So, the new Citigroup deal for Costco is an ~0% discount fee for Costco-branded, Citigroup-issued Visa card transactions and a <0.4% fee for other-bank-issued Visa card transactions. “That compares with the roughly 0.6 percent of each transaction the retailer pays its current partner, American Express Co.”

The material question then is, what fees—that they continually complain so vociferously about—are the other very large retail merchants (eg, Wal-Mart) paying their acquiring bankers? Undoubtedly <0.5%. Frankly, I don’t understand what they are complaining about.

And, of course, the simple answer for any retailer that does not like the cost of any credit card transaction is to only accept debit cards, but I guess that’s too simple an answer for them to comprehend; alternatively, they can join the MCX consortium—LOL …