Luckily for many merchants, Visa and MasterCard have delayed their most recent set of card fee increases as a concession to the pandemic, per PaymentsSource.
However, the two companies have also made it clear they intend to resume the increases as the economy improves, which nobody questions is happening as vaccinations speed up in the United States.
And while merchants are pleased to see the increases delayed, the pandemic has “seen a massive shift from card present transactions to card not present transactions which carry higher interchange and largely shift the fraud burden to merchants,” says the website.
Swipe fees are higher in the U.S. than in any other major industrialized nation, and now some are saying the payment card market is broken. Merchants may see any new post-pandemic fee rate hikes as further reason to nudge their customers into using other means of digital payments besides credit cards for purchases.
This article was written by Mark Horwedel and originally published on PaymentsSource. A subscription may be required.
