% of each purchase and are most merchants’ highest operating cost after labor, far too much to absorb. They have more than doubled over the past decade and soared 25% in 2021 alone to a record $138 billion. That works out to $900 a year for the average family, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition.
Pizza Marketplace: How Digital Payment Processing Technology Becomes a Resiliency Enabler for Pizzerias
Credit and debit card processing fees, which are paid as a percentage of every transaction, have more than doubled over the last decade. According to the Merchants Payments Coalition, these fees cost merchants, including restaurants, $137.8 billion in 2021, increasing from $110.3 billion in 2020.
READ MORE +
Payments Dive: Durbin to Reintroduce Credit Card Competition Bill
Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation and Merchants Payments Coalition that supported the legislation, arguing it would reduce rising card interchange fees, remain committed to passing the bill, MPC Executive Committee member Doug Kantor said in a statement. “Momentum is building and we fully expect Congress to take action to address out-of-control credit card swipe fees this year,” said Kantor, who is also general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores. “Competition is key to bringing these fees under control and this legislation will make the card industry compete the same as other businesses do every day.”
READ MORE +
Green Sheet: FTC Slams Mastercard Over Debit Routing
Doug Kantor, general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores, in an interview published in December by Forbes magazine, suggested Mastercard came first because of the degree to which it flouted the Durbin Amendment requirement. "Mastercard has been particularly egregious in preventing merchants from using other networks," he said.In a statement issued by the Merchants Payments Coalition, Kantor praised the FTC's action. "More than a decade after debit reform became law, it is well past time for Mastercard and also Visa and major banks to drop all of their efforts to undermine debit card competition. We look forward to additional enforcement actions to ensure that happens," he said. Kantor is a member of the MPC's executive committee.
READ MORE +
CSP Daily News: Mastercard Must Cease Debit Card Routing Block
“Main Street businesses thank the Federal Trade Commission for its work to ensure that Mastercard stops blocking competition for ecommerce debit-card payments,” said Doug Kantor, MPC Executive Committee member and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). “More than a decade after debit reform became law, it is well past time for Mastercard and also Visa and major banks to drop all of their efforts to undermine debit-card competition. We look forward to additional enforcement actions to ensure that happens.”
READ MORE +
NACS Daily: FTC Orders Mastercard to Cease Anticompetitive Debit Card Practices
The Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) welcomed an order by the Federal Trade Commission in late December that Mastercard cease practices the agency says have illegally blocked merchants’ ability to route e-commerce debit card transactions over competing networks.
READ MORE +
Digital Transactions: The CCCA's Long Shadow
This ongoing merchant-bank payment conflict isn’t exactly top-of-mind for most consumers. But it broke into the public consciousness in November when NACS, with backing from the Merchants Payments Coalition lobbying group, ran a TV commercial that used Visa Inc.’s sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup to decry credit card acceptance fees and advocate for the CCCA. The 30-second ad used the image of a giant credit card blocking a soccer goal and claimed “unfair hidden fees” add up to almost $1,000 a year in higher prices for each American family. In December, the MPC and NACS followed up with a holiday-themed 30-second commercial in which the announcer proclaims, “Unfortunately, credit card companies are still stuffing our stockings” with unfair swipe fees. As a Christmas tree crashes to the floor under the weight of swipe fees on cards in a stocking, the narrator urges viewers to tell Congress to pass the CCCA. The commercial is part of a seven-figure ad campaign.
READ MORE +