WASHINGTON – The Merchants Payments Coalition, of which NACS is a founding member, applauds legislation in Canada that would reform the way banks charge retailers hidden fees every time a customer swipes a credit card at checkout, similar to successful reforms in the European Union and Australia.

A Canadian lawmaker recently introduced legislation to set credit card swipe fees at 0.3% of the purchase amount. Proponents say it will save Canadian consumers and merchants billions of dollars and energize the economy. The European Union implemented similar reforms last year to bring competition and transparency to its market.

American merchants pay the highest swipe fees of all the developed countries—up to 4% in credit-card swipe fees, or $4 for every $100 spent. That’s a 10,000% profit margin, since the transaction costs the bank only a few cents. These exorbitant fees raise prices of everything consumers buy, even if they don’t use a card, and hurt the poorest consumers most.

The Merchants Payments Coalition urges Congress to consider the swipe fee reforms implemented in Australia and the European Union, and now introduced in Canada, as examples to consider in the United States.

The Merchants Payments Coalition includes restaurants, retailers, supermarkets, drugstores, convenience stores, fuel stations, online merchants and other businesses fighting unfair credit card fees and advocating a more competitive and transparent card system that works better for consumers and merchants alike. The coalition’s member associations collectively represent about 2.7 million stores with approximately 50 million employees.