Canada Doesn’t Put Up With It
The CBC reports that the Competition Bureau takes on Visa, MasterCard
At issue are fees charged to merchants by Visa and MasterCard every time a transaction is processed. The credit card companies collect between one and a half and three per cent of the total amount of the transaction. The companies can charge even higher fees on premium credit cards.
According to Canada’s competition commissioner, the rules have eliminated competition between the rivals and driven up the cost to merchants, which ultimately affects the prices consumers pay.
“Visa and MasterCard’s anti-competitive behaviour hurts businesses and consumers alike,” said Melanie Aitken, Canada’s competition commissioner.
The US still can’t figure out that no one else puts up this crap from corporations. The Canadians have actual health care for everyone, and they don’t tolerate anti-competitive behavior. They expect businesses to follow the rules … or else.
8 comments
when the causes of the financial meltdown were first becoming apparent and people were just beginning to think of bringing back glass-steagall, you’d hear a lot of but canada doesn’t have glass-steagall! from the ‘money just wants to be free’ crowd. to which the obvious answer was they don’t have regulatory capture either.
didn’t you write a post once on the boston tea party and ant-corporation sentiment? or am i misremembering?
You are remembering accurately, and I am about to do it again.
Visa, MasterCard Decline as Federal Reserve Moves to Lower Debit-Card FeesVisa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. plunged more than 10 percent in New York trading after the Federal Reserve Board proposed rules that could slash debit-card interchange fees by 90 percent.
The new rules, posted today by the Fed on its website, may aid retailers and cut profit for lenders who reaped about $15 billion from interchange fees last year
🙂
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-16/federal-reserve-moves-to-reduce-debit-card-fees-visa-mastercard-decline.html?nstrack=sid:4831250|met:300|cat:0|order:1
That’s what really gets to me. You do the work of entering the numbers to spend your own money, that the banks get to use while it is on deposit, and you are paying the financial industry to be an unpaid employee.
People who have never been in business realize that you deposit your withholding money from your payroll, and the banks only deposit it in the Treasury account once a quarter. They get to use that money for free for up to three months.
I really hate what banks have become which is why I use a credit union.
I use a credit union as well, and at the end of this quarter I am going to transfer my account from the CU that I have used for 25 years to a different CU because my current organization has become quite generous to themselves and behave more and more like a bank every year.
Fortunately, my current CU went through that a while ago, and the directors involved were removed at the annual election.
I used to have a local bank that I loved, but they got bought out by Barrnett Bank, which was bought by Nations Bank, which was bought by Bank of America. I left when the first buy out occurred because they replaced the head teller, and that woman had saved my butt all over the world by vouching for me and guaranteeing my checks. She was the bank for me, and if the new owners were too stupid to understand that, they were too stupid to have my money. Since then, that was back in the 1970s, I have used credit unions when they were available.
yes! that was the one i was remembering! although i’d forgotten the ‘gone gekko’ part. thanks.
Glad to be of assistance.