In The News
June 08, 2023
Close to 2,000 companies and a total of 270 trade associations from across the country signed letters this week calling on Congress to pass the Credit Card Competition Act, the Merchants Payments Coalition said.
June 07, 2023
MPC welcomed reintroduction of the Credit Card Competition Act, saying the measure would provide relief from billions of dollars in rapidly rising “swipe” fees that drive up prices for consumers.
May 25, 2023
Visa and Mastercard’s market dominance in the U.S. hasn’t been regulated to the same extent as in other nations, where laws or agreements to hold the line on the interchange fees, (MPC Executive Committee member Doug) Kantor said. “So everywhere has been able to reduce the fees more than the United States. We have the highest fees in the world,” Kantor told CSP Daily News Thursday.
May 22, 2023
The Merchants Payments Coalition continues to keep up the pressure behind its efforts to get the Credit Card Competition Act enacted, with its latest argument being that an agreement in Canada to lower credit card “swipe” fees shows that the fees could be reduced in the United States as well.
May 22, 2023
“If Visa and Mastercard can afford to reduce their swipe fees in Canada, there’s no reason they can’t do the same here,” said Doug Kantor, NACS general counsel and MPC executive committee member. “U.S. merchants and their customers pay twice as much as Canadians and seven times as much as Europeans. It doesn’t make sense that the country that invented the credit card and is home to the two largest card networks on the planet has the highest swipe fees in the industrialized world."
May 19, 2023
“If Visa and Mastercard can afford to reduce their swipe fees in Canada, there’s no reason they can’t do the same here,” MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said.
May 19, 2023
The MPC, a trade group for merchants that advocates for lower interchange rates, was quick to suggest something similar could be done in the United States with a call to action by Congress to step in.
May 19, 2023
MPC said an agreement in Canada to lower credit card “swipe” fees shows that the fees could be reduced in the United States as well.
May 10, 2023
MPC estimates that $6.14 per shopper will go to banks and card networks rather than the merchant when customers pay by credit card. That’s the equivalent of two roses out of a typical 24-stem Mother’s Day bouquet where each flower costs about $3. If all Mother’s Day purchases were made with credit cards, swipe fees would account for $799.7 million of the total.
May 08, 2023
But merchant advocates contend card acceptance remains a steadily rising cost burden in the aggregate for retail businesses. “Swipe fees have been exploding over the last several years. In fact, fees were $22 billion higher in 2022 than they were in 2021,” says Doug Kantor, general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores, long a critic of acceptance costs, in a statement sent to Digital Transactions News in reaction to the EPC’s data release. “To put that in perspective,” Kantor continues, “the total annual revenue of the National Football League is $19 billion. Just the increase in swipe fees was more than NFL revenue. The credit card industry can try to confuse things with misleading data, but their fee increases are huge and are hurting Main Street and American consumers.” Kantor is also a member of the executive committee of the Merchant Payments Coalition, an advocacy group.