A letter to the editor can be a great way to personalize this complicated issue and show how important it is to local merchants. We are encouraging supporters to use the letter below as a template to draft your own letter to the editor to submit to your local paper.
Most newspapers allow you to submit letters online under the “Opinion” tab of their website. It is an easy process—and you could wind up as a published author that makes a huge difference in the fight for swipe fee reform.
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To the Editor:
As a small businessman who works every day to provide a great shopping experience for members of this community, I’m between a rock and a hard place when it comes to accepting credit cards.
On the one hand, paying with plastic makes it easier for people to shop at my store. That’s great. What isn’t great is that I have to hand over a chunk of every credit card sale to the banks and credit card companies. For every credit card “swipe,” the banks charge a “swipe fee” that I can’t negotiate. I don’t even know what the fee will be until the monthly bill comes.
Today, I pay an average of 2-3 percent of the sales ticket in “swipe” fees when someone uses a credit card. On some sales, the bank actually takes more money than make in profit. That’s just not right.
These fees make it hard to lower prices – something that my customers would love – or invest in my business and my employees – something that I’d love to be able to do. And, the fact that I don’t know what fees will be at the time of the sale make it that much harder to manage my business.
People ask all the time what can be done to jump start our economy. I know one thing for sure – doing something about credit card fees will help my business and millions of other small businesses just like mine lower prices, hire more people or pay our workers a little bit more. That will do more for our economy than padding bank profits the way we do now.