Visa Considers Cutting Some Credit Card Fees

Credit card giant Visa has made its first move toward its promised plan to change the interchange fees it charges merchants when customers swipe their credit cards.

For the past two years, when the company threatened to increase the fees, pressure from merchant groups and politicians forced Visa and Mastercard to step back from the fee hikes. Still, they put them all on notice that the increases would arrive this April.

Now, in an interesting twist, Reuters reported late Thursday that Visa is gearing up to reduce fees just for small businesses by 10%. The card company will cut the fees just for businesses with $250,000 or less in credit volume, the news outlet reported, citing an unnamed source.

The card company last month reached an agreement with the world's largest retailer, Amazon, after that company protested Visa's credit card fees for months with surcharges and by blocking use of the card in the U.K.

The smaller merchants targeted for the reduced interchange fee make up some 90% of businesses in the U.S., Reuters reported, but that statistic belies the fact that the big national retail chains account for a disproportionately large share of sales.

(Source: Payments Dive)