News broke earlier today that Visa, MasterCard and big banks have agreed to pay $7.3 billion to millions of merchants to end a seven-year dispute over credit card "swipe" fees. While this is good news for some seven million merchants it is bad news for Visa and MasterCard users who are ordinary people like you and I. Why bad news for us? Well, as the report states, merchants who continue to accept Visa and MasterCard payments from customers would be able to charge us a fee for swiping our cards. Wow! Customers just can't win for losing when it comes to BIG BANKS! They have us by our "tails" no matter what the business - bad mortgage deals, high interest fees on our credit cards, and low interest on our savings, checking, money market, CD accounts to name a few.
Our best alternative to avoid the fees merchants now have the green light to charge us is to go back to paying with cash, which no doubt will make many of us worry about the possibility of being robbed for our CASH. I wonder if our "beloved" political leaders will come to our rescue and save consumers and/or the merchants from having to pay the "swipe" fees? After all the banks are the ones that came up with the cards so why not them footing the bill for us using them? I thing that's only fair but I doubt our TOO BIG to fail banks with their greedy CEOs will consume the "swipe" fees. That will just be too good to be true. Instead, I believe consumers will end up paying two sets of fees: the "swipe" fee from merchants charge and knowing how greedy the banks have become they will pretend that the merchants aren't charging customers a "swipe" and charge their customers a fee disguising it as something else, as they always do. Sad but true.
For full details on the ruling visit: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/13/12728092-visa-mastercard-in-73-billion-settlement-over-credit-card-fees#.UAH9KJ0U-nI.twitter.
Our best alternative to avoid the fees merchants now have the green light to charge us is to go back to paying with cash, which no doubt will make many of us worry about the possibility of being robbed for our CASH. I wonder if our "beloved" political leaders will come to our rescue and save consumers and/or the merchants from having to pay the "swipe" fees? After all the banks are the ones that came up with the cards so why not them footing the bill for us using them? I thing that's only fair but I doubt our TOO BIG to fail banks with their greedy CEOs will consume the "swipe" fees. That will just be too good to be true. Instead, I believe consumers will end up paying two sets of fees: the "swipe" fee from merchants charge and knowing how greedy the banks have become they will pretend that the merchants aren't charging customers a "swipe" and charge their customers a fee disguising it as something else, as they always do. Sad but true.
For full details on the ruling visit: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/13/12728092-visa-mastercard-in-73-billion-settlement-over-credit-card-fees#.UAH9KJ0U-nI.twitter.
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