As you may know, CFIB is a not-for-profit non-partisan organization representing more than 109,000 small and medium-size independent businesses across Canada. I will be walking you through a slide deck that I hope you have in front of you.
There's no doubt that payment systems, especially credit card-specific payments, have been a touchy subject for merchants of all sizes, but especially for smaller merchants, who often feel powerless against large payment networks because they feel they have little choice but to accept the terms of payment and technology imposed on them.
While they always have the option of not accepting credit cards, this is very difficult for some sectors, such as retail and hospitality, which could simply not operate without providing their customers with the option of paying by credit or debit, as you see on slide 2.
On slide 2 you can also see that cheques remain the top form of payments among all types of small and medium-size businesses. In fact, Canada has been slow in adopting e-invoicing and payment solutions, particularly at the business-to-business level.
The good news is that most entrepreneurs see the benefits of moving to electronic forms of invoicing, payment, and acceptance but have limited options that are user friendly and affordable. Our hope is that some of these emerging digital solutions will start to address this gap in the Canadian payments market.
As you'll see on slide 3, despite the abundance of businesses accepting credit cards, if given a choice of which payment type to accept, very few even among those in the retail and hospitality sectors would choose to accept credit cards, citing the cost as the biggest factor in that decision.
We welcomed the credit and debit card code of conduct in 2010, as it served to save low-cost in-store debit in Canada and provided merchants with a small degree of power in their dealings with the industry, but with all kinds of emerging digital technologies now entering the market, the code must be updated to address them.
Digital payments may offer some advantages to merchants and customers; they also hold the potential to create significant problems and drive up costs. There will soon be many more competitors in the market, including many non-traditional players, each with their own system and fee structure. The result may be additional confusion, complexity, and lack of clarity, especially for smaller merchants trying to balance consumer demand with their own cost to process those payments.
Unfortunately, the hasty and unfair introduction of premium credit cards in Canada served to reduce the trust Canadian merchants have in their payments industry. More recent merchant fee increases and plans to add another level of premium cards into the Canadian market have only added to the growing mistrust. As a result, small firms struggle to believe that the introduction of digital payments will not usher in significantly higher fees following an initial introductory period.
This skepticism is apparent in slide 5, where merchants are asked to rate the current fees associated with each type of credit card. Most feel that Interac debit fees are fair or good, and a majority also find that fees associated with regular credit cards are at least fair, underlining that many merchants accept that there should be a cost associated with the service.
It is in regard to premium credit cards that most are stating that fees are poor, because from a merchant's perspective, there is little additional value for the extra fees they are paying to accept them.
Even more concerning is a lack of transparency. As you can see on slide 6, almost three-quarters of respondents said that it was somewhat or very difficult to understand their credit card fees. Our concern is that this will only become more complex when adding digital payments.
While we understand that currently there is no difference between the fees associated with digital payments and current credit card rates, we find it hard to believe that this scenario will be maintained in the long run, for the simple reason that additional players, such as telecommunication companies, are now involved. As you can imagine, the level of trust that small businesses have for major telecom companies is not much better than it is for credit card companies. Bringing these two industries together does not give small business much comfort that their costs will not increase in the future.
One solution is to quickly update the credit card code of conduct to include new provisions that allow some power to merchants when it comes to emerging digital technologies. We were pleased to hear reference in both the throne speech and the recent budget to making further changes to the code to improve fairness and transparency and help lower credit card acceptance costs for merchants.
These code improvements must include provisions that require payment networks to obtain express written consent for each digital product they put out, even if it is at the same fee as other forms of payment. We understand that industry players will not want to go back to merchants each time a new technology, a new payment option, or a new feature of a wallet is introduced. However, merchants have very few powers other than the ability to choose the payment options they offer. That is why express written consent is absolutely vital to ensure that there is a degree of fairness in the system.
CFIB believes that there are only two parties in making a transaction: the merchant and the consumer. Only merchants should be able to decide which forms of payment they wish to offer, and only consumers should be able to decide by which method they will pay. All payment methods, apps, and technologies should be set to respect the wishes of these two parties, and default settings should not be allowed.
With the proliferation of new players who will enter the payments market, including telecommunications and technology companies, ensuring that the code effectively covers all these players is essential.
A formal and accessible dispute resolution process must be implemented. The current mandate of the FCAC allows it to review complaints for information only and does not provide advice or relief to small business owners. A proper dispute mechanism should have the power to require resolution to specific problems.
Finally, as I mentioned, there is a gap in the Canadian payments market around B to B, business-to-business, transactions and somewhat around business-to-government and government-to-business transactions for smaller businesses. We would encourage emerging digital payment technologies to start filling that gap with potential solutions that are affordable, accessible, transparent, user friendly, and secure, and that allow tracking for record keeping.
Thank you.