WASHINGTON, DC—Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC) Executive Chairman Richard Hunt issued the following statement after CMSPI released an inaccurate study on the cost of credit card processing, paid for by the largest corporate mega-stores:
“This report is nothing more than paid industry propaganda masquerading as research. MPC has called CMSPI a ‘partner’ and the CMSPI press release even admitted the study was led by the largest corporate mega-stores in the country like Walmart, Amazon, McDonald’s, Shell, Target, and even Kroger – who just admitted to hiking prices on essentials like milk and eggs faster than inflation.
“Credit card interchange has remained virtually flat at less than 2% for nearly a decade while the price of virtually everything sold by the corporate mega-stores who authored this report has increased.”
NOTE: The Merchants Payments Coalition, a leading champion for the new government mandates in the Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Bill, has called CMSPI a “fantastic partner with us on the advocacy side” at the 13:00 minute mark of this podcast. The CMSPI press release on the study even admitted it was done in partnership with the largest retail merchants in the country. Additionally, research from Nilson puts the weighted average cost of card processing at 1.58%. This is significantly lower than the CMSPI figure, which itself is still less than the cost of accepting and processing cash transactions which range from more than 4.5% to 15%.