Industry committee  Sure. Again, I listened to the witnesses from the other day, and I have to say some of the rates they were talking about bore no relationship to our interchange rates. They were much higher. Again, to refer back to my speech, that's because we don't control end-user pricing. I think one of the projects we want to undertake with the CFIB in particular is to make sure merchants understand that there are basically three kinds of acquirer contracts out there.

Industry committee  Yes, but for any given merchant, there are only three consumer rates.

Industry committee  There were three rates before. Individual merchants went from having three rates to having three consumer rates, but there are 19 rates because there are rate reductions for certain categories. There are volume recognition advantages. Catherine Swift mentioned 100 rates in the U.S.

Industry committee  Honestly, I don't know if it's useful information for the consumer. I think the merchant needs to know how interchange is priced. Clearly, we intended to make it simpler by providing customized reports, and clearly we have to work on making sure our small merchants are taking advantage of that infrastructure, but I think what's more important is for the information to be available on a daily basis so that merchants can create some sort of predictability over financial periods--weeks, months, or whatever is convenient--in terms of the actual costs.

Finance committee  That's not correct. That's not the model we work on.

Finance committee  Sure. When we set our rates, what we're trying to do is maximize participation in the system by merchants and cardholders. If we, for example, were to follow the model the RCC thinks exists, we would delight issuers and lose all of our merchants and then eventually make our issuers quite unhappy.

Finance committee  Sure. Again, I listened to the witnesses from the other day, and I have to say some of the rates they were talking about bore no relationship to our interchange rates. They were much higher. Again, to refer back to my speech, that's because we don't control end-user pricing. I think one of the projects we want to undertake with the CFIB in particular is to make sure merchants understand that there are basically three kinds of acquirer contracts out there.

Finance committee  Yes, but for any given merchant, there are only three consumer rates.

Finance committee  There were three rates before. Individual merchants went from having three rates to having three consumer rates, but there are 19 rates because there are rate reductions for certain categories. There are volume recognition advantages. Catherine Swift mentioned 100 rates in the U.S.

Finance committee  Honestly, I don't know if it's useful information for the consumer. I think the merchant needs to know how interchange is priced. Clearly, we intended to make it simpler by providing customized reports, and clearly we have to work on making sure our small merchants are taking advantage of that infrastructure, but I think what's more important is for the information to be available on a daily basis so that merchants can create some sort of predictability over financial periods--weeks, months, or whatever is convenient--in terms of the actual costs.

Industry committee  I believe, Andrea, maybe you can clarify. We provided it to Parliament.

Industry committee  It's enhanced disclosure, but education has to be a big part of it. The rate calculator is an important feature of that education so that they understand that they might not need to accept credit cards to have a viable business.

Industry committee  You know, I can't explain why the association is having--

Industry committee  Yes, but to add to that, I'm not suggesting that MasterCard or Visa were hurt. I'm suggesting that consumers were hurt, and that's well documented in studies by the government accounting office in the United States and a study called by the CRA, and it has been acknowledged in the United States by the Department of Justice, the FTC, and the Small Business Enterprise Council there as well.

Industry committee  Yes, I will.