This morning, we noticed a news item from AFX Financial News warning that consumers might be facing new card fees. Based on the E.U.s regulatory interventions, the credit card associations might need to recoup lost revenue by increasing consumers' card fees. This sounds more like a drug addict who needs to identify where they will be getting their next fix from.
Rather than scoring a new pool of income, the card issuers should look back to when interchange fees were cost-based. Like most businesses, efficiencies and new technologies should also be bringing down merchant interchange fees, but the inverse is occurring due to what we alledge is an anticompetitive, price-fixing monolopy.
Potentially threatening card holders and casting fears of new fees to replace their ocean of windfall profits is not fair. Should we expect to read more ominous predictions and amplified fear of new fees to counter the impending Office of Fair Trade's response to anticompetitive practices by the credit card associations?
[Source: WayTooHigh.com via AFX news item]
