I'm just trying to get through a number of questions here, so I appreciate the answer as it pertains to customers and the folks who use credit cards.
In your testimony, Mr. Scott, you talked about the ever-changing and uncontrollable external cost structures that are inflicted on small business or businesses in general as it pertains to the interchange and transaction fees charged to your businesses and the businesses you represent. This is something that I think came as a surprise to many consumers as these hearings have unfolded. There is a different interchange fee that the small business or the business owner has to pay depending on which credit card or Visa they pull out of their wallet.
In fact, if they pull out one Visa, it might be one fee for the business, and if they pull out the other Visa, it might be a different fee for the small business. It's made me a lot more aware of what I'm using when I pull out a credit card at the grocery store.
As it pertains to these uncontrolled and ever-changing fees, do you have a suggestion as to what we should come up with in terms of a recommendation? Is it so much the fact that it's ever-changing and that it fluctuates from one card to another or is it just that fees for certain cards are higher than for others?
I guess my question would be this: should we recommend that there be an across-the-board levelling of those fees so that at least, even if they're higher, small businesses would have an understanding of the cost structure they're working with?