An assessment of the retail sector

I believe the cost of transaction acceptance is one of the most important issues that mature retailers deal with. Carholder rebates, now up to 1.5%, are reflected in merchant discounts. For gas purhases some issuers are paying rebates of 5%. The industry needs to RETHINK its current the stream of costs that contribute to today's current merchant discount rates. Interchange rates in the U.S. have almost doubled in the past 30 years in order to fund reward programs. At the end of the day I am sure consumers would prefer lower prices than a bunch of reward points. I respect the banks' need to hang onto the $50+ billion in hidden interchange fees. Maybe a payments disrupter will enter fray and create some chaos. It should be fun to see how this all falls out.

It's ike watching a re-run. MCI and Visa have been saying the same things for the last 10/15 years. They are still trying to understand merchants.. what is so difficult? I notice she missed a few regions! Most of the people are MCI and Visa are ex bankers, who really don't understand merchants. They push solutions on to us merchants without actually asking what it is we need. As a global merchant with more than 20,000 outlets I have tried so many times to arrange meetings with MCI and Visa. They are still no where near where they should be.