Digital Transactions: Merchants and Issuers Are Pouncing on Inflation -- But With Dueling Results
The Merchants Payments Coalition on Wednesday issued a release contending that interchange fees “drive up prices [merchants] charge consumers,” exacerbating the impact of inflation. Interchange, the Washington, D.C.-based group argues, represents merchants’ second-highest operating expense, after labor. All told, swipe fees on purchases made with credit and debit cards last year totaled $137.8 billion in the United States, up 25% in one year, according to the MPC.
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Merchants Say Credit Card 'Swipe' Fees Will Add to Inflation for Those Celebrating Fourth of July
“Swipe” fees banks charge merchants to process credit card transactions will add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of everything from food to fireworks as Americans struggling amid rampant inflation celebrate Independence Day this year, the Merchants Payments Coalition said.
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American Banker: Are Cash Discounts the Answer to Merchants' Intensified Swipe-Fee Pain?
Merchants began looking for new ways to cope with higher swipe-fee costs after Visa and Mastercard in April hiked credit card interchange rates. At a Senate U.S. Judiciary Committee hearing last month, retail lobbying groups testified that inflation’s higher prices mean merchants pay proportionately more in swipe fees. ... The Merchants Payments Coalition says U.S. merchants collectively pay more than $100 billion annually in card swipe fees based on some of the highest credit card interchange rates in the world.
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CNN: Retailers Call Out Visa and Mastercard for Fee Hikes That Could Make Inflation Worse
The recent increases are on top of fees that merchants have already been paying to the credit card companies, said Doug Kantor, general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores and an executive committee member of the Merchants Payment Coalition. Credit, debit and prepaid cards were used to make $9.4 trillion in purchases last year, according to the Nilson Report, a publication covering the payment industry. Out of those purchases, merchants paid about $138 billion in processing fees, Nilson reported. "The increases a couple of weeks ago are really just the tail on the dog," said Kantor, who estimates the hikes will result in an added $1.2 billion in fees this year.
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NRF: Banks Win, Consumers Lose -- Important Facts About Excessive Credit Card Swipe Fees
MPC Executive Committee member Doug Kantor was among the witnesses as the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on how price-fixed credit card swipe fees are driving up inflation.
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NACS Daily: Merchants Say It's Time for Fed to Resolve Debit Routing and Fees
“It’s been a full year since the Fed said it wanted to resolve this issue once and for all, and the Senate has now given Chairman Powell a vote of confidence to act on what’s best for the American economy and consumers,” said Leon Buck, a member of the MPC Executive Committee and vice president for government relations, banking and financial services at the National Retail Federation.
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Restaurant Business: Restaurants Ask Congress for Relief on Swipe Fees
The Merchants Payments Coalition, has been pressuring Congress for decades to revise the way the credit card industry works. It notes that MasterCard and Visa have an advantage in setting swipe fees as high as they can. The higher the fees, the more that a partnered bank will collect from processing card charges, and hence the more likely they’ll be to issue a card by the card company with the highest swipe charges. “Banks should set fees independently and should compete to offer the lowest fees,” the group maintains.
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With Powell Confirmed, Merchants Say It's Time for Fed to Complete Work on Debit Routing and Fees
As the Senate confirmed Chairman Jerome Powell for another term today, the Merchants Payments Coalition called on the Federal Reserve to finalize a year-old proposal clarifying that merchants can choose which payment networks process debit card transactions regardless of whether purchases are made in stores or online.
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Cox Television: Top Executives from Mastercard and Visa Face Congress Over High Swipe Fees
MPC Executive Committee member Doug Kantor called for swipe fee competition at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: "People have more money in their pockets when there's competition. They can spend more and that consumer spending helps drive the economy."
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Payments Dive: Durbin Proposes Card Fee Reforms, Not Legislation
The National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition seemed to be wanting more definitive action when they chimed in Wednesday ahead of the hearing. “We hope this hearing will be a landmark step toward bringing about the transparency and competition that is missing from our nation’s broken payments system,” MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor said in the release.
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