ACS has welcomed new measures to cap the costs retailers face when processing debit and credit cards. The EU intends to limit the ‘interchange fees’ charged by banks to card providers such as Visa and MasterCard to 0.2% on debit cards and 0.3% on credit cards.
At present, Visa typically charges 8p per debit card transaction and 0.77% of the transaction value for consumer credit cards. MasterCard typically charges 7 to 11p per MasterCard and Maestro debit card transaction, 0.8% of transaction value for ‘standard’ consumer credit cards, and 1.05 to 1.5% for ‘premium’ consumer credit cards.
ACS Chief Executive, James Lowman, said: “We have been working with our partners in the EU for some time now on capping interchange fees. We are pleased with this proposal which takes us one step closer to making the card charges convenience retailers face much more manageable”.
The agreement will need to be endorsed by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, before going to a full vote in the European Parliament. It is expected that the European Council will adopt the text by February or March 2015, with the regulations coming into force by autumn 2015.
