Finance committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee regarding the study of the credit and debit card industry in Canada. We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you and share information with you in support of your study. I'm Jim Baumgartner, pre

Industry committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee regarding the study of the credit and debit card industry in Canada. We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you and share information with you in support of your study. I'm Jim Baumgartner, pre

Finance committee  From our perspective, no.

Finance committee  Yes, we did.

Finance committee  Yes, as the more complex interchange structure was introduced, we did change our pricing structure in response to that. I can tell you that overall from when we started the company--the first full year was 2001--to 2008, the difference between what we were charged in interchange

Industry committee  From our perspective, no.

Industry committee  Yes, we did.

Industry committee  Yes, as the more complex interchange structure was introduced, we did change our pricing structure in response to that. I can tell you that overall from when we started the company--the first full year was 2001--to 2008, the difference between what we were charged in interchange

Finance committee  Well, it required a significant investment in infrastructure. Our system was not capable of handling the complex interchange structure that was traditionally more common in the U.S. When that was introduced here, it required an investment in the tens of millions of dollars to be

Finance committee  I'd say a combination of both, quite frankly. As I mentioned before, our spreads have come down since we started and so we definitely have borne some of it, but the merchants are paying more as well, and there's no doubt about it.

Finance committee  On the debit side? Sure, I can, and I'll try to be brief. Cut me off if I'm not brief enough. Priority routing refers to a practice where, if you had an Interac card today, and let's say Maestro was added to the card, the instructions from the issuers would be to route this thro

Finance committee  In our particular case, Visa has offered us an incentive to develop Visa debit. However, we've not elected to roll it out yet because we're not comfortable right now that the price is appropriate for merchants. When MasterCard introduced the price for Maestro, we had some serious

Finance committee  That's exactly right. Starting in October 2010, both card brands have announced what's called a liability shift. That is, if you went to a merchant with a chip card, you entered your PIN, and then said that it wasn't you, the merchant would be liable for that transaction if they

Industry committee  Well, it required a significant investment in infrastructure. Our system was not capable of handling the complex interchange structure that was traditionally more common in the U.S. When that was introduced here, it required an investment in the tens of millions of dollars to be

Industry committee  In our particular case, Visa has offered us an incentive to develop Visa debit. However, we've not elected to roll it out yet because we're not comfortable right now that the price is appropriate for merchants. When MasterCard introduced the price for Maestro, we had some serious