I will say the Durbin exemption for banks with under $10B in assets is pretty silly.
I kinda like smaller orgs getting a small leg up against bigger ones. Discourages excessive consolidation. It’s like an anti-oligopoly provision.
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'abuse.'
Is Truist abusing non-Durbin status by giving out points for PIN debit transactions? Or are all the other non-Durbin banks who give back nothing abusing the exemption by keeping the interchange?
But even Durbin wasn’t perfect: before many cards would charge more of a percentage model, but after Durbin, raised them per swipe fee to the max. Which can be unfortunate for small purchases.
Maybe credit card loyalty systems are specifically, but if you want to make comments about the entire system of credit cards then you should look at the entire system of credit cards to figure out who’s subsidising who. On the other side of credit card rewards the fact that revenue from high spenders subsidises credit account defaults. If you chose to only focus on that single element of the system you could just as reasonably say that credit cards are a progressive tax on the rich.
Different brands also have different business models. Amex relies very heavily on interchange, Chase is a balanced mix iirc, Citi is more interest, and different companies have everything in-between. This is a deliberate strategy -- issuers split people into transactors, who never carry balances and pay off their CC bills every month, and revolvers, who carry balances and pay interest. It's a core strategic decision to target how much of your customer base you want to be one vs the other.
To a first order, defaults are subsidised by the high interest rate that they pay. Transactors primarily earn the banks interchange revenue, which is a more stable part of the business, and revolvers primary earn the banks interest, which obviously carries with it much greater credit risk. To a second order, some issuers securitise their portfolios into different tranches, and the default risk is thus pushed to the debt purchasers. It gets much more complicated from there, with different scoring models to determine spending patterns, default risk, bust-out risk, etc. (As an aside, there's a fascinating story around Synchrony switching from FICO to VantageScore a while back, thus making it much more complicated to securitise their CC portfolio)
But, in general, credit card interchange is a cost built into everything you buy, and on which the prime-superprime consumer receives a rebate.
[1] - https://www.thebalancemoney.com/credit-card-surcharges-31542...
TLDR: The existence of credit cards is basically an automatic 2-3% inflation on prices. As a fraction of income, this hurts the poor the worst. The better off get this 2% back as rewards. Cash payers get nothing back.
If you want to draw this conclusion you’d have to calculate the cost of the alternative. What would the impact on prices be if there were no electronic payments? What would the impact on prices be if every bank had to implement its own electronic payment system with every merchant? The credit card system integrates a huge portion of the worlds merchants with nearly all of the worlds banks. It’s massively more efficient than the alternatives, apart from other conceptually similar systems that have exactly the same type of costs. Your claim that removing this efficiency would lower prices seems entirely implausible and to me.
Also note that interchange is capped in the EU at 30bps, and they seem to do just fine without 2% cashback on every purchase. One might start to think that we can do with something similar here in the US.
The TNG cash back program: https://fintechnews.my/33848/e-wallets-malaysia/fave-offers-...
The TNG loyalty program: https://www.touchngo.com.my/promotion/redeem-your-points/
The TNG cardholder fees: https://www.touchngo.com.my/policies/touch-n-go-card-fees-an...
There’s also merchant fees (which are confidential). All of these systems are just reinvented credit cards. They often try to compete with credit cards on merchant fees, but you’re still paying for exactly the same thing. This “alternative” is just the same thing with a different name. You might find a few base points difference in merchant fees here and there (especially during the growth phase of these technologies), but the alternative isn’t to eliminate the premium charged for processing credit cards, it’s simply to allocate it to a different service provider.
Merchants are charged 0.5%. Compared to 2-3% in the US credit card scheme.
The alternative is credit or debit cards with a tenth of the fees and no cashback, just like in every other country.
According to the local gas station, 10 cents cheaper per gallon. Which is about 2%.
You can pay a very similar flat 1/3 of a cent fee for an instant FedNow payment with none of those risks or costs.
0.3c is still far in excess of 0.0025c but maybe that won't matter.
When local vendors give me a cash discount, it’s typically 3%, better than most rewards programs, and I take that.
The few cards that offer 5% in other categories have to be getting that from interest payments or promotional retail agreements as opposed to transaction fees. Hitting one of those on a high spending category is like hitting the lottery!
