| 5/20/2008 |
Brian Kilcourse |
| A Day Late and a Dollar Short? |
Last week, a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee anti-trust task force took up proposed legislation (H.R. 5546) that is intended to force Visa and MasterCard to directly negotiate with retailers the “interchange fee” for each online credit card transaction. According to the proposed legislation, if such negotiations fail, a panel of three administrative law judges in the Justice Department would set the rates. This is the latest move by lawmakers to put more controls on the credit-card industries. Visa (of course) says the bill is anti-competitive.
We have to ask, what took so long for Congress to act? After all, credit card payment systems are over 30 years old now. We’re supposedly entering a new age of secure debit-based and stored-value systems that will render credit cards obsolete (once consumers adopt the new alternatives, which could accelerate given the outrageous interest rates that banks charge consumers).
What do you think?
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| keywords: Retail, Retail IT, VISA, MasterCard, PCI, Congress, Data Theft, Credit Card, Payment Regulation |
