Sunday 17 October 2010

Is US DoJ Lawsuit actually a win for MasterCard & Visa

Credit card loyalty programmes took a potential dent last week when Visa and MasterCard settled a dispute with the US Justice Department. The dispute centred around the restrictions the card schemes placed on retailers about card acceptance and how they are able to promote or incentivise different payment methods.

To accept Visa or MasterCard, retailers have to essentially sign up to an "honor all cards" commitment. In principle this rule is a good thing as it means that wherever you see the card scheme logo, you can be assured your card will be accepted. The problem however is that increasingly not all cards are equal.

Card schemes typically charge merchants a fee for every transaction which ranges anywhere from 1-3%. This interchange fee is the cost of doing business if you want to take credit cards and as a retailer you cannot impose a surcharge to cover it. This basically means that whether I pay using cash, debit or credit card, I should pay the same price.

While for the consumer these restrictions sound fair, what really niggles merchants is the fact that these fees are increasing. Card schemes are free to set the interchange rates at whatever level they want and increasingly they are charging more for "premium cards" and "reward cards".

Again the principle behind this seems fair - if you want to access a better class of customer who has more disposable income, you need to pay a little more for the privilege. The problem though is that increasingly the bar is being lowered for a "premium" customer meaning merchants pay more fees across more customers and don't necessarily get more benefits.

The retailers argument is that as they cannot surcharge for these cards or refuse to accept them they are essentially held hostage to whatever the card schemes want to charge.

This has now changed though. While the retailer still has to accept all cards within a given scheme they sign up to, they can now incentivise customers to use other payment methods including cheaper credit cards. This could mean for example that a customer may be offered a 2% discount for using a cheaper credit card or debit card, making them decide at the POS whether they want 2% off now or pay 2% extra and earn reward points.

The value exchange and payment decision is suddenly going to get very complicated.

However, it's not all that bleak. The Visa and MasterCard settlement is actually quite clever and probably more of a win for them than a loss.

The first rule of the proposed settlement states:-

[Allow merchants to] offer consumers an immediate discount or rebate or a free or discounted product or service for using a particular credit card network, low-cost card within that network or other form of payment

This means that the offer at POS will have to be something like "2% discount for using debit card" rather than a "2% charge for using rewards credit card".

Given that consumers will have already seen the price of goods published and will have been mentally prepared to pay that price, this I suspect won't have such a great effect. In addition, the amount of rebate that can be offered is also very small on a per transaction basis - anyone who's enrolled in a card reward scheme knows that you have to spend thousands to get a small amount back. On a $50 transaction, any free gift worth around $1 isn't going to be worth having - I'll just have the points thanks.

While larger merchants can probably combine this with their own loyalty scheme, offering say double points for transactions using a different payment card, it is likely that highly loyal customers already have the merchants own payment card - so little traction here either.

For smaller merchants this is likely to work even less. They are in a constant battle for customers against the larger retail behemoths and so unless you're the only merchant for miles, setting payment hurdles higher is likely to just make footfall lower. Their only saving grace is the proposed rule:-

[Allow merchants to] communicate to consumers the cost incurred by the merchant when a consumer uses a particular credit card network, type of card within that network, or other form of payment

This tugging on the heart strings for a small mom and pop store is likely to be more motivating than any discount on other payment mechanisms.

Also, don't expect consumers to win in this deal any time soon. Attorney General Eric Holder said:-

We want to put more money in consumers’ pockets, and by eliminating credit card companies’ anti-competitive rules, we will accomplish that.

However, any potential savings that retailers make out of this won't be passed on to the consumer in lower prices, they will simply go into greater profits for the retailer. The experience in Australia when they halved interchange fees showed that basically consumers get less rewards on the cards, pay more in bank fees and end up still paying the same price. While this settlement is slightly different, it certainly won't result in savings for consumers. If anything it will move money from consumers pockets in the form of points and into retailers pockets in the form of increased profits.

There is though I think a happy medium here.

For many merchants, especially the smaller ones, they don't have the ability to recognise and reward customers in a meaningful way either due to purchase frequency or the running costs around a loyalty solution. What this judgment does do is provide a wake-up call for banks that they cannot keep retailers at arms length and expect them to just payout for a loyalty programme which is basically there to create stickiness to the bank - not the retailer.

I think now is the time for banks to embrace retailers and provide added value back to them in return for accepting their cards. Banks have a wealth of data and very sophisticated loyalty platforms. The opportunity to create a win-win here for banks and retailers is immense and if the judgment delivers this it will have been worth it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

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