Analyst: Credit-Card Swipe Fees Likely To Be Cut

veracious · ‎01-20-2012

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Credit-card swipe fees paid by merchants would likely be cut temporarily under a potential settlement of numerous retailer lawsuits against Visa Inc. (V), MasterCard Inc. (MA) and several large banks.

"This cut could be roughly 33% and may last approximately one year," Jason Kupferberg, analyst with Jefferies Group Inc., wrote in a research note Tuesday.

The fees, known as interchange, are set by Visa and MasterCard, which process transactions, but collected by the banks that issue their plastic cards, including Bank of America Corp. (BAC), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Citigroup Inc. (C).

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stockmarketnewsstoryprint.aspx?storyid=analyst-credit-card-swipe-fees-lik...

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lithium78 · ‎01-22-2012

That's a problem for me. Most of my CCs are rewards cards and I foresee the rewards programs getting slashed if this happens. Rats.

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Lel · ‎01-22-2012

@lithium78 wrote:
That's a problem for me. Most of my CCs are rewards cards and I foresee the rewards programs getting slashed if this happens. Rats.

+1. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies here, in my opinion.

The Credit CARD Act was supposed to make everything better. Some people definitely benefited, but others suffered. The rewards on my Shell Mastercard were drastically slashed shortly after this law went into effect.