ALEXANDRIA, VA -- NACS retail members looking to stay abreast of important industry topics, such as card fees, the 2006 NACS State of the Industry (SOI) report and more dialed in on Thursday, Jan. 19, for the inaugural NACS retail membership conference call.

Hosted by NACS 2005-2006 Chairman Scott Hartman, the call updated retail members on the antitrust lawsuit pursued by NACS on behalf of the industry against Visa, MasterCard and other major banks, as well as the data collection process for this year’s SOI.

To kick off the call, Teri Richman gave an update on the antitrust, class-action lawsuit being pursued by NACS on behalf of its members alleging that Visa, MasterCard and other banks are engaging in collusive practices by setting credit card interchange fees at highly competitive levels. Richman also gave an update on the claims process in the settlement for the Visa Check/MasterMoney antitrust litigation.

Gray Taylor and Bob Swanson discussed the methodology used by NACS to collect this year’s SOI data, the importance of retailer participation and the need for each retailer to complete and return to NACS the SOI survey.

Industry Relations Committee Chairman Jeff Miller was also on hand to brief callers on current NACS retail membership numbers and respond to inquiries.

For more information about each topic discussed during the conference call, contact NACS at (800) 966-6227, or e-mail Teri Richman at trichman@nacsonline.com; Gray Taylor at gtaylor@nacsonline.com; or Bob Swanson at rswanson@nacsonline.com.

The next call will take place on Thursday, Feb. 16 from 3:00 to 4:00 pm Eastern time. Prior to the call, topics will be announced in early February via NACS Online and NACS Daily. For more information, contact Carolyn Schnare at cschnare@nacsonline.com.