NACS Daily: Senate Judiciary Committee to Hold Hearing on Swipe Fees
“We look forward to this hearing because we want as many opportunities as possible to talk about the growing financial hardship excessive swipe fees have caused for American families, small businesses and the economy,” MPC executive committee member and NACS General Counsel Doug Kantor said. “The card industry, on the other hand, wants to hide the facts and pretend the problem doesn’t exist."
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American Banker: Swipe fees get renewed Washington focus in aftermath of election
While Durbin and Republican lead cosponsor Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., made a show of inviting the executives of the two card networks, neither are listed as attending the hearing. "The card industry, on the other hand, wants to hide the facts and pretend the problem doesn't exist," said the Merchant Payments Coalition executive committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores general counsel Doug Kantor in a statement. "That's why Visa and Mastercard's CEOs have refused to show up for a hearing and have fought to avoid any hearings or votes on legislation to bring desperately needed competition to the broken payments market."
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Chain Drug Review: Senate Judiciary Committee to address rising credit card “swipe” fees
“We look forward to this hearing because we want as many opportunities as possible to talk about the growing financial hardship excessive swipe fees have caused for American families, small businesses, and the economy,” said Doug Kantor, a member of MPC’s Executive Committee and General Counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores.
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Merchants Welcome Hearing on Out-of-Control Credit Card ‘Swipe’ Fees
MPC welcomed the announcement that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on rising credit card “swipe” fees that cost American small businesses and families billions of dollars each year.
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Digital Transactions: Who Will Benefit Most Becomes the Latest Flash Point in the Battle Over the Illinois Interchange Law
“Merchants that receive a lot of tips and pay the most in excise taxes are small merchants,” says Doug Kantor, (MPC Executive Committee member and) general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores, which has petitioned the court to join the lawsuit as a defendant. Excluding how much merchants will save by not paying interchange on tips and excise taxes raises serious questions about the report’s accuracy, Kantor argues. “The [report’s] numbers aren’t accurate, because they’ve been cherry-picked to show only the largest merchants would see the biggest savings,” Kantor says. “It’s as though they want to rescore the World Series to show only runs scored by base hits as opposed to all runs scored. [The EPC] is not looking at the law as a whole. Instead, it’s using the data to support a false narrative it has created so there is a bogeyman.”
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Digital Transactions: How Illinois’s Interchange Case Has Transfixed the Industry
The Illinois Retail Merchants Association, the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Retail Federation, and FMI, the food-industry association, are the merchant groups that this fall filed a request to intervene in the case as defendants. The groups requested to join the suit because they feel they could provide the court with more facts and insights about how the payments system works. The move is part of an effort to refute plaintiffs’ claims that the law will negatively disrupt the payments system, according to Doug Kantor, (MPC Executive Committee member and) general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores.
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Center Square: Controversial swipe fee law in Illinois goes to court
"The U.S. credit card industry will still collect the highest fees in the world, even with the Illinois law in place,” said National Association of Convention Stores General Counsel (and MPC Executive Committee member) Doug Kantor. “There is no justification for slowing the Illinois law from taking effect.”
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MPC Hill Blast: Justice Departments Under Democratic and Republican Administrations Have Condemned Visa’s Monopolization of the Market
The Justice Department recently filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Visa. The complaint alleges that Visa has been monopolizing the debit card market, paying rivals not to innovate or compete with them, and extracting fees that inflate prices of “nearly everything.”
READ MORE +MPC Hill Blast: 'Visa Wanted a Vast Empire. First, it had to beat back its foes.' – WSJ
On October 19th, the Wall Street Journal published an expose on how Visa used its market power to block competition in the credit card market. The findings are eye-opening and, along with the recent Department of Justice lawsuit against Visa, add to the growing evidence of the lack of a free market in the space.
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Jacksonville (ill.) Journal-Courier: The backward reasoning behind debit card fees
Op-ed by MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor says the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit over debit card practices shows “Visa has bent the antitrust laws beyond recognition to monopolize the debit card network market.”
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