The campaign to have payment card Interchange rates reduced is continuing:

• Visa Inc. and its former European affiliate Visa Europe Ltd., were, according to Bloomberg, sued at a London court on July 23 by several retailers in the UK including, Asda, William Morrison Supermarkets Plc and Arcadia Group Plc over payment-processing fees.
• MasterCard is also being sued by more than a dozen companies over the fees in the UK.
• the European Union proposed caps recently on interchange fees, that banks can demand from retailers at 0.2 percent for debit card payments and 0.3 percent for credit cards, because while interchange fees can be agreed on by banks, card companies such as Visa and MasterCard provide default ones that are (mostly) used unless lenders comes to their own bilateral arrangements.

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The one thing that is certain in the present turmoil is that the retailers in both the US and Europe will not give up until they have brought some sense to the payment card and mobile payment charges. What is at risk is not just the current high costs, but much more critically that this structure will be applied to the billions of payments that are currently made by cash. Corporate treasurers how can you help in this campaign?