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The Canadian Federation of Independent Business wants Visa Canada and MasterCard Canada to charge a flat per-transaction fee when banks associated with the card networks begin issuing their PIN-debit cards this fall. The Toronto-based federation, which represents 105,000 companies, is asking MasterCard and Visa to charge seven or eight cents per transaction instead a percentage of the sale, Catherine Swift, the organization's president and CEO, tells ATM&Debit News, a CardLine sister publication. The flat, per-transaction fee is what Interac charges, Swift says. Interac, a nonprofit entity, operates Canada's sole existing debit network, but it is seeking to change its status to a profit-making business to compete with Visa and MasterCard. Swift's comments took MasterCard Canada by surprise, as it always has offered flat-fee pricing for its Maestro PIN-debit product. MasterCard wants to use Maestro to enter Canada's PIN-debit market (no issuers in Canada issue signature-debit cards). "MasterCard has made public commitments to that pricing approach on many occasions, of which (the Canadian Federation of Independent Business) is well aware," Deborah Rowe, a MasterCard spokesperson, writes in an e-mail. "Maestro's flat-free transaction cost for merchants is substantially less than that of Interac, which recently increased it fees by 60%." Visa Canada did not reply to an e-mailed request for comment. The card brand announced March plans to issue a "co-badged" PIN-debit card that contains both a microchip and a magnetic stripe. Neither Visa nor MasterCard has set a date to enter Canada's PIN-debit market, but some industry insiders expect to some action to occur this fall. On Tuesday, the federation demanded that Visa and MasterCard adopt a code of conduct for Canada's small-business sector or face calls of government regulation of the payments industry. Swift later described the code of conduct as a working paper designed to seek resolution of some issues. In response to the federation's call, MasterCard said a "nonregulated solution to small-merchant concerns about credit and debit card acceptance is best." Visa did not issue a statement, but Swift says she received a good response from the network. "We are scheduled to meet with Visa and MasterCard, and I won't know how serious they are until I see the whites of their eyes," she adds.
