Hardware Retailing: Record Credit Card Swipe Fees Fuel Calls for Credit Card Competition Act Reform
Credit and debit card “swipe” fees have reached $198.25 billion, a new record, amid calls by President Trump and others to decrease the fees, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC). “Credit card swipe fees make just about everything Americans buy more expensive,” says MPC executive committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores general counsel Doug Kantor. “Swipe fees set a new record by taking more of our money every year and the impact on American families and small businesses is devastating. President Trump, lawmakers across the political spectrum, business groups, labor unions, consumer groups, Native American tribes and more are calling for bipartisan swipe fee reform. It’s time for Congress to make America affordable again by ending the swipe fee ripoff.”
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Payments Dive: State interchange fee laws progress
Meanwhile, the Merchant Payments Coalition issued a press release Thursday noting that combined debit and credit card fees last year climbed nearly 6% to a record annual $198.25 billion, citing a report from the research firm Nilson Report. “Credit card swipe fees make just about everything Americans buy more expensive,” National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said in the MPC release. It’s time to end the “swipe fee ripoff,” said Kantor, who is also an MPC Executive Committee member.
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Home Building Supply Dealer: Swipe fees hit record high in 2025
Credit and debit card swipe fees that big banks and global card networks charge merchants to process transactions reached a new record of $198.25 billion in 2025, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition. “Credit card swipe fees make just about everything Americans buy more expensive,” MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said. “Swipe fees set a new record by taking more of our money every year and the impact on American families and small businesses is devastating. It’s time for Congress to make America affordable again by ending the swipe fee ripoff.”
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Digital Transactions: The Card Industry’s Endless War
Merchants argue that prohibition creates cartel pricing, rather than competitive pricing, says Doug Kantor, a Merchants Payments Coalition executive committee member and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. Neither the MPC nor NACS is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “The defendants did not address the court’s concerns in their latest settlement offer,” Kantor says. “They tinkered at the edges a bit, but no major changes were made that addressed the central issue [of the lawsuit].”
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MPC Hill Blast: Credit Card Companies Are Inflating Fuel Prices (And the Price of Nearly Everything Else)
Americans buy about 377 million gallons of gasoline per day. The national average price of gas is $3.57 per gallon. If those gallons were paid for with credit cards, the swipe fees on gas sales alone would be more than $31 million PER DAY.
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Law360: Ill. Swipe Fee Ruling Sets Stage For A High-Stakes Appeal
The Merchants Payments Coalition called the ruling "a major victory for merchants, their customers and their employees," arguing that merchants are unfairly punished with fees for performing a pass-through service (i.e., collecting taxes remitted to the government and tips given to workers), while consumers bear the ultimate cost through higher prices.[
READ MORE +MPC Hill Blast: ‘Extensive’ and ‘Punitive’ Credit Card Swipe Fee Increases
The calendar has barely turned to 2026, and credit card swipe fees are increasing again. The credit card giants keep pretending otherwise, but year after year they dramatically increase swipe fees.
READ MORE +MPC Hill Blast: The Hidden Force Pushing Up Gas Prices
Customers don’t see it, but there is a hidden factor pushing up the price of gasoline — and virtually everything else that Americans buy. That hidden force is credit card swipe fees.
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Payments Dive: CCCA seeks new path to passage
The timing is unclear, but sponsors of the housing bill, Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are aware of the Marshall-Durbin desire to offer an amendment, said (MPC Executive Committee member) Doug Kantor, who has advocated for the CCCA as general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. Warren has previously supported capping credit card fees. “I think [Scott and Warren] are fully aware that the sponsors of the CCCA will take any opportunity that is presented to them,” Kantor said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re sort of waiting to hear.”
READ MORE +MPC Hill Blast: 'Persistent Cost Pressures'
The James Beard Foundation just issued its annual report on “The State of Independent Restaurants” and the picture is sobering.
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