Whenever you use a credit card at a business, they have to pay a fee to the company that issued the card. Consumers for Competitive Choice President Bob Johnson says those fees average about two-percent for each transaction, and generated over 48-billion-dollars last year.
However, he says it’s unclear whether those amounts are even justified, because credit card companies don’t have to reveal how they are calculated.
Johnson and other business leaders are calling on Congress to pass legislation that would require credit card companies to account for those fees. He says transparency is needed to make the reasons for those charges clear and to set them at a cost-based level. He says such a move would bring down prices for consumers and give businesses more money to hire workers.
Credit card companies argue the fees are needed to cover their cost of doing business. But Johnson believes they’re taking advantage of a service businesses can’t survive without. He says up to 90-percent of transactions processed by businesses are done by credit card.
AUDIO: Andrew Beckett reports (1:18)