Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. are postponing planned credit-card fee increases that were set to kick in this year after the plans drew criticism from lawmakers. Citing the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses, Visa and Mastercard said they will hold off on increasing interchange fees for merchants until next April, the Wall Street Journal reported. Visa and Mastercard plans included raising interchange fees for many online purchases by around 0.05 to 0.10 of a percentage point, according to a document reviewed by the Journal. Those changes would have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in additional interchange fee charges for merchants within the span of a year, according to estimates from CMSPI, a merchants’ payments consulting firm. The planned fee increases prompted Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) to send a letter this month to the chief executive officers of Visa and Mastercard calling on the companies to refrain from moving forward with the increases, citing the pandemic’s effect on businesses.
