Is there any coalition of merchants fighting for fair treatment.

[radeckd]

I was wondering if there is any coalition fighting for merchants rights. Why we have to pay for unauthorized use of credit card? If you run AVS and CVV, ship to verified billing address etc. why we are held responsible for chargeback. What is 2-3% of every transaction used for. If we use all available tools provided by credit card companies why we still loose chargebacks? I know everyone here is talking about how to prevent fraud, but the more we do to protect ourselves, less credit card companies care about it. Why would they? We are liable for all charges. When they send you new crdit card, they do not even require signature confirmation. But they do require it from our shipments. I know that congress is trying to do something about interchange fees, but what about laibility for unauthorized use?

[ByronM]

I wish i had a few billion to fund a non profit card industry whose sole purpose was the reliable & secure transactions for both parties. I figure non profit because the money would be better spent on technology, processes, security, expansion & growth vs shareholder value. Non profit would be mutually beneficial as it would allow for a level of trust over and beyond behind the scene corporate shenanigans such as exclusivity rights and what not. (the only card accepted at the Olympic games blah blah blah)

Its probably worthless to try and fix the existing system since visa/mc are so hell bent on the brand dilution vs service.

[Ledfish]

"I know that congress is trying to do something about interchange fees, but what about laibility for unauthorized use? "

I would really question what Congress is doing because I'm sure that VISA and M/C are in someway major campaign contributors. I'm sure they have a very powerful lobbyist and thus Congress isn't going to do anything that would cut off that supply of money.

My feeling is that until merchants form some sort of powerful coalition, we merchants are going to keep getting hit for everything that the credit card issuers want to hit us for.

[rise2it]

No, but there should be.

I'm amazed (after ten years) that no one has filed a class-action lawsuit over the extra money charged for mail order/ecommerce credit card transactions.

The merchant gets ZERO extra protection.

The merchant gets no relief even if they do not have a chargeback problem, or have a lower chargeback rate than their brick/morter industry average.

.6 % for nothing but being gouged. Multiply that by ten million dollars in sales, for example.

[thorsten iceland]

radeckd wrote:

I was wondering if there is any coalition fighting for merchants rights.

Because the card association governance structures don't include merchants (this was something that Dee Hock fought for and failed to get in the first formative years of Visa) merchants don't get a fair shake.

I suppose if enough merchants bought stock in the newly listed MasterCard and Visa corporations we might get our voice heard... But it's an uphill battle.

In the meantime two organizations to investigate are Merchant911 and the Merchant Risk Council.

[jecasc]

I am glad that Credit Card payments only make up a small amount of my payments.Three cheers for the Single Euro Payments Area. I hope I can further decrease my credit card payments in favour of bank-transfer and direct debit.

2-3% for credit card transaction are a rip off. Especially since the merchant has to take all the risks.