Kum & Go Collects 40,000-Plus Signatures for Fight Swipe Fees Campaign

The signatures were gathered in just one month for the NACS petition drive.

March 23, 2010

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - Kum & Go L.C. has gathered more than 40,000 signatures from customers wanting to control and reduce credit and debit card interchange fees. The signatures were collected in a month from all Kum & Go stores as a part of the NACS Fight Swipe Fees petition drive.

"Kum & Go joined NACS and their campaign to Fight Swipe Fees to reduce costs to our customers," said Kyle J. Krause, Kum & Go president and CEO, in a press release. "Unfortunately the high costs of these credit card fees are passed onto the consumer. It is our corporate responsibility to try to reduce these fees and pass that savings onto our customers."

Credit card swipe fees range from 2 percent to 3 percent per each transaction. NACS research shows that interchange fees in the United States are three to four times higher than most other countries. Many retailers cite credit card fees as their second largest store-level operating expense, behind only labor.

These fees have a significant but little known impact on consumers. Swipe fees add roughly 5 cents to the cost of each gallon of gas that customers purchase. Last year, American families paid an average of $427 in credit and debit swipe fees ?" and this figure has tripled since 2001. Americans paid more than $48 billion in interchange fees in 2008, more than twice of what was paid in credit card late fees and three times the amount of ATM fees.

For more on credit card fees, see the NACS issue page.

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