Walmart Begins Ban on Visa Cards

The retailer’s threat to ban the use of Visa cards at its Canadian stores is underway.

July 19, 2016

MONTREAL — Walmart's threat to ban the use of Visa cards at its Canadian stores began on Monday in the northwestern Ontario city of Thunder Bay, the Huffington Post reports.

Walmart Canada announced on June 11 that it will stop accepting Visa credit cards. “Following an evaluation of credit card transaction fees in Canada and the rest of the world, we have concluded the fees applied to Visa credit card purchases remain unacceptably high,” said the retailer in a statement.

“To ensure we are taking care of our customers’ best interests and delivering on our promise of saving customers money, we constantly work to reduce our operating costs, including credit card fees. Unfortunately, Visa and Walmart have been unable to agree on an acceptable fee for Visa transactions. As a result we will no longer accept Visa in our stores across Canada, starting with our stores in Thunder Bay, on July 18, 2016. This change will then be rolled out in phases across the country,” the statement read.

The news source writes that Walmart remains optimistic that an agreement will be reached with Visa, while the card company says Walmart is using consumers as pawns. Additionally, Walmart says it pays more than $100 million in fees annually to the card companies. In response, Visa said it offered Walmart one of the lowest rates of any merchant in Canada.

The Retail Council of Canada (RCC) is pushing for a permanent regulatory solution to high interchange fees paid by Canadian merchants, urging all members of Parliament to support legislation, Bill C-236, that seeks to empower the minister of finance to cap interchange rates like countries such as Australia, Switzerland and Israel have done.

“There are no Goliaths involved on the merchant side in this second story, Bill C-236 having been inspired by the Quebec convenience stores association and supported by the 46,000-plus storefronts represented by the Retail Council of Canada,” wrote RCC President and CEO Diane Brisebois, in a recent op-ed. “What these two stories have in common is a rising merchant frustration with the level of credit card fees known as interchange fees.”

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