Like any small business, you probably take credit cards. When you signed up for your merchant account, you were introduced to a hidden tax called the “interchange access fee.” This fee ranged from 1% (huge retailers) to 4% (small business) and was deducted from every credit card charge you took in. You were told the rate would go down as you took in more credit cards, and you were told it was a normal cost of doing business.

What you may not have been told is that this hidden “tax” on retailers as tripled in the last decade, and now cost the average consumer approximately $427 each year.

Congress recently passed a bill to increase consumer protection for credit cards, and  now they are looking at regulating interchange access fees.

If congress gets these fees under control, it will put money directly into your pocket. I’m going to stay on top of this and urge my congressman to do the same.

Tags: business

permalink |

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.