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August 12, 2024 • Issue 24:08:01

Green Sheet Advisory Board Navigating the repercussions of scattered state laws - Part 1

A new law in Illinois, effective July 2025, prohibits interchange assessments on sales taxes and gratuities, and legislation pending in at least four other states would impose similar prohibitions. Given the adjustments this will require of merchants and payment processors, we asked members of The Green Sheet Advisory Board the following questions:

  1. What are the immediate and long-term effects of scattered state laws likely to be on stakeholders such as merchants, consumers, your business and/or the payments industry as a whole?
  2. Is complying with the Illinois bill and similar legislation in other states feasible? If not, why not? If so, what will service providers need to do to help merchants comply?
  3. It appears lawmakers are well-intentioned in drafting legislation that attempts to ensure merchants aren't gouged by growing payment-acceptance costs. Could legislators have a more effective approach to legislation that affects the payments industry? And how might payment professionals work with them?

Following is a portion of the answers we received.

Mark Dunn, Field Guide Enterprises LLC

  1. In speaking from my consulting role for agents and small to medium-sized ISOs, the Illinois statute will most likely pose difficulties in compliance for ISOs with Illinois merchant clients.

    Agents and ISOs in their sales roles supply entries on merchant processing applications that convey rates and fees. For most agents and ISOs these rates and fees are interchange plus—meaning they are additions to the interchange fees, dues and assessments that the card brands and their sponsor banks designate.

    The agents and ISOs have no control over these interchange fees, dues and assessments.  They are wholly reliant on the card brands to calculate and apply these rates and fees. If there are exceptions or variations for merchants in particular states, the card brands and their sponsor banks will have to calculate and apply the proper rates and fees. The agents and ISOs should not be liable for compliance.

  2. It seems to me that applying exceptions for certain states poses more work for the card brands and their sponsor banks. More work requires reprogramming, testing for accuracy and the potential for mistakes. All of this will result in higher costs to cover the cost of the additional work and potentially exposure to legal action for non-compliance.

    I would propose that the states work together, as they have in the past with EBT in the 1990s and other initiatives, to coordinate their approaches. Then the states can propose unified national standards for applying exemptions for sales taxes and gratuities.

    The patchwork created by state legislatures acting singly is not optimal and, to my way of thinking, not feasible.

  3. Certain state legislators seem to be able to draft unified legislative proposals in other areas of the law that are proposed virtually verbatim from one state to the next. Why can't we have a unified approach to sales tax and gratuities for payments?

Steven Feldshuh, Betterpay

With our footprint in the NY tri-state area, we are finding it more and more difficult to address the concerns of merchants with the various cash discount and dual pricing programs. In NY the confusion comes from the permitted credit surcharge program.

As an example, yesterday we received notice of a complaint from Visa on a Pizza location that is set up for dual pricing. The setup is correct in that the business enters the standard price, and if someone pays in cash, they receive a discount. Visa claims you are not permitted to add a surcharge on debit cards. They also claimed that the business never registered with them.

Since this is not a credit surcharge program but a dual processing cash discount program, Visa was incorrect in making this claim. Obviously, the business owner was upset and worried. We submitted pictures of the signage approved by our processor. We had to submit a copy of a cash transaction showing the discount and a card transaction where there is no mention of any surcharge.

So yes, there is absolute confusion in the marketplace. There are also varying signs to post based on the processor. That definitely needs to change to (1) permitted positing of notification.

As an ISO who does not control the transactions, or have any input into the platform the transactions are run on, we are at the mercy of the processor to make internal changes based on state requirements. I would think that this would add complexity to their systems which would lead to higher overall costs and human mistakes, and not accomplish any savings for businesses in that state.

Yes, I certainly understand the need to protect both the merchant and the consumer, but this should come, in my opinion, from the card brand level. I think it would be virtually impossible for a Fiserv, TSYS, Worldpay, Elavon or any other platform to deal with the complexity of each state setting up its own rules. Diversity in rules, by states, certainly would add to the costs to processors which would have to be passed on to the merchant.

Long term, if such an event happened and each state's legislature set up different rules for the processors to follow, I do believe the processors would have the right to increase costs to the merchants, which the states are simply trying to reduce.

Personally, I think a wiser decision should be the reduction and simplification of interchange.  Yes, banks who are issuers are saddled with losses, but to what extent? If Chase or Wells Fargo or any large issuer was losing money on this aspect of their business would they really continue? I know the card issuing banks are very powerful and this reduction in interchange is just a pipe dream, but it would help solve the cost issue to businesses.

Allen Kopelman, Nationwide Payment Systems Inc.

  1. These laws clearly show a need for more understanding of the payment system's workings. These lawmakers need to learn how credit card processing works. These laws are to show that the state can make a law, and then some people will cheer. Later, reality will set in, and they will find out that what they are asking for can't be done, and if it could be done, it would double credit card processing costs.

    They do not want sales tax, tips, and other taxes charged interchange fees. When a customer comes into a restaurant, the bill is $100, the sales tax is 5 percent, $105, they add a tip of $20, and the total is $125. That is all the processor sees. They do not see the tip or the sales tax, and they do not know if the person ate by themself or with two other people, and they do not know what they ate or drank.

    It's the same thing; they want a special SIC code to track guns—someone walks into a sporting goods store and buys a shirt, ammo or a hat. The credit card company needs to find out what the person bought.

  2. It's not feasible as there is no way to separate any of that info. If they are so smart, they can create some new software, which would take them years, and then they can get it PCI compliant, and by the time they figure it out, it will cost millions; they will just forget about this hot mess.

    It's all for votes.

  3. If they wanted to actually do something they could give me a call, and I can give them a few suggestions.
    • a. Bring back small ticket interchange. This will help businesses save money.
    • b. They keep talking about Visa and Mastercard nonstop, but they must look at the big fintech companies processing billions of dollars a month with flat rates—Square, Stripe, Toast, PayPal, Shopify, QuickBooks, etc. Tell them you need to lower your rates to include savings for the "Durbin Debit" by .05 percent and .22 cents they mandated in 2010. Those companies process billions monthly and do not pass any savings to business owners.
    • c. How about card brands lower the dues and assessment fees for merchants?
    • d. Give businesses that process under $25,000 a month a rebate on the interchange fees. We do not make money on interchange as agents, and ISOs give the smaller companies a rebate of 10 percent on interchange fees if they process under $25,000.
    • They need to get rid of PCI compliance fees. It's just a money grab. It does not protect against breaches. It would be better if merchants had to pay an insurance fee in case of a breach for the same money spent on worthless SAQs
    • e. The federal government needs to crack down on scammers and prosecute them and those outside of the USA.
    • f. Make robbing any ATM—if it's at a bank or a store—a felony with 20 years in jail to stop these crooks.

These are just a few suggestions that would help Small to medium-sized businesses.

Stay tuned

We will publish insights from additional Advisory Board members in a subsequent issue of The Green Sheet.

Thank you to the valued payments experts who took the time to weigh in on this issue. end of article

The Green Sheet Inc. is now a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals. Click here for more information.

Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact names or information may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.

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