TAMPA, Fla. – During the Asian American Convenience Stores Association’s third annual convention in December, the association rallied its members to fight against the major credit-card companies and their high credit-card fees, the Indus Business Journal reports.

The organization decided to talk with the major credit-card companies — American Express, Discovery, MasterCard and Visa, about their high fees, which “significantly eats into [our] profit margin.” Satya Shaw, the president of the association, said the 2 percent to 2.5 percent charged per credit-card transaction is too high.

Shaw told the magazine that his association is working with NACS to lower these credit-card fees. With two-thirds of consumers using plastic to pay for goods and services, most convenience and petroleum retailers accept credit cards. The biggest chunk of the fees charged to retailers by the credit-card companies are interchange fees: the amount the issuing bank charges the retailer’s bank for processing the transaction. NACS estimates that U.S. interchange fees bring in $30 billion annually to credit-card companies.

NACS spokesperson Jeff Lenard said that NACS is  suing Visa and MasterCard and their member banks for collusion. He added that credit card fees cost the convenience store industry $6.6 billion in 2006, while the industry tallied an overall profit of only $4.8 billion.

Lenard said that NACS is glad when any group such as the Asian American Convenience Stores Association is proactively engaged to fight this issue. “The more in this fight the better, because it is a fight,” Lenard said.