To Do: Sign Petition
Although interchange bank fees have remained constant in recent years, according to the American Bankers Association, more customers are using credit and debit cards to pay for their purchases. According to Card & Payment, interchange fees generated by bankcards reached nearly $24 billion in revenue in 2008, almost 20% of revenues for bank cards. While credit and debit card issuing companies such as Visa and MasterCard set the fees, everyone in the chain takes a cut of the revenues, including the merchant’s bank and the issuing bank. For small businesses with low individual purchases, these fees can be onerous and were not addressed in the new credit card reforms enacted by Congress in May. Interchange fees are typically 1.2 – 2.2% of the transactions made on credit and debit cards. Franchisees of 7-Eleven are trying to collect 1 million customer signatures on petitions to deliver to Congress in the hope of reducing such fees which are burdensome to the convenience store business where the average purchase totals $6.