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WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 2, 2025) – The Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) sent the following correspondence to Congress about credit card swipe fees exceeding inflation.
Wall Street to Congress:
Who ya gonna believe, us or the facts?
The credit card industry keeps swiping more and more money from Main Street and everyday people, but they keep pretending they never raise their fees.
Never mind that in the past few years alone fee increases have been reported for January 2025, October 2023, and April 2022.
Below you can see for yourself the total Visa/Mastercard credit card swipe fees and inflation by year over 10 years.* The fees increased by multiples of the rate of inflation every year other than 2020 when sales fell dramatically due to pandemic shutdowns.
| Year | Visa/MC Swipe Fees ($) | Visa/MC Swipe Fee Rate Change (%) | Rate of Inflation (%) | Swipe Fee Change Relative to Rate of Inflation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $39.13 Billion | |||
| 2015 | $43.33 Billion | Increased 10.7% | 0.7% | Increase of 15.3 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2016 | $47.53 Billion | Increased 9.7% | 2.1% | Increase of 4.6 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2017 | $54.69 Billion | Increased 15.1% | 2.1% | Increase of 7.2 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2018 | $62.53 Billion | Increased 14.3% | 1.9% | Increase of 7.5 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2019 | $67.59 Billion | Increased 8.1% | 2.3% | Increase of 3.5 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2020 | $61.63 Billion | Decreased 8.8% | 1.4% | Pandemic dramatically reduced sales |
| 2021 | $77.48 Billion | Increased 25.7% | 7.0% | Increase of 3.7 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2022 | $93.20 Billion | Increased 20.2% | 6.5% | Increase of 3.1 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2023 | $100.7 Billion | Increased 8.0% | 3.4% | Increase of 2.4 times Rate of Inflation |
| 2024 | $111.2 Billion | Increased 10.4% | 2.9% | Increase of 3.6 times Rate of Inflation |
Note that if you skip the anomaly of the economy freefalling for part of 2020, the increase from 2019 to 2021 was 14.6%. Any way you look at it, the increases have exceeded inflation by large margins.
And the increase in total fees is not just attributable to larger transaction volume. As The Nilson Report just disclosed, in 2023 the average swipe fee rate for Visa and Mastercard-branded credit cards was 2.26% of the transaction amount, but in 2024 that average increased to 2.35%. The fees are going up. The credit card market is broken. Competition and the free market have been stifled as Visa and Mastercard set cartel-style pricing for all the banks that issue their cards.
NSGA is a member of the Merchants Payments Coalition.
Topics
Swipe Fees Merchants Payments Coalition Credit Cards Visa Mastercard Inflation