A court case between Visa, MasterCard and major banks in the US and retailers on excessive fees appeared a step closer to resolution with a $7.25B (yes, Billon) settlement proposal from the Visa, MasterCard et al. Peak retail body, The National Retail Federation, (not a party to the case) has come out today against the settlement. They say the proposed settlement does not progress the issue of ever-increasing fees imposed on retailers for the use of cards.
We face the same fee problem in Australia but worse. There is less competition for the provision of EFTPOS services. The government, through the Reserve Bank, put the banks and a couple of major retailers, effectively in charge of regulation.
Pushing back against unreasonable fees is something newsagents and other retailers should be working on through those who represent them. We should be looking carefully at the battle being waged in the US. Losing the percentage we lose of each card based sale for what are often mediocre services is unreasonable.
Mark, thank you for keeping your community aware of what is going on. We here at Tyro are the lonely fighter, the only one in the banking world pointing the torch light on how unfair the interchange fees are. They are too high and have even been raised and they hit small business, not the big retailers. The retailer association should be up in arms.
The banks benefit from it being complicated. The Tyro submission fights for lower eftpos fees (http://www.rba.gov.au/payments-system/reforms/submissions/future-regulatory-framework-for-the-eftpos-system/tyro-31072012.pdf)
Cheers, Jost