{"id":120689,"date":"2018-08-09T14:24:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/?p=120689"},"modified":"2018-08-09T14:33:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:33:10","slug":"disapointing-announcement-of-the-federal-gov-today-on-credit-card-fees-reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/disapointing-announcement-of-the-federal-gov-today-on-credit-card-fees-reduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Disapointing Announcement Today On Credit Card Fees Reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal government <a href=\"https:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/entrepreneur\/big-credit-card-firms-agree-to-cut-fees-they-charge-merchants-source\">today announced the renewal of an agreement<\/a> with credit card companies to reduce abusive credit card fees.<\/p>\n<p>Under this new five-year agreement, the credit card companies will lower the average fees by only 0.1%, down to 1.4% from 1.5%, while they are capped at 0.5% in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Although this is a step in the right direction, it is a disappointing agreement in several respects:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, it is a decrease of about 6% for the next five years. For a retailer who pays $80,000 a year in fees, this can potentially represent a saving of $4,800&#8230; with still $75,200 to pay while the hope of capping costs once for all completely disappears from the radar screen!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Then, we are talking about average fees that will not necessarily apply equally to all, depending on the type of cards used in a store. In other words, some retailers will not see a difference while others may;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Several voices have also questioned the average cost calculations put forward by the credit card companies and the fact that they will only drop by 0.1% suggests a lot of &#8220;room to maneuver&#8221; in how this decrease will be applied;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Also, it is clearly a victory for the credit card companies since they make peace for five years at an extremely cheap price.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In short, this <span class=\"hvr\">announcement<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"hvr\">cut<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"hvr\">the<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"hvr\">ground<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"hvr\">from<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"hvr\">under<\/span>\u00a0retail advocacy groups, just like the Conservative government did at the beginning of the decade.<\/p>\n<p>And if we continue to reduce credit card fees at this pace, we will have capped them as in Europe in &#8230;. 50 years! That makes billions and billions of dollars in fees to pay until then.<\/p>\n<p>But of course, time is of the essence. Credit card companies will have plenty of time in the next few years and beyond to find new ways to preserve their duopoly and abusive business model.<\/p>\n<p>However, hats off to MP Linda Lapointe for at least leading the fight and making a real gain, no matter how small.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal government today announced the renewal of an agreement with credit card companies to reduce abusive credit card fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":120688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,1743],"tags":[1757],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/cartecredit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depquebec.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}