For those of you who don’t know this, Visa and MasterCard charge a fee to the stores every time you swipe your card. There has been a long-running lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard for price-fixing.
Basically, we have two issues here: one, the two companies have been working together to fix their fees, and, two, that they made it against the rules for the store to pass that fee on to the customers. In the settlement, the companies are lowering the fees to the stores, only for a short time, equaling between $6 billion and $7.25 billion in savings to the stores. Also, stores are now allowed to charge you for using your credit card. Honestly, I think the second part is a great thing, maybe it will be the impetus that we need as a society to move back towards using cash and not get into as much credit card debt as we are in. What do you think?
