In The News
August 25, 2023
Swipe fees have been a hot-button issue on and off Capitol Hill, pitting Visa and Mastercard — which dominate the credit card processing market with a combined 80% market share — against Amazon and other retailers represented by the Merchant Payments Coalition, as Kiplinger previously reported.
August 23, 2023
"Spending on school supplies helps children get an education, but the biggest lesson parents will learn is that swipe fees are astronomically high and make everything more expensive," MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said. "Swipe fees add to the cost of school, whether it's a lunchbox in first grade or a laptop in college. Congress needs to bring competition to the broken swipe fee market."
August 18, 2023
Total credit and debit card swipe fees paid by merchants have more than doubled in the past decade and soared $22 billion last year to a record $160.7 billion, driving up prices for the average American family by over $1,000 a year, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition.
August 10, 2023
The pro-CCCA group Merchants Payments Coalition said, “Claims that the Credit Card Competition Act would let China UnionPay process U.S. credit card transactions are simply not true and are an example of the blatant misinformation being spread by the card industry and its surrogates.”
August 07, 2023
“Support for the Credit Card Competition Act is growing rapidly and we are confident it will pass once senators are given the chance to cast votes in favor of Main Street over Wall Street,” says MPC executive committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores general counsel Doug Kantor.
August 04, 2023
“We see it as a small victory as the chorus of voices calling for reform grows louder and Washington is hearing us,” said Doug Kantor, the general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores, a member of the Merchants Payment Coalition. MPC led the charge to get legislation passed in 2010 that allowed for similar competition in debit card transactions, known as the Durbin Amendment. If leadership follows through on its promise to bring the CCCA to a vote, the coalition is confident they’ll have enough support to apply the same standard to credit cards.
August 01, 2023
In a letter sent to Congress, the MPC said the legislation would help fix “a broken market that has allowed Wall Street megabanks and global card networks to block competition and unfairly profit at the expense of Main Street merchants and American families for far too long.”
July 30, 2023
Doug Kantor, a member of the Merchants Payments Coalition executive committee, remains “optimistic” that the Credit Card Competition Act could end up as an amendment attached to a larger piece of legislation at some point.
July 28, 2023
Capitol Account: What is the Merchants Payments Coalition? MPC Executive Committee member Doug Kantor: It is virtually everybody you can think of on Main Street who accepts a card for payments. Grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, hotels, florists, bookstores – it goes on and on. All of these folks get hit with these huge fees that are set in an anti-competitive manner.
July 27, 2023
The Merchants Payments Coalition welcomed the announcement by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan)., that the Senate plans to vote on the Credit Card Competition Act.