Western Grocer Serving the industry since 1916
TORONTO, ON, September 14, 2016 – The release today by both Visa and MasterCard of the long awaited ‘independent third party audits’, of their promised credit card merchant fee reductions- under a voluntary agreement struck in April, 2014 with the previous Government of Canada- confirms what the Small Business Matters Coalition has been saying for the last year. “We have stated all along that the promised voluntary reductions by the two big credit card companies, to an overall average rate of 1.5% was not meaningful enough to make any real difference to the plight of Canada’s small business” said Gary Sands, Chair of the Small Business Matters Coalition and Vice President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. ”However, it is even more disconcerting that even that very modest target has not been met.” The Coalition has always questioned why an overall average merchant fee rate of 1.5% was chosen by the previous government and what it was based on. Canadian investment company Nesbitt Burns dismissed the proposed voluntary fee reduction of approximately only a 10% reduction as having “no positive financial impact” for merchants. Continue reading here.