You know who banks love? That person who has 5 overdraft fees on their checking account per month while maintaining a healthy balance in their savings account. Know who banks hate? Poor people defaulting on their loans that won't get collected. Know who banks love the most? People who park large amounts of money in them. That money makes banks bank. Banks and credit card companies aren't just leeching off the poor. They have various sources of income.
There's more nuance to the system than just "fuck the poor" and framing it that way just muddies the waters.
I'm basing my view on the classic Boston Fed paper https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/public-policy-discuss... . I don't keep up much with the literature, so you can probably find rebuttals and more complex models in the last 13 years of economic research, but I think the big picture largely stands -- all prices are increased by 200bps, and super-prime customers get most of it back as a rebate on their credit cards.
I.e. I have two 2% cashback credit cards even though I make <$30k/yr.
It's also worth mentioning the real business is analyzing the consumer data you give them for pennies.
Instead of capping prices, you could simply require any fees to be paid by the cardholder. Combine that with a standard for payment processing so that lots of companies could compete for payment processing and fees would drop really fast.
If someone is using a POS terminal like Toast or Square, it should be trivial for them to support lots of new payment companies if they're all adhering to a standard. If consumers have to pay the fee, they're going to shop around for the lowest-fee card (just as many shop around for the highest-reward card now). You wouldn't need government caps.
You could tell stores "once you accept payments with the new system, the consumer is responsible for the fees." This would drop fees really fast - even for stores that didn't upgrade their credit card machines. If Walmart, Target, CVS, etc. all update their machines quickly, I'm going to find a card with a low fee. Then when I use that card at a non-upgraded shop, they have to pay the fee, but it's a much lower fee since I had shopped around for a low fee.
The issue right now is that the person choosing the card doesn't feel any of the pain. As the article notes, Visa (Canada) charges 1.25% for a regular consumer card or 2.08% for a premium card. I will pay with a premium card since it will give me nice rewards and I don't feel the additional 0.83% that the store has to pay. If I did have to feel it, I would make different decisions.
If you're looking to change behavior, align people's incentives. Another commenter said that they're capped at 0.3% in Europe. Consumers might hate the idea of paying 0.3% additional, but I think credit card companies would drop below that cap if consumers had to pay it. I think they'd look to make it up on interest or other things. As you note, credit cards can come with 2% rewards so they're essentially giving you the whole interchange fee back already. Make consumers shop around for the lowest fee cards.
The problem is that stores need to take the cards that consumers have with little option to forgo the fees. If Bank of America had a no-fee card while Chase charged 1.5%, consumers would move to BofA if they felt the fee.
Also doesn't work online if you're not signed in, or if it's the first time you've visited that store and you haven't given them a card number yet.
The price says 100DKK, but they pay 101.50DKK or whatever it is.
People trying to get air miles, cashback or similar have to pay the cost of that.
Don't most people have the normal visa/mc debit cards there?
That was pretty much specific to German-speaking countries (or at least they were the only one, where I noticed that). Elsewhere, there was no such thing as ATM-only card (or even ATM-only PIN).
Don't even exist in many places anymore. e.g. in the EU country where I live both were replaced ~8 or so years ago by Visa/Mastercard Debit (since they removed embossed characters the only way to distinguish them is the word 'debit' written in a tiny font.
I assume there's gradually less and less appeal for a card that isn't as broadly accepted, and if it encourages more fee generation, all's the better.
I know there are extra fees for business/corporate credit cards, and these are specifically excluded from the EU cap. (The cap was for consumer protection, so business transactions aren't regulated.)
Foreign (non-EU) fees are also not part of the EU cap, as there's no way to control those.
It could be poor wording on the sticker, or it might be including the other fees. The 0.3% is just Visa/MasterCard's fee, there's also the fee from the card processor — HN is familiar with Stripe, but there are many companies offering this.
But yeah, I guess that doesn't differ by payment method, so it wouldn't affect the choice of payment method.
It can be very convenient for retailers since sales can vary in different counties let alone states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...
just try to imagine what a mess it would be if any advertisement, price sticker etc. would have to show the full price.
> everything is owned by like one company right now anyway so they already have systems in place to deal with differing tax rules in different states.
Yeah I agree it would generally be a much higher burden for small businesses than for Amazon.
