Sherrod Brown stands up for small businesses and consumers in opposing credit card swipe fees
The Plain Dealer — As a local restaurant owner, I hear a lot of the talk that goes around town. These days, you can’t help but miss conversations about the cost of food, goods and services. In this tough economy, we’re all struggling — everyone except for Visa, MasterCard and the country’s biggest banks, that is.
The reason for that is, every time a customer pays with plastic at my restaurant or at any other store in town, the retailer has to pay a swipe fee back to the bank. Even though it costs only 4 cents to process a transaction, we pay an average of 44 cents per swipe. Unfortunately, a portion of that swipe fee gets included in the cost of food on the menu or items at the grocer’s. My customers and I are subsidizing huge Wall Street profits at a time when we can least afford it.
