WASHINGTON– The Merchants Payments Coalition—which strongly supports the Credit Card Competition Act in Congress that credit unions equally strongly oppose—announced it has added a new member: the Airport Restaurant and Retail Association.
The Credit Card Competition Act would require that cards from financial institutions with $100 billion or more in assets be enabled to be processed over at least two unaffiliated networks – Visa or Mastercard plus a competitor like NYCE, Star or Shazam, or even American Express or Discover. While that asset threshold would apply only to Navy FCU, credit unions argue that by default it will apply to all.
The MPC has stated the legislation would make networks compete over fees, security and service and is expected to save merchants and their customers $16.4 billion a year.
“Airport merchants continue to recover from the pandemic and still face many challenges including high credit card swipe fees that drive up the cost of doing business and prices for our customers,” ARRA Executive Director Andrew Weddig said in a statement. “Our members desperately need relief from unjustifiably high swipe fees and we know the banking industry’s scare tactics about rewards going away are false. Bringing competition to swipe fees will only help businesses that rely on travel and tourism.”
‘Out of Control Fees’
Added MPC Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores General Counsel Doug Kantor in a statement, “We welcome ARRA members to the fight for fair, competitive swipe fees. These businesses see the impact of these out-of-control fees every day and their involvement shows that swipe fees touch virtually every merchant whether they do business downtown, at the mall, online or even at the airport.”
The MPC said credit and debit card swipe fees have more than doubled over the past decade and hit a record $172.05 billion in 2023, According to the organization, the fees are most merchants’ highest operating cost after labor and “drive up prices by more than $1,100 a year for the average family.”