Wall Street Journal: Visa, Mastercard Prepare to Raise Credit Card Fees
Doug Kantor, general counsel of the National Association of Convenience Stores (and MPC Executive Committee member), said that many businesses are already being hurt by inflation and high interest rates, or still recovering from the pandemic. “It’s just a bad combination and bad timing for any of these fee increases to happen,” Kantor said.
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Verify: No, Congress is Not Considering a Law That Would Ban Credit Card Rewards
The Merchants Payments Coalition argues that banks would still have plenty of profits left over from fees to pay for rewards programs, which it calls marketing tools to convince consumers to choose a credit card from one bank rather than another.
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Kiplinger: New Jersey Limits Credit Card Swipe Fees on Shoppers
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.
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Fox Business: Many Parents Turn to Credit Cards to Pay for Back-to-School Shopping
"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."
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Leader & Times: Credit Card 'Swipe' Fees Add to the Cost of a Good Night's Sleep
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.
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Florida Politics: JMI Urges Florida Delegation to Vote Against Credit Card Crackdown
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.”
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Hardware Retailing: Senate to Vote on Credit Card Swipe Fees Bill
“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.
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American Prospect: Wall Street Stokes Culture War to Fight Swipe Fee Reform
“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.
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Kiplinger: Washington Takes Aim at Credit Card Processing Fees
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.”
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CNBC: The Fight Over a Bill Targeting Card Fees Pits Payment Companies Against Retailers
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.
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