Swipe Fee War Coming?

Ellen C. Wells

The Mariano’s supermarket chain has stopped accepting Visa credit cards and now Kroger, the chain’s parent company, is considering expanding that ban. Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., announced its California unit, Foods Co. Supermarkets, will stop accepting Visa cards at 26 locations soon. This is all in an attempt to fight back against the more than $90 billion Kroger pays in swipe fees each year.
 
Said a Kroger spokesperson in a recent Chicago Tribune article about the card fees, “[When the fees] get out of alignment, as it is now, we don’t believe we have a choice but to use whatever mechanism possible to get it back into alignment.” Other retailers are also taking actions of sorts. Walmart dropped Synchrony Financial after not coming to an agreement on economic terms and Amazon’s investigation into its own financial services arm is a way to stave off growing credit card fees. GP