While merchants are urging regulators to expand the Durbin Amendment, the recent surge of “buy now, pay later” is deflating their interchange arguments, according to ICBA’s latest blog post.
Merchant, Consumer Cost: In Main Street Matters, ICBA’s Deborah Matthews Phillips writes that merchants will gladly pay significantly higher transaction fees for BNPL loans than they do for credit cards while ignoring the potentially negative effect on consumer protections.
Flawed Argument: “The argument that credit card interchange results in higher costs is illogical and disingenuous when merchants are actively promoting other forms of more expensive unsecured personal credit while simultaneously decreasing consumer protections,” Matthews Phillips writes.