Whether it's an advantage...it's a competitive reality that credit unions are obviously significantly smaller than any of the five chartered banks, so they band together and provide a larger scope of access. They have two options. There's a network called Acculink, which is credit union only, and then they could participate in the Exchange--which, other than in the Prairies, the rest of the country does--to allow for a no-surcharge situation. Then some of the individual credit unions choose, at their option, not to charge any incremental service charges to their own cardholders for those transactions as well.
On April 17th, 2007. See this statement in context.