Gifts and Decorative Accessories: Merchants Beg Card Industry to ‘Stop Gouging American Consumers’ as Swipe Fee Costs Rise
Soaring credit and debit card swipe fees cost the average U.S. household more than $1,100 last year, the Merchants Payments Coalition said today.
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Chain Drug Review: Swipe fee cost for average household tops $1,100
“American families should not get bilked for more than $1,100 each year on swipe fees,” MPC Executive Committee member and National Retail Federation Senior Director of Government Relations Dylan Jeon said. “It’s time for the card industry to stop gouging American consumers and small businesses and compete to offer market-based, competitive fees. Instead, the credit card industry uses cartel pricing to extract more and more dollars from Americans’ pockets each year. Congress needs to pass the Credit Card Competition Act to fix the broken credit card market.”
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According to the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC), Visa and Mastercard control 80% of the U.S. credit card market. As a result, “Each centrally set the swipe fees charged by banks that issue cards under their brands, and also block transactions from being processed over other networks that could do the job with lower fees and better security,” MPC officials suggest.
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Credit Unions Today: Merchants Group Launches TV Ad Saying Card Legislation Must be Passed to Stop China From Getting Data
The Merchants Payments Coalition has launched a new TV commercial that warns there is “no bar to China’s payment network processing Americans’ credit card data” unless Congress passes the bill. The 30-second ad and similar digital banner ads are running in Washington and targeted markets around the country.
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Digital Transactions: MPC’s New CCCA Ad
The Merchants Payments Coalition released a 30-second TV ad that says the Credit Card Competition Act, a measure that would stipulate merchants have credit card routing choices, would prohibit China’s credit card network UnionPay from processing U.S. credit card transactions. Currently, no regulation prohibits that the MPC says. The CCCA, if passed, would keep U.S. card data from being processed over non-U.S.-based networks.
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Gifts and Decorative Accessories: New Ad Campaign Takes Aim at ‘Glaring Gap’ in Credit Card Data Security
“A glaring gap in payments security currently gives U.S. banks the option to outsource credit card processing to China through the China UnionPay network if they choose to do so,” Christopher Jones, MPC executive committee member and National Grocers Association senior vice president of government relations and counsel, said. “The CCCA would close that loophole and protect American consumers.”
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Restaurant Business: Group aiming to lower swipe fees steals a page from the opposition's playbook
The Credit Card Competition Act would require that Mastercard or Visa charges be clearable through a third party, but it specifies that the alternative processor cannot be one that’s controlled by a foreign government. The stipulation appears to be aimed at China UnionPay, the network that is owned by the People’s Republic of China. “The prohibition would keep banks from exposing Americans’ sensitive financial data to foreign governments by routing U.S. credit card transactions over foreign networks,” the Merchants Payment Coalition said in announcing its new ad campaign.
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Digital Transactions: A Card Industry Group Cites Retailers’ Price Boosts And Surcharges in Its Latest Campaign to Stop the CCCA
Doug Kantor, an MPC executive committee member and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores: “The EPC can cast aspersions all it wants on merchants, but all it shows is desperation on their part.”
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Payments Dive: Visa, Mastercard CEOs Throw Hearing Off Track
Retail and merchant trade groups, including the Merchants Payments Coalition and National Association of Convenience Stores, have supported the legislation, contending that the fees keep rising despite efforts to keep them in check. That camp is confident that the hearing will be rescheduled, according to Doug Kantor, who is general counsel for the association and an MPC executive committee member. “We’re happy to show up anytime any place in any form to talk about this issue and it’s telling that the other side is not,” Kantor said in a Tuesday interview. “It tells me that they’re afraid to talk about it because they know the merits aren’t on their side.”
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Digital Transactions: Consumers Don’t See Any Benefit from the Credit Card Bill, a Bankers’ Group Contends
“A whole range of consumer groups have come out in favor of this bill. Do the bankers really have consumers’ interests at heart?” Doug Kantor, an MPC executive committee member and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores, says by email. Kantor charges that card issuers falsely claim the sky is falling when attempts are made to rein in their business practices. “And they make the same false claims whether they are talking about fees they charge consumers, their capital standards, or fees they charge merchants,” he says. “Asking people if they want the sky to fall or not isn’t a legitimate way to measure consumer sentiment and doesn’t do anything to undermine the fact that people overwhelmingly support the Credit Card Competition Act.”
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