March 18, 2021 — Visa and Mastercard announced this week that they are delaying a restructuring of credit care swipe fees that were set to be implemented in April. The increases were expected to total $1.15 billion, according to payments consulting firm CMSPI. 

The restructuring received criticism, including from the Merchants Payments Coalition (whose counsel referred to it as “unnecessary and avoidable”), the National Retail Federation (NRF), and lawmakers. 

“The last thing retailers needed in the middle of a pandemic was higher credit card swipe fees,” says Leon Buck, NRF’s VP for government relations, banking, and financial services. “We’re glad to see this delayed, but the increase should really be canceled altogether. This increase would have hit virtually all merchants at a time when they could least afford it, and we were particularly concerned by higher fees for online transactions when so many retailers have relied on ecommerce to get through Covid-19. The only thing good about this increase is that it has focused the attention of Congress on the market power of Visa and Mastercard. We look forward to working with lawmakers as they address this issue this year.”

In early March, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Representative Peter Welch, D-Vt., sent a letter urging the credit card companies to halt the increases.

“Just as increased vaccination efforts start to give our Main Street business hope for a summer reopening, your companies propose slamming struggling merchants, and by extension consumers, with fee increases,” Durbin and Welch stated in the letter, dated March 3. “Raising your fees would undermine efforts to help the economy recover and further reduce Americans’ purchasing power.”

The NRF has shared that processing fees paid by U.S. merchants were up 88% in 2019 over the previous decade.

For more updates: 
nrf.com
reformswipefees.com