Welch Lauds Senate Kill of Interchange Delay Posted by AVCU on 8:36 PM

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch posted the following statement regarding the Senate defeat of debit interchange controls delay on his website:

"This is a long-overdue, good day for consumers and Main Street businesses. Visa, MasterCard and the big banks have been fighting ferociously to gut swipe fee reforms. Why? Because they want to maintain their unchecked monopoly pricing power that has for years allowed them to charge the highest swipe fees in the world. I congratulate Senator Durbin and those who withstood the withering pressure from big banks to preserve this important consumer protection.

Earlier in a "Roll Call" editorial column appearing the morning of the Senate vote on Tester's interchange delay amendment, Vermont Congressman Peter Welch slammed Tester's effort as a "kill" instead of "delay" measure, citing it as "a diversionary tactic that allows huge banks to maintain an unbalanced and unfair profit center at the expense of small businesses that are the lifeblood of communities in Vermont and throughout the country." Roll Call is the daily publication of DC legislators and staff.


Welch goes on to claim that:

• U.S. swipe fees are the highest in the world,
• Debit card swipe fees are 10 times what it actually costs to process the transaction
• Swipe fees add 1% to 3% to the cost of all goods and services, regardless of form of payment
• That claims that community banks and credit unions will be hurt are bogus, and
• That claims that merchants won't pass long the interchange windfall equates to "we’ve been doing such a good job ripping off consumers, we can’t let someone else do it!”

Read Welch's editorial in entirety here.


To write to Congressman Welch go to http://www.house.gov/formwelch/issue_subscribe.htm