Insights

Unwrapping Card Fees This Holiday Season

This year is poised to be an expensive holiday season for retailers, who have battled breakneck fee increases over the past three years. Between rising fees, continued growth in the online segment, and a spike in credit card usage, digital retailers could be hardest hit.

How Have U.S. Card Fees Grown Since 2006?

U.S. merchants face some of the highest credit card swipe fees globally. On November 19, 2024, the Senate Judiciary Committee revisits this issue in a hearing titled “Breaking the Visa-Mastercard Duopoly: Bringing Competition and Lower Fees to the Credit Card System.”

Credit Card Competition Act Could Result in Annual Savings Upward of $16.4 Billion

CMSPI estimates pro-competitive policies on U.S. debit have saved merchants and consumers billions.

How Much Interchange was Paid on Sales Tax in the U.S.?

CMSPI estimates that U.S. merchants paid nearly $10 billion in interchange on sales tax, gasoline and diesel excise taxes, and alcohol excise taxes. Read below to see how the impact differed by state.

Fraud Wars: How Tech, Shifting Attitudes, and Organized Crime Are Redefining Online Retail Security

In the high-stakes world of online retail, three forces are shaking up the fight against fraud: cutting-edge technology, changing attitudes towards what feels like fraud, and increasingly cunning organized crime. Are merchants ready to tackle these evolving threats? Dive into our latest blog to uncover how these elements are transforming ecommerce security and what retailers need to do to stay ahead.

Five Common Mistakes When Evaluating the PINless Debit Business Case

Payments teams love flexibility almost more than they love incremental savings. While PINless debit can offer both flexibility and savings, when talking PINless debit, however, many merchants claim that they don’t see a large enough opportunity to invest in the solution. Unfortunately, many merchants may not be evaluating PINless granularly enough to properly evaluate the potential savings.

Boosting Transaction Approval Rates: A Guide to The Tools on The Market

In their 2024 report, the Merchant Risk Council found that ‘revenue’ was the most highly ranked payments KPI among merchants. Here, we break down five industry innovations intended to maximize the success of good transactions.

The Complexity of Payments: A Driver of Costs or An Opportunity for Savings?

As complexity mounts, many merchants find themselves grappling to control their expenses, leading to unnoticed elevated fees. However, some merchants are ushering in a new era of payments optimization where embracing complexity drives savings, rather than cost increases.

A Guide to Competition in the U.S. Payments Market

Does network routing competition create market efficiencies? In this article, we discuss competitive interventions within the U.S. payments landscape. We compare norms pre- and postintervention and highlight key hurdles faced by merchants in extracting the value of regulation. Finally, we map out the road ahead in terms of new challenges and potential avenues for improving the payments landscape.

“Fee Changes, Right Ahead!” Diving Into Spring Card Brand Releases Around the World

In April 2024, merchants around the world faced yet another set of changes to their card acceptance fees, estimated to cost them over $250 million in the U.S. alone.

Stakeholders Respond to Proposed Revision of U.S. Debit Interchange Fee Cap

For the first time since 2011, the U.S. Federal Reserve has proposed a revision to the maximum interchange fees charged on debit card transactions in the U.S.. With the comment period on the proposal now closed, CMSPI’s Insights team has analyzed the four main arguments against the rate revisions in light of public payments data.

There’s No Such Thing as European Payments: Six Steps for Merchants Going Local

At the Merchant Risk Council’s April conference in Barcelona, CMSPI’s Timo Pauget and Martha Southall were joined by Jérémie Fave, Payment and Fraud Expert at LVMH, to ask how multinational merchants are approaching one of the most complex payments markets around.