Merchant Coalition Cries Foul On Fees (Again)

Leading into the busy holiday season, the Merchants Payments Coalition isn’t being shy with how they feel about the bank.

More specifically, the group has called out the banks, saying that they are “giving thanks for outrageous fees that raise consumer prices,” in its latest press release that targets the “heaping plateful of exorbitant fees,” the banks will be serving up.

Swipe fees, to be even more specific.

“In fact, the banks make everything more expensive every day – from groceries to airline tickets – through a fee they charge retailers when a customer swipes a debit or credit card,” the group wrote in the release.

The release goes on to call out the banks for the swipe fees that the banks place on merchants, which the group notes is as high as 4 percent in some cases. The group uses the statistic of how much it costs to feed 10 people ($50), according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, to show how much they claim the bank shaves off of retailers’ profits. Which in that case would be up to $2.

“Since it costs only a few cents to process this transaction, the bank reaps a profit of 10,000 percent,” the release reads.

Or, there’s the example the group provides about traveling, which means swipe fees for hotels, dinners and airline fares.

The group is calling for reform on the bank’s side in how much it charges for swipe fees. The group cites the example of a 2013 reform when lowering debit card swipe fees helped cut back $5.8 billion in costs to merchants. The coalition calls for the U.S. to continue to reform debit swipe fees and then tackle the credit card costs.

“Visa and MasterCard price-fix swipe fees so their member banks can charge merchants the highest swipe fees of any industrialized country on earth,” the group claims. “These fees are now the second-highest operating expense for many retailers, who – unlike banks – operate on skimpy profit margins and are forced to raise prices to survive. Consumers pay more whether they use a card or not, which is not only unfair but especially hurts poor people.”

The Merchants Payments Coalition represents retailers, restaurants, supermarkets, drug stores, convenience stores, fuel stations, online merchants and other businesses. The coalition’s member associations represent 2.7 million stores with 50 million employees.