USA Today: Credit Card Companies Adjust Merchants Fees, Consumer May Pay the Price
Leon Buck, vice president at the National Retail Federation, estimates the average family spends on fees about $700 a year -- an amount that will continue to climb with inflation since the fees are a percentage of their total spending bill. These fees “get factored into the cost of everything consumers buy,” said Doug Kantor, general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores. “This is bad for merchants, bad for consumers and bad for inflation.”
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Payments Dive: Lawmakers Seek to Cancel Card Fee Increases
The Merchants Payments Coalition praised the lawmakers' letter. "It’s very significant that lawmakers from both parties and both chambers of Congress have come together to stand up against the global card giants to protect small businesses and consumers," MPC Executive Committee Member Anna Ready Blom said in an April 15 MPC press release.
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Digital Transactions: Interchange Increases Will Exacerbate Inflation, a Growing List of Merchant Groups Contend
The NRF’s argument that the networks’ planned increases will make inflation worse echoes a similar case laid out last week by other merchant advocacy groups, including the Merchant Payments Coalition. The MPC on Friday said it welcomed a letter from both Democratic and Republican members of the House and Senate asking Visa and Mastercard to withdraw their planned interchange increases.
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Convenience Store News: Lawmakers Join the Call for Visa & Mastercard to Withdraw Swipe-Fee Increases Slated for This Month
Trade groups including the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) and the NRF applauded the letter. As Convenience Store News reported, the MPC in March unveiled an advertising campaign to educate Congress and other policymakers on increasing swipe fees credit card networks and big banks charge merchants to process transactions.
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Bipartisan Letter Stands Against Swipe Fee Increases
With credit card swipe fee increases set to begin this month, bipartisan members of the House and Senate sent a letter asking Visa and Mastercard to withdraw the increases, noting it would escalate the prices paid by consumers, who are already plagued by high inflation, according to The Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC).
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Legislators Urge Visa, Mastercard to Cancel Swipe-Fee Increases
“It’s very significant that lawmakers from both parties and both chambers of Congress have come together to stand up against the global card giants to protect small businesses and consumers,” said Anna Ready Blom, a member of the MPC executive committee and NACS director of government relations. “This shows that this is an issue that crosses political lines. This is about the card industry continuing to profit on the backs of Main Street merchants and hard-working American families at a time when they can least afford it.”
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The Hill: Merchants Want Competition Over Credit Card Fees, Not Price Controls
As Congress focuses on soaring inflation, banks and their surrogates have recently claimed lawmakers want to set a cap on the billions of dollars in credit card “swipe” fees Wall Street banks charge Main Street merchants each year. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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There Was No Stopping Credit Card Fee Hikes This Year
Merchants are incurring tens of millions of dollars in additional interchange, or "swipe," fee increases that the big credit card companies Mastercard and Visa are deploying.
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Visa Changes Rules for Gas Stations to Avoid $125 Pump Limit
Merchants have been decrying the firms’ plans to increase swipe fees. This week, the Merchants Payments Coalition trade group asked the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services to examine the fees. “It’s just especially troubling given the level of inflation right now,” Stephanie Martz, general counsel of the National Retail Federation and an executive committee member for the Merchant Payments Coalition, said in an interview. “We’re clawing our way to hang onto our slim margins as is. Given that these fees sometimes exceed what our margins are, we have to pass some of those rate raises onto consumers.”
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Merchants Call on Congress to Examine Swipe Fees
MPC sent a letter to the House Financial Services Committee, asking the committee to go beyond examining overdraft fees. “MPC applauds the committee’s action, but we believe a full examination of fees costing consumers billions should also include the billions of dollars big banks and card companies charge to process credit and debit card transactions,” wrote MPC in the letter. “The banking industry collects seven times as much in swipe fees as it does in overdraft fees and the impact on American families is far more widespread. Swipe fees are a hidden tax paid every day by nearly every American consumer, not just those who overdraw their accounts.”
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