MPC Hill Blast: $9.2 Billion
A new Harvard Business School paper says credit card swipe fees and rewards transfer $9.2 billion a year from low- and middle-income households to wealthier households.
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MPC Hill Blast: Why Do Convenience Stores Care About High Credit Card Swipe Fees?
Credit card swipe fees are out of control. Total payment card swipe fees were $198 billion last year. The fees have increased by 80% since 2020. For all Main Street retailers, the fees are their second-highest operating cost on average. Is there a reason that convenience stores in particular care? Yes — annual data that has just been compiled for the year 2025 demonstrates this vividly.
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MPC Hill Blast: Who Swiped the Peeps?
Everyone loves Peeps at Easter. You can even make dioramas out of them. But, once again this year, credit card swipe fees took a lot of the fun out of Peeps. The average family was hammered with $4.62 in swipe fees on Easter spending alone. That is three packs of eight Peeps — swiped right out from under our noses.
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MPC Hill Blast: Fuel Price/Swipe Fee Tracker
Credit card swipe fees currently amount to 9.8 cents on the average gallon of gas and 13.3 cents on the average gallon of diesel, costing American consumers $58.2 million per day.
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MPC Hill Blast: Fuel Price/Swipe Fee Tracker
Credit card swipe fees currently amount to 9.5 cents on the average gallon of gas and 12.8 cents on the average gallon of diesel, costing American consumers $56.3 million per day.
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MPC Hill Blast: 4½ Months’ Worth of Groceries
New data was just reported by The Nilson Report payments industry analyst showing that U.S. businesses paid $198 billion in swipe fees last year, up from $187 billion in 2024. $119 billion of those fees were Visa/Mastercard credit card fees. These fees are up 80% since the pandemic.
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MPC Hill Blast: Fuel Price/Swipe Fee Tracker
Credit card swipe fees currently amount to 9.3 cents on the average gallon of gas and 12.4 cents on the average gallon of diesel, costing American consumers $54.9 million per day.
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MPC Hill Blast: Fuel Price/Swipe Fee Tracker
Credit card swipe fees currently amount to 9.2 cents on the average gallon of gas and 12 cents on the average gallon of diesel, costing American consumers $53.9 million per day.
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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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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.
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