MCLEAN, Va. - Retailers have made a "better case" for reforming swipe fees, USA Today wrote in an editorial this week. The newspaper laid out the basics first: that when customers use credit or debit cards, merchants pay interchange fees of between 1 percent and 3 percent of the transaction.

"In 2008 retailers paid $48 billion, which they passed on in form of higher prices. That's an average of $427 per household," the newspaper wrote.

While merchants have for years said the fees were too much, it wasn??t until the financial crisis of 2008 turned the tide in favor of banking reform in Congress. Retailers won a small victory with those reforms that included lowering of debit card swipe fees.

But the banks have not taken this lying down. "They are prodding Congress to delay, and ultimately kill, the measure, set to go into effect in July. A two-year delay, championed by Sen. John Tester (D-MT) is circulating in the Senate," wrote USA Today. "In our view, Congress was right to go after debit card swipe fees, even if it went about it in the wrong way."

The newspaper offers its own answer to the problem: "The obvious, and counter-intuitively pro-consumer, solution would have been to allow retailers to pass on the swipe fees to their customers directly as line items on their bills. Once consumers saw the fees, instead of having them hidden in the cost of what they buy, they would rebel against them.

"They would demand a cheap and efficient way to spend their money without having to support a $48 billion industry of middlemen. In so doing, they would both drive down prices and create what doesn't exist now ?" an actual marketplace for credit and debit card branding."

NACS continues to urge retailers to send letters to your senators telling them how vital debit card fee reform is to your business.