Picking Up the Tab for Payments
The October issue of the National Retail Federation's Stores magazine has a cover story by Patricia Murphy on increasing retailer opposition to bank card interchange fees.
“The Fed has taken a very conservative view of its authority,” says Mallory Duncan, NRF senior vice president and general counsel. “Debit cards, which are nothing more than plastic checks, are the fastest-growing form of payment. For years, the Fed has assured Americans that checks pass at face value — that a $100 paper check is worth $100 cash. But if a Visa or MasterCard debit card is used for the same $100 transaction, the recipient only gets $99; banks and credit card companies pocket the difference. Unless the Fed acts,” Duncan says, “billions of consumers’ hard-earned dollars will be siphoned from their wallets.”
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