Then there’s an incentive to produce higher inequality: high sales tax affects mostly poor, while low property tax usually benefits rich. Poor people are usually underrepresented in democratic institutions, so it would not be surprising if inverse redistribution would be a frequent problem.
Finally, local tax as a way to fund communities is not the only alternative and relying on it would mean that some communities will never get out of financial trouble. Tourist towns are minority, after all. Other countries just keep some of the collected VAT locally and redistribute excesses from richer to poorer communities through federal transfers (German solidarity tax did exactly that, for example).
The stores have the info to calculate this, and do at checkout, so it's really the first two points mostly.
So it could 10.25% in one place, 9.75% in the next town 8.750% and 8.975% if you drive for another 15-20 minutes. Imagine if you run a business, have multiple locations and want to buy a TV/Billboard/etc. ad with the price how would that work? You'd also need to make different price stickers, won't be able to print the price on the packaging etc.
Of course this does change the incentives for localities setting their sales tax, and they might be inclined to set them higher if the cost isn't borne by local residents. I don't know if that's a bad thing, if that money improves local services and / or lowers other taxes.
Convenience isn't even a factor.
Compared to other places, where the price is what you pay (in most cases). You would be adding inconvenience and a little uncertainty to one form of payment. Americans would switch too, if this were the case.
Edit: Actually I think there's a simple solution: the fee should be assessed on the consumer side, not on the merchant side. Your issuing bank charges you 200bps on your end instead of taking it from the merchant cut. The net effect is the same.
People would hate it, and it would never happen, but it's fun to think about :/
On the other hand, that's probably why sales tax is around 5%? whereas VAT is 20%+
Sales Tax ranges from 0% through to 12%
I have to pay it if I order from Amazon or Etsy, for example. If I order from the US, I pay later.
Every sales receipt has the VAT right on the receipt. I can see it every single time. If I order from inside the country, I can see it before I pay.
It isn't hidden. It isn't secret.
It wasn't even secret to an immigrant that didn't yet understand enough Norwegian to know.
What I do get is to be reasonably certain what I'm going to pay when I get to the cash register. I don't have to do mental gymnastics with a total if I'm tight on money - like I have many times in the US. It won't change if I'm in a different part of Norway. There simply aren't as many price surprises like that.
Greece is in the EU, which means they are paying at least 15% VAT on most stuff, assuming everyone is paying their taxes (which might or might not be). Trust me, even being built into the cost, everyone knows how much they are paying in taxes on goods. Greek folks aren't unintelligent. This sort of tax isn't a secret any more than sales tax was in the US.
Regulation is warranted in monopoly/oligopoly situations. Either by changing the rules to favour/promote increased competition, or, as the EU has done here, by capping the fees which they can charge.
Merchants are typically happy to take them, because their fees are lower.
> Regulation is warranted in monopoly/oligopoly situations. Either by changing the rules to favour/promote increased competition, or, as the EU has done here, by capping the fees which they can charge.
I suspect you might want to look into lightening regulations, so that upstart competitors have an easier time entering the market. Instead of piling on ever more regulations that only those who are big enough to afford an army of lawyers and accountants and lobbyists can manage.
This is unlikely to happen in the US, however, where market-dominant corporations have huge lobbying power and can ensure the rules are written in their favour, and any potential upstarts drowned in a sea of red tape.
Instead, private credit cards are built into the system. That makes no sense to me. The US system of credit cards does very little for economic stability or growth. It has clear harms to the vulnerable and it hardly benefits the economically stable. Instead, there should be a system of frictionless debit payment. Governments shouldn’t pick winners and losers, but they should build infrastructure for healthy markets.
Signing credit card slips? What is that? Clearly irrational. Visa and Mastercard are not just normal market players. American capitalism would function better without the excessive role of credit cards in commerce.
Here in the UK we have frictionless debit payments and we all use credit cards. Credit cards have a safety net in case of fraud. Much better.
Cash is 15%, the rest are various types of bank transfer. Note this is all transactions, online and in-person, including things like subscription renewals.
(How can a debit card be cloned, anyway? I'm not aware of any case of this, only a possible problem in the USA where data is 'cloned' onto a magstripe card.)
https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2022-08/UKF%20Paym...
