CUNA filed an amicus brief this week with the U.S. Court of Appeals defending a Texas law that prohibits retailers from imposing a surcharge on buyers who use credit cards to complete purchases.
The brief was filed Wednesday with the Fifth Circuit in the case of Rowell et all v. Pettijohn. In that case, a group of merchants is challenging a Texas law that prohibits them from imposing a surcharge onto buyers, but CUNA has argued that allowing merchants do to so would shift costs onto consumers.
"Without the Texas surcharge ban, merchants would be able to add additional fees on to products when consumers use their credit card as payment, and shift the cost of these electronic payments to consumers," said Jared Ihrig, chief compliance officer at CUNA. "This would be inappropriate because merchants receive a number of benefits from participating in the credit card system, including increased sales, being able to keep staff levels low, allowing for transactions at any time through automated or online processes, fraud protection and insufficient fund loss protection. Consumers should be protected through standardized pricing so that the posted price is the amount that card users pay."
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CUNA said the surcharge would likely force credit unions to reevaluate their credit offerings and possibly exit the market, resulting in fewer credit card choices for consumers. Currently, retailers are permitted to apply a surcharge to credit card purchases only, and cannot impose a surcharge for purchases made using a debit or prepaid card. Surcharges were banned under federal law until 1984, and Visa and MasterCard continued the ban as part of their network agreements until litigation brought by a class of retailers in 2005 was finally settled in 2013. Several states still ban surcharges, however.
According to a media release from CUNA, three similar cases across the country are pending in Florida, New York and California. CUNA filed an amicus brief in the Florida district court, which has ruled surcharges to be unconstitutional. The New York Credit Union Association has filed an amicus brief for the case in New York, which is currently under appeal. The California case is still pending.
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