The Banking Industry’s Meal Ticket

In her recent article Credit Card Gravy Train Is Crushing Consumers, Ellen Brown provides an excellent analysis of the banking industry’s profitable swipe fee scam and the burdensome cost to both merchants and consumers.

Most consumers don’t realize that every time they use their credit card, the retailer is charged an interchange or swipe of about two percent of the total purchase. Banks are able to charge this rate because Visa and MasterCard, the two biggest credit card companies, set the fees essentially in secret and then dictate the terms to merchants, who are left with no choice but to accept them if they want to stay in business. As Brown explains, two percent:

“…may not sound like much. But consider that for balances that are paid off monthly (meaning most of them), the banks make 2% or more on a loan averaging only about 25 days (depending on when in the month the charge was made and when in the grace period it was paid). Two percent interest for 25 days works out to a 33.5% return annually, and that figure may be conservative.”

In other words, the swipe fee results in big profits for the banks but puts a big squeeze on the rest of us from the merchants who are forced to absorb the fees to the consumers who are left paying higher prices to cover that cost.
Interestingly, Brown compares this fee to a private sales tax.

“A 2% merchants’ fee is the financial equivalent of a 2% sales tax—one that now adds up to over $30 billion annually in the US. The effect on trade is worse than either a public sales tax or a financial transaction tax, since these taxes are designed to be spent back into the economy on services and infrastructure. A private merchant’s tax simply removes purchasing power from the economy.”

It’s a sneaky game the banks are playing and it leaves merchants and consumers holding the bag while sapping an already vulnerable economy of the energy it needs.

(photo source: Ripoff Report)