Er yes, you're right about debit card cloning I think. I'll retract that one :) However if purchase something that doesn't work your CC company is jointly liable (crazily enough) and if your card details leak you have protection against fake purchases. Neither is the case for debit card use.
[0] https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/card-spe...
In this scenario, it is much easier to change the sales tax at the register than to reprice the entire store every time one of the several sales tax authorities decides to change the rates or rules.
This has begun. Many restaurants near me have a credit card fee, as does at least one car repair place.
No fee of paying with cash/debit.
https://www.lawpay.com/about/blog/credit-card-surcharge-rule...
If you don't believe parent, and you don't believe me, I hope you believe Visa's own FAQ.
> Q. Can I add a surcharge to card transactions?
> As a result of a legal settlement to resolve claims brought by a group of U.S. merchants, merchants in the U.S. and U.S. territories may add a surcharge to certain credit card transactions, starting January 27, 2013. Merchants who choose to surcharge must follow consumer disclosure and other requirements agreed to as part of the settlement.
[1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/surcharging...
Just because it is legal, doesn't mean they are doing it right -- and in my limited experience, they usually aren't.
In this case the contract is that 1) you tell them you're doing this and 2) that it is capped to a certain amount and 3) you are visibly doing it and the customer is properly informed.
These are all pretty reasonable contractual terms, IMHO.
No, I can't.
If you have me sign a contract that says "refurb agrees to no longer walk in exchange for $50,000", that will not be enforceable in court.
https://blog.ipleaders.in/unenforceable-contracts-what-you-n...
You said "If you want to have fun, you can report them to Visa/MC and watch that go away within a few days.", so no, if they are following the contract terms, it won't go away.
And Visa isn't able to include a blanket ban on surcharges due to changes in the law that would make such a contract illegal and unenforceable.
[1] https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/take-on-payments/2018/04/30...
The exception to that is American Express directly issued cards and American Express merchant contracts have had such terms at least in the past. Not sure if they still do.
And hence why in developing countries only luxury and ultra-luxury establishments accept AMEX cards.
Nevertheless, partly thanks to COVID, cash usage is way down and many people seem happy to pay the standard 1.6%-ish for the convenience.
So if we're making customers pay the fees for their preferred payment method, is it also OK to charge cash customers a surcharge?
This already happens in Australia. The price is the price, until you go to pay and if the shopkeeper sees you pull out a credit card, would adjust the total to include a 1.5% surcharge (Visa or Mastercard, and you'll likely be turned away if you pull out a different card like Amex).
The problem with this is that especially since Covid, a massive percentage of in person sales are done via contactless credit card payment, sometimes even with the screen of the terminal not even in view of the cardholder. Some sellers have caught on to this and are charging _much_ more than the 1.5% -- three sushi handrolls at the store around the corner of my workplace would cost about 9 AUD to buy (already includes GST), but the shopkeeper then added a whole 1 AUD on top for surcharge. I protested and have not shopped there since, but there's still plenty of customers at that store.
More and more stores are adding 50c or 1 AUD on top to cover surcharge for items well under 10 AUD, I'm guessing because calculating 1.5% is not trivial for a lot of people, and are ripping off their customers. Calculating 2.08% in your head to make sure the shopkeeper is not pulling a sly one on you unfortunately is not something a lot of people are going to do.
That's not required in AU, btw, it's optional. It's up to the merchant.
Interchange is public information: https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-in...
It's true that Visa/MC technically doesn't keep any of the interchange -- but the interchange goes to the issuing bank, and then visa/mc turns around and charges their scheme/network fees, which basically means that the issuing bank only gets to keep about 2/3rds of the interchange (that was set and negotiated by Visa/MC). You can dice it up into the processor fee, the network fee, the whatever fees, but I believe that the general consensus is that the networks keep about a third. I don't quite remember where I read that, so if you have better info please let me know.
If those are their maximums, then that's the worst case for the customer right? It is these rates that would yield the biggest spread between cash and credit.
Merchants that are able to negotiate better rates inherently have less of a spread between cash and card prices right, and are therefore able to offer a better relative deal to all customers including cash customers. Walmart can better control their costs than a mom-and-pop shop, has more volume, and hence more leverage against $V. So if you're a low-income person at Walmart, you're going to be least relatively affected by card surcharges. Definitely at Costco as you point out, I think Citi actually went below cost to take the portfolio from Amex.
