Visa-Master card to fork out 6 billion dollars

Visa-Master card to fork out 6 billion dollars

www.arirang.co.kr

Visa, MasterCard and major U.S. banks have agreed to pay retailers at least 6 billion dollars to settle a 7-year long lawsuit.
The allegation was that the card issuers conspired to fix the fees that stores pay to accept credit cards.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The pact, announced late Friday, was called by lawyers involved in the case the largest antitrust settlement in US history. It was seen as a major victory for merchants that have long complained about the billions of dollars in so-called "swipe" or "interchange" fees that they pay to banks for purchases made using plastic.

www.arirang.co.kr
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by leosnake


As a small retailer, this will be a victory of sorts....I just received a check for a class action lawsuit involving Google Adwords warning me to cash the check before 12/26/12....whoo hoo $1.78!

reply to post by km22453


you're lucky man!

Time to start paying cash again.

Under this settlement, retailers can start charging customers a fee for using plastic.

Originally posted by jam321
Time to start paying cash again.

Under this settlement, retailers can start charging customers a fee for using plastic.

It is all by design.

There is not enough cash in circulation for people to do this.

Bank run, more depression, more theft by the priests of currency.

Faith is the only thing that keeps the lie of 'economy' alive and well.

Originally posted by jam321
Time to start paying cash again.

Under this settlement, retailers can start charging customers a fee for using plastic.

Start? Retailers have been doing that for a long time -- when I bought my last car, I tried to charge it on my "points earning" credit card, but the BMW dealer said they would have to charge me the fee, as well, so I just wrote a check. Same thing with the University of Minnesota, where my daughter goes to school. If I pay her tuition and fees with my points credit card, they tack on a 3% fee (or something like that) so I just have them direct debit out of my checking account. And I don't see it down here, but when I lived in North Dakota, most gas stations gave you a discount for paying with cash or check (which served the dual purpose of saving them the fee, and got you into the shop to buy sodas and crap you wouldn't have if you paid at the pump.)

Did anyone just think the push to plastic was just to save the cost of people dealing with the paper?

Originally posted by roadgravel
Did anyone just think the push to plastic was just to save the cost of people dealing with the paper?

Yes it was. Back in the 1990s, I used to go to the NACHA annual conferences, and a lot of the sessions were organized around electronic payment processing, because of the fairly significant costs of processing checks. Check cards were one of the solutions, as well document imaging, which allowed the Fed to not have to physically move checks for them to be processed. Costs are significantly reduced if a transaction runs on the Fed (as an ACH debit) than if it goes through the VISA/MC system.

reply to post by adjensen


So you do not believe they saw the chance to make money also? The convenience would lead people down their road to money making.

Originally posted by roadgravel
reply to post by adjensen

 

So you do not believe they saw the chance to make money also? The convenience would lead people down their road to money making.

Of course, it was a bit of a win-win for the banking industry. More traffic on the ACH network generating revenue, and lower processing costs for the banks that were able to move their paper payments to electronic ones. The downside was largely left the consumer, who lost the "float" on check transactions.

In the same timeframe as they were working on that, the other major program touted at the conferences was EDI, business to business electronic document delivery, but they've been a lot less successful at rolling that out.

You might find this article interesting: Journey through the payments study

I have worked with EDI.

Banks are trying to make money while the businesses are trying to reduce costs and save time.

reply to post by roadgravel

When these business reduce their costs, will they share that love with the rest of us? Because the banks are sharing the love--at least with those of us who are smart about handling credit.

Banks a greedy and crooked. So I get paid 0.05% interest, pay $15.00 for an account, pay 15% interest if I use their credit card. Now they want people to pay a monthly fee for a debit card that the bank makes at least 1.5% of each purchase.

BS.

My customers always ask me why I don't accept debit or CC at my bakery. I give them my reason.

"I take your money, give it to trillionaires and I have to pay to do that?"

In any other business model, I would receive a commission for helping them earn money but with this system, I actually pay them for the rights to give them money...WTH?

No Thank You.

Peace

Originally posted by jude11
My customers always ask me why I don't accept debit or CC at my bakery. I give them my reason.

"I take your money, give it to trillionaires and I have to pay to do that?"

In any other business model, I would receive a commission for helping them earn money but with this system, I actually pay them for the rights to give them money...WTH?

No Thank You.

Peace

Good reasons. All the added overhead is the reason I don't use banks or credit cards. I do use a prepaid walmart money card. At least the charges are fixed and I deem them an acceptable evil. Walmart charges you 3 dollars to load up the card with money. I feel in the long run this is cheaper for me than dealing with the banks or credit card companies.

As for banks.. the whole idea of earning interest is pretty much a scam. They charge you so much with various things that the money you make with interest is gone plus some of your hard earned cash. Any charges they wish to impose should come out of a small percent of the interest your money generates and still leave you some of that interest left over. It doesn't work this way so the banks are stealing more of your money than you are making. Banks are a bad investment. People just don't add all this up to check it out.

Now if you had a significant amount in the bank, you should be able to leave it there and live off the interest alone - at least you could years ago. I am in a situation where I will one day receive about half a million dollars. I'd love to just plop the money in a bank and live off the interest but I may not be able do that in today's economy/banking climate. The banks only insure up to 100.000 dollars. I'd have to spread that money around in many accounts and many banks.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Day before yesterday I started offering a 3% discount for my customers using cash. It's starting to catch on! Whoo Hoo!

So does this mean that costs will now rise for the cardholders? (although I am happy to see any sort of victory for small business) The banks never suffer in this scenario. They are fined, they apologize, they pass the costs incurred to the users, and proceed to find other loopholes.

Originally posted by HolographicPrincipal
So does this mean that costs will now rise for the cardholders? (although I am happy to see any sort of victory for small business) The banks never suffer in this scenario. They are fined, they apologize, they pass the costs incurred to the users, and proceed to find other loopholes.

Probably, though like I pointed out, it would be the seller (small business and large) that's just passing their already existing costs on to the consumer. And contrary to popular belief, VISA and MasterCard, though they were originally started by banks (Bank of America and Chase, as I recall,) are not banks, they are merely processors.