Visa Inc. V, +2.09% and Mastercard Inc. MA, +3.05% are planning to raise swipe fees for some types of credit-card purchases in April, adding to the squeeze felt by restaurants, retailers and other merchants already struggling through the Covid-19 pandemic.
What’s more, customers’ switch to online shopping during the pandemic — a trend heralded for keeping businesses afloat when people are reluctant to venture inside stores — is also creating extra costs for merchants. Swipe fees, which merchants pay when a customer pays by card, are often higher on online purchases.
The swipe fees, known as interchange fees in industry parlance, are a perpetual source of contention between merchants and card companies. Though invisible to consumers, they are glaring to merchants, which often end up paying fees of about 2% of their customers’ credit-card purchases. The fees are set by the card networks, such as Visa and Mastercard. Merchants pay them to the banks that issue the cards.
Cash use as a share of U.S. payments has been declining for years, but merchants say Covid-19 has accelerated the shift. Even customers who are shopping in stores are shunning cash during the pandemic, which also means more swipe fees for businesses.
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