Even in the case of smaller shops, Square, Stripe, Adyen, etc have done a ton to level the playing field by aggregating volume and using it against networks.
Credit card rewards are evil. They incentivize crafty behavior to secure miles or whatever and shaft normal people who just want to live life and get what’s equitable without playing shenanigans. I’d rather live in a world where when you pay for a coffee, you pay for the fucking coffee. Not a million equations of cashback and miles with perverse incentives.
> a very corrupt, bureaucratic place with billions of people did it.
You're not making a great sell here... you're just saying that this is a thing that a corrupt country does and therefor others should.
I still don't understand why this is a convincing argument. As an example, many countries with dictatorships have people that love and support the dictator (no matter how cruel they are). Dictators will also try to make this look universal.
This isn't a comment on the banking system (or even India), this is a comment on your argument. You're trying to convince others that a thing is good by connecting it with corruption. For me, this just doesn't follow.
I can’t wait.
I was surprised when I first learnt that you could spend money online with a VISA card by only card number, expiration date and a 3(!) digit CVV. Those are hardly secure and printed out on the card that anyone can see. Then the US merchants have so many rules about fraud detection but all of them are just heuristics with many false positives and false negatives.
When Internet companies constantly invents new methods to both increase security and usability (two step authentication, pass keys, FIDO-U2F), the payment industry in the US is just stuck in the past.
The optimal amount of fraud is not zero. Merchants, and consumers, both benefit from the equilibrium where there is much more commerce, backstopped by bank fraud detection.
Credit card fraud is just not a large problem in the US, and the extra commerce encouraged by continuing to use a relatively insecure system generally outweighs the benefits of tightening security.
Tokenized NFC payments are even more convenient than swiping credit cards, and they’re gradually replacing the old system, but there is no urgency here.
Sounds like a kick-back from suppliers directly to employees.
Didn't you just contradict your own argument?
What's your opinion on Buy now Pay Later for online retailers? fee is close to 5% but allows customers to pay for items with interest free installments over 90 days.
So if you say something negative about the govt and the govt bans your access to e payments, would you still support that?
We are never going to ban cash in the US because government officials need the anonymity of cash just as much if not more than your local drug dealer.
If a business takes both cash and cards, allowing cards In Addition to already taking cash, does not cost more. It costs a lot less.
But don't take my word for it. Just look at how many places kept trying to offer discounts for cash, how hard and for how many decades the card companies lobbied against that, and how many places do that now since it became illegal for credit cards to force that into their vendor agreements.
Let me give you an example of the logic used for the statement. A 5 ton truck is faster than a porshe 911.
When the truck is cruising on the highway and the porshe is starting off a red light.
I believe the oft-cited reason cash is more expensive is primarily due to shrinkage, which is on the same order as the credit card fees (unless you’re a family-run business or have only amazingly trustworthy employees). Cash-only discounts can be just as easily explained by the “flexibility” cash provides — you can’t assume the conclusion as a fact. The fact that most cash discounts are greater than 1% generally supports this idea, since a business offering a 3% cash discount definitely earns less than taking plastic. (But the accounting “flexibility” is worth more than that 3%.)
Are you saying this is not true, and cash shrinkage is less than the fees?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/15/cashless-res...
Several restaurants around you (I've never seen one, ever) being bigoted and rejecting business, does not mean your general statement is true. 99.(99999?)% of physical businesses also take cash. A blanket generalization, like the statement to which I replied, is based on - umm - the general case. a .0001% case of it being true doesn't make it true.
Trees you see, don't grow on land. Because I saw one growing through the water in a shallow lake once.
Here in the real world, the polar opposite of what was stated is actually true. In fact, I'll bet you a lot more businesses Only take cash than only take credit. Adding credit to a business that does cash (most businesses), is expensive. Adding cash to a business that does credit (count them on one hand) is also expensive.
You seem to not understand that, so I do have more tree and fern examples - just ask. You'll have to wait a couple of days if you want other kinds of flora however, as my brain turns slowly.
This idea of businesses that are handling cash are cheating on taxes is about as right as saying men with moustaches are burglars.
