Restaurants Canada Applauds Federal Government for Lowering Credit Card Fees for Small Businesses
After months of advocacy and collaboration with the federal government, we are pleased to see Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finances, alongside Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development, announcing lower credit card transaction fees for small businesses.
Restaurants Canada has been advocating for a long time to lower interchange fees on credit cards. In our last two pre-budget submissions, we asked for a reduction of these fees that represent an additional burden to our restaurant operators.
In its recent budget, the Liberal government confirmed they were working with two major credit card companies on interchange fee reductions, and today, we see the details of it.
As noted in the announcement;
“Visa and Mastercard have agreed to:
- reduce domestic consumer credit interchange fees for in-store transactions to an annual weighted average interchange rate of 0.95 per cent from a current average rate of 1.26 per cent;
- reduce domestic consumer credit interchange fees for online transactions by 10 basis points, resulting in reductions of up to 7 per cent; and,
- provide free access to online fraud and cyber security resources to help small businesses grow their online sales while preventing fraud and chargebacks.
Specifically, small businesses with annual Visa sales volume below $300,000 will qualify for the lower interchange fees from Visa, and those with annual Mastercard sales volume below $175,000 will qualify for the lower fees from Mastercard.”
Restaurants Canada continues to work collaboratively with the government to improve the profitability of restaurants, by finding concrete solutions for our members from coast to coast to coast.
