Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's great to see you all, particularly Martha.
I have a question related to merchant fees. It's exciting to see the development of ubiquitous payment technologies and the adoption of them in Canada. That's largely a positive development. But the challenge that smaller merchants have in terms of these fees is quite significant. Larger merchants have the capacity to negotiate lower fees. It's very difficult for smaller merchants to refuse either mobile payments or a credit card, because consumers have the expectation that they're going to be able to use these ubiquitous technologies or approaches and do not want to be told by a small merchant, “I don't accept those”.
We're told by organizations, including CFIB, that in fact even with a Visa or MasterCard, a merchant fee applies. Not only when you acquire something is there a 3% fee—say, if you buy a pair of shoes and pay $100 and you use a card, as an example—but then if you take it back, there's another 3% fee, and the merchant still hasn't sold anything.
Is there no delta between, for instance, PayPal and Visa or MasterCard in terms of merchant fees? Is there potential opportunity for mobile payment providers to provide lower fees than the credit card systems currently?