I guess the problem with the 30% is that it seemed like a very good deal for developers back in ~2010 compared to all other options.. but well it there is no incentive to lower it even more since there is no competition
Then again Steam and GOG for instance can still take 30% despite operating on perfectly open platforms so they must provide some value.
I believe bigger merchants with better credit ratings can normally negotiate faster repayments.
That's not actually true. Card-not-present debit is a separate transaction category than card-not-present credit. Durbin requires that debit routing be available for all debit transactions, not just PIN debit. Further, as of October 2022 the Fed amended the Regulation II rule to extend Durbin debit least-cost routing to card-not-present transactions. [2]
[1] https://www.cardrates.com/advice/atm-card-vs-debit-card-vs-c...
[2] https://cmspi.com/nam/en/resources/content/card-not-present-...
I never paid for anything on YouTube. Nobody ever explained how that could happen
(1) With a credit card, your fraud liability is almost always zero (but technically $50). With a debit card, it varies - I think by law it's $0 if you report the card lost or stolen before it's used, $50 if you report it within 2 days, $500 if you report it within 60 days and unlimited after 60 days. For card-not-present I think it's 60 days for zero liability.
(2) With a credit card, you simply don't pay the fraudulent charge until resolved. With a debit card, the money is out of your account until resolved.
(3) There's some weird arcana in the Fair Credit Billing Act about common carrier bankruptcy. In some cases, you're not liable if an airline goes bankrupt after you book but before your trip. This doesn't apply to debit cards. [2]
[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/credit-card-...
[2] https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/service-cessation...
In my corner of the EU - I don't recognise this at all as every debit card you would get from a bank here (as an adult with no bad credit judgements) is Visa branded and works just fine anywhere worldwide that would be set up to handle Visa (electronically at least).
People who make a habit of purchasing stuff abroad might well seek out a bank with a low/no currency exchange fee - and it could be that a credit card is more effective here, but it's nothing to do with the fundamental debit vs credit, and once again, simply isn't something that's generalise-able across the entire EU.
My card works everywhere and even credit card transactions appear as slow debit transactions.
I also don't pay any fees for any of that. Only the merchants do in my case.
My Danish debit card supports both Visa and Dankort, the Danish network. Danish companies will generally put the transaction through Dankort, as the fees are lower, but it's still a debit transaction if it goes through Visa's network.
Dankort only cards begin with the number 5019. Visa+Dankort with 4571.
Slightly related, I never allow direct debit from my bank account for things like utilities. It's blanket permission to take money they think they are owed. A friend had a problem with his electricity, the public utility came out, said the meter was tampered with, replaced it and charged him $1000 right from his account.
Of course they were wrong. He got the money back, two months later.
> I don't know what's the solution here. I'm weary of government intervention in capping prices, but I'm not sure what's the alternative here -- force each card to be available over multiple networks and for them to bid the interchange per transaction? Durbin amendment style caps? I don't know. But I do know that the status quo cannot stand.
Perhaps make it easier for new payment providers to enter the market? Here in Asia we have lots of alternatives popping up (like Grab pay). And merchants are happy to support them, because they typically charge lower fees than Visa and Mastercard.
Just like the government pays to produce bank notes and coins today.
A nice side-effect of it all is that many credit cards are offering great rewards without any annual fee. I get year-round access to VIP lounges at any airport here, car/travel insurance AND cashback/miles for $0, it's a very different scenario from say 5 years ago.
[1] https://www.infomoney.com.br/minhas-financas/pix-e-mais-bara...
[2] https://febrabantech.febraban.org.br/temas/meios-de-pagament...
Credit card rewards are a regressive tax on the poor -- literally, only those like us here on HN with good credit can get 2% cashback on everything, the rest who pay with debit/cash effectively subsidise our 2% discount. I enjoy my 2% cashback, but really would rather see a world where, like the EU, interchange got slashed to 30bps and it all went away.
Take a look around the rest of the world -- Alipay in China is 55bps, TNG is Malaysia is 50, Pix in Brazil (I can't find concrete numbers, but seems to be around 22bps), etc. 2-300 bps is outrageous, we should demand better.
I don't know what's the solution here. I'm weary of government intervention in capping prices, but I'm not sure what's the alternative here -- force each card to be available over multiple networks and for them to bid the interchange per transaction? Durbin amendment style caps? I don't know. But I do know that the status quo cannot stand.