The Electronic Payments Coalition late Wednesday filed an Amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act. The lawsuit, brought by Illinois Bankers Association, Illinois Credit Union League, American Bankers Association, and America’s Credit Unions and filed last month in the United …

Merchants in the United States paid $224 billion in card-acceptance costs in 2023, the highest toll for merchants in any country in the world, according to payment consultancy CMSPI’s State of the Industry Report. Interchange fees alone accounted for $143 billion of that total. Since 2009, U.S. merchants’ like-for-like payment …

Merchants’ disdain for interchange is well documented, but one aspect of card-acceptance costs that gets drowned out by the outcry over interchange is that rising processing fees are hitting merchants harder than interchange hikes, according to some observers. Processors’ rate hikes have been running between 0.25% and 1.5% in recent …

High card-acceptance fees are the root cause for why some merchants are charging consumers for cash back at the point-of-sale, a service merchants have historically provided consumers even though customers can make purchases with their debit cards at no charge, says the Merchants Payment Coalition. Driving the trend is that …

Merchants were granted a second extension late Tuesday for filing claims against Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. in their ongoing class-action lawsuit against the two networks over interchange costs. U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York Margo K. Brodie, who is presiding over the case, moved …

Merchants’ disdain for interchange is well documented, but one aspect of card-acceptance costs that gets drowned out by the outcry over interchange is that rising processing fees are hitting merchants harder than interchange hikes, according to some observers. Processors’ rate hikes have been running between 0.25% and 1.5% in recent …

Merchants are looking forward to making their case now that a judge has rejected a proposed settlement of their two-decades-long litigation with Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. over transaction costs. Late Tuesday morning, Margo K. Brodie, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York, issued a written …

Market pricing is preferable to legal settlements, which in turn are preferable to government regulation. Will the payments business ever learn that lesson? Many in the payments industry breathed a sigh of relief at Mastercard’s and Visa’s announcement in March of their landmark settlement of a longstanding antitrust suit over …

Claims by banks that merchants won’t pass along savings from the Credit Card Competition Act to consumers are grossly misleading and do not reflect the economic realities merchants face, argues the Merchants Payments Coalition, a lobbying group representing sellers on payments-acceptance matters. Passing along cost savings or at least holding …