Retailers Shopping for Lower Interchange Fees
Lisa Lerer writes for Politico.com writes about merchant frustrations with increasing payment card interchange fees - and legislation introduced in the US Congress to try to deal with interchange fees. She writes: 'The fight is over interchange fees, a relatively obscure business-to-business charge brought into the spotlight by a two-year lobbying campaign. And it’s an issue the retailers hope will dovetail with renewed congressional scrutiny of other credit card practices involving hidden charges and excessive fees.'
On the flip side, Jeff Jacoby writes an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe titled 'Leave the Plastic Alone' advocating that no legislation is required to manage interchange fees.
At the recent Airline Payment Summit the term "appropriate payments" was used to describe all non credit card payments. The airline industry is an online e commerce business that needs more forms of payments. Our company UseMyBank, as a bridge between the customer's online bank and the merchants checkout. With more forms of payments the credit cards adjust pricing to be competitive with other forms of payments. The market can work itself out without more regulation.
Posted by: Brian Crozier | April 30, 2008 at 06:36 AM