By Vincent Taylor, vtaylor@opisnet.com
Copyright, Oil Price Information Service
As expected, the National Association of Convenience Stores is taking its battle over debit card swipe fees to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The association said that today it asked the Supreme Court to hear NACS’ appeal of a March 21 federal appeals court ruling that upheld a controversial federal rule on debit card swipe fees.
NACS has argued that the rule as written, issued by the Federal Reserve Board, allows banks to set unreasonably high swipe fees and isn’t in line with “the Durbin Amendment,” the federal legislation on which the rule is supposed to be based.
The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), was part of the Wall Street Reform Act and directed the Fed to write a rule ensuring that interchange transaction fees are reasonable.
“Debit swipe fee reform was needed to address the price-fixing of debit swipe fees that the giant card companies engaged in for the nation’s largest banks,” NACS President and CEO Henry Armour said today in a prepared statement. “Unfortunately, the Fed overrode the language of the law and blunted the positive impact of reform. We need the Supreme Court to decide this case so that American merchants and their customers stop paying billions of dollars more than they should per year to the big banks.”
Other groups litigating the matter along with NACS include the Food Marketing Institute, National Restaurant Association, National Retail Federation, Boxcov’s department stores, and Miller Oil Company.
