Small business pushes credit card reform - Boston Business Journal:

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It’s a figure a group of small business owners say creditt cardcompanies don’t want but one that consumers need to “The continuing burden of or swipe fees on small business owners has become heavier and heaviefr to bear. It is the seconc largest expensebehind payroll. It is something we are extremelworried about,” said Jim Smith, president of the Floridz Petroleum Marketer and Convenience Store during a Monday news conference. Credi t card companies, on the other hand, say the fees are simpl y the cost ofdoing business.
Credit card swipe fees called interchange fees by the big banks that set theseratesa – are a percentage of each transactionn that Visa and MasterCard and their member banksw collect from retailers every time a credit or debit card is These fees average aboutr 2 percent in the U.S., according to the , the associatiohn for convenience and petroleum retailing, which put together Monday’s news In 2008, credit card fees cost U.S. convenience stores $8.4 billion, compared with $5.2 billion in stored profits, according to NACS data. Almosy all of these credit card fees are attributablse to credit cardswipe fees.
Convenience store owner Bruce Mitchell said his operation paid out morethan $3 milliobn in credit card fees last year. “I am payin g 25 percent more for credit card fees than I pay in he said. Recently, tax officeds in four Florida counties – Walton, Osceola and Brevarfd – said they will no longer accept Visa becauss there was no room in their budgets to absorb the swipe fee The coalitionnoted that, while county governmentxs have the ability to say no becauss Floridians must pay their businesses can’t afford to say no to credit card The groups are pushing for legislationh that would either require credig card companies to reveal swipe fees or allow merchants to negotiate thoswe fees, thus leveling the playing field.
Federall lawmakers recently reintroduced the Credit Card FairFee Act, whichu NACS said would give merchants “z seat at the negotiating table with banks to determin the fees assessed for every sale made by creditr card, and ultimately reduce the costs of everyda goods for consumers.” But, the , an organizatiob that represents payment card financial services companies and financial services trade said in a new release that retailerse are trying “to make consumerzs pay for one of their business expensews – the cost of accepting crediyt and debit.
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