Contents tagged with Credit Card News

  • Fall 2008 Interchange Announcements

    August 31, 2008
    MasterCard, Visa and Discover have all announced changes to Interchange to take effect October and November 2008. 

    Visa has announced a new Government-to-Government (G2G) program for government services merchants and a new Tax Payment program for eligible government taxing authorities, or parties acting on their behalf.  Both of these new programs require merchant registration.  Vantage government clients will automatically be enrolled. 

    Since 2005, Vantage has monitored, recorded and reported on Interchange changes impacting merchants.   Read more about the Fall 2008 Merchant Interchange Rates. 

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  • Regulating Credit Card Interchange

    July 25, 2008
    The Credit Card Fair Fee Act (H.R. 5546) - creating an antitrust exemption for retailers allowing them to collectively negotiate agreements for the Interchange fees assessed on credit card sales - passed out the House Judiciary Committee on a 19 to 16 vote.  

    In a recent survey, consumers showed popular support for the Credit Card Fair Fee Act.   However the Federal Trade Commission stated its belief that this legislation will reduce competition and harm consumers.  The U.S. Department of Justice also presented a case against legalizing collusion among the nation's largest retailers at the expense of consumers.

    If a merchant cartel forces down how much they pay, it only stands to reason that the costs will get shifted to cardholders (for example increasing … more

  • Tax bill proposal for finding merchants’ supposedly underreported cash receipts

    April 19, 2008
    Tax Bill Could Be Greater Threat Than Interchange Proposal... Digital Transactions

    A proposal, which is still being refined in House and Senate iterations, would force “qualified payment facilitators” to disclose information (file forms similar to current 1099 income forms) about each of their merchant clients’ receipts to the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes with the idea to help identify taxable but unreported or under-reported sales. 

    With this bill, merchants and businesses can simply expect more tax code complexity and higher tax compliance costs.  We would all be better off under the FairTax (www.fairtax.org)! more

  • The Costs of Card Payments

    April 12, 2008
    Charges fly over shops' credit-card feesCNNMoney.com - USA

    The public debate continues over government regulation of the card payment networks built by MasterCard and Visa. 

    With more than a million new merchants signing up to accept payment cards in the past year, it is argued that the network effect balance of setting Interchange high enough to provide the banks an incentive to issue the cards, but not so high that merchants won't accept them, is working. 

    A major factor behind retailers' objections is that as consumers use credit and debit cards more frequently and that the fees have also increased as the card companies have upgraded more consumers to rewards cards, which carry higher fees. more