Financial Brand: Will the Mastercard/Visa Settlement Upend Your Credit Card Strategy?
The National Association of Convenience Stores called it more "smoke and mirrors." The National Retail Federation called the offer "window dressing" and said that "this is the third attempt to settle this case and the card industry either just doesn’t get it or just doesn’t care." NRF called the 10 basis point reduction "inadequate" compared to the average swipe fee of 2.35% in 2024. The Merchant Payments Coalition, in opposing the settlement, pointed out that swipe fees "are too high to absorb, leading to higher prices."
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State Affairs: Massachusetts Bills Seek to Remove Taxes and Tips From Interchange Fees
“We desperately need reform,” Doug Kantor, general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores and a member of the Merchants Payments Coalition Executive Committee, told State Affairs. “Other businesses in any sector across the economy don’t get away with centrally fixing fees or prices and having competitors agree to charge the same thing. We usually call that price fixing and say ‘you can’t do that.’ We’ve got to have something that injects competition or limits the fees in some way.”
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Payment Expert: US Senator attacks Visa and Mastercard swipe fee deal as ‘falling short’
The National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition have already criticised the compromise as offering modest, time-limited relief while leaving Visa and Mastercard’s core pricing power largely intact.
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WebProNews: Swipe Fee Showdown: Visa and Mastercard’s $38B Deal Reshapes Retail Payments
Not all merchants are celebrating. Some trade groups, including the Merchants Payments Coalition, have voiced opposition, arguing the reductions are too modest and temporary.
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NewsNation: Here’s how the Visa, Mastercard swipe-fee settlement could affect you
“[The proposal] ignores the fact that 85% of cards issued today are rewards cards and that merchants have no choice but to accept them,” said Jennifer Hatcher, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payment Coalition, in a statement calling for the settlement to be rejected.
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NerdWallet: ‘We Take Visa, Just Not That One’: Are Credit Card Rules About to Change?
The proposal “ignores the fact that 85% of cards issued today are rewards cards and that merchants have no choice but to accept them,” added Jennifer Hatcher, a Merchant Payments Coalition executive committee member, in a statement. “Banks would likely also have the power to move cards into different categories, effectively forcing merchants to continue to take all cards and pay their high prices.”
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The Street: Visa, Mastercard offer $38 billion deal to end long swipe-fee battle
Many trade groups — including the NRF and the Merchants Payments Coalition — oppose the settlement, arguing it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of rising card costs.
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CNBC: What the Visa, Mastercard legal settlement means for your rewards credit card
Merchants have been battling with card issuers over what they’ve called a “cartel-like pricing practice” for two decades, according to Doug Kantor, an executive committee member at the Merchants Payments Coalition.
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Bloomberg: Banks Versus Merchants Carries On
Doug Kantor, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, which has been fighting the banks and credit card companies over the issue, said he expects “a lot of opposition” to the proposed settlement and says it could be rejected. The lobbying will continue, he said: “If anything this shows an even greater need for legislation and demonstrates the courts are just not equipped to set out how a competitive market could happen in the future.”
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Payments Dive: 8 pros, cons of Visa-Mastercard pact
Swipe fees on Visa and Mastercard credit cards totaled a record $111.2 billion last year, 11% higher than in 2023 and triple the cost a decade earlier, the Merchant Payments Coalition said in March, citing data from the Nilson Report.
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