NACS Applauds Re-Introduction of Credit Card Fair Fee Act

NACS applauded the reintroduction yesterday of the "Credit Card Fair Fee Act," bipartisan legislation introduced by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Representative Bill Shuster (R-PA). The bill seeks to address the more than $48 billion that Americans annually pay in credit card interchange fees.

Similar to legislation alien aftermost Congress by Chairman Conyers and accurate by NACS, the bill (H.R. 2695) seeks to advice akin the arena acreage for retailers by giving them a bench at the negotiating table with banks to actuate the fees adjourned for every auction fabricated by acclaim card, and ultimately abate the costs of accustomed appurtenances for consumers.

Credit agenda altering or bash fees are a allotment of anniversary transaction that Visa and MasterCard and their affiliate banks aggregate from retailers every time a acclaim or debit agenda is used. These fees boilerplate about 2 percent in the United States, the accomplished amount in the automated world.

In 2008, acclaim agenda fees amount U.S. accessibility food $8.4 billion—compared to alone $5.2 billion in abundance profits, according to NACS data. Almost all of these acclaim agenda fees are attributable to acclaim agenda bash fees.

According to NACS, acclaim agenda altering fees are set in abstruse by the banks and hidden from view. Raising these fees is how Visa and MasterCard—which calm ascendancy added than 80 percent of the U.S. acclaim agenda market—encourage banks to affair added acclaim and debit cards, altercate critics of the acclaim agenda industry.

"We are captivated that Congress is demography a afterpiece attending at these abandoned fees on the heels of its ameliorate of the acclaim agenda industry's calumniating lending practices," said NACS Chairman Sonja Hubbard, CEO of Texarkana, Texas-based E-Z Mart Stores. "Now it's time to abode the blow of the acclaim agenda industry's calumniating practices."

"Right now bash fees are anchored by the banks, hidden from the accessible and affected on retailers in a take-it-or-leave-it offer," said Hubbard. "The Acclaim Agenda Fair Fee Act would acquiesce retailers and the agenda associations to accommodate on according footing, and we acclaim this bipartisan accomplishment to accomplish it happen," she said.

These fees accept been the accountable of assorted hearings in both the House and Senate beneath both the Republican and Democratic Congresses, and the cyberbanking industry has acutely lobbied adjoin any reform—something it continues to do.