Finance committee  Australia was very much like Canada in that respect before this regulation was put in place. Things like chip deployment, contactless payments, and security systems all need proper economic framework for investment. When you hear from Interac, they'll say they need economic rati

Finance committee  At that low economic value level you need to have enormous scale to play. Small players and niche players have to go. They can't play. It's important that when you look around the Canadian environment, price competition and feature competition have been led by niche and innovati

Finance committee  That's MasterCard.

Finance committee  The acquirer collects it, passes it along to us, and we pass it along to the issuer.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  No, the bank is not involved in setting it. Asking them what they want is not going to balance—

Finance committee  I'd have to challenge your analogy. We're saying to one side of the two-sided network that is our business that this is how much the participation of this participant's cardholders will cost you if you decide to accept the proposition. That's almost like a wholesaler saying this

Industry committee  No, because you have to demonstrate certain spend levels. The merchant value proposition doesn't kick in until there's a demonstrated spend of $24,000 a year on our card. That's why it naturally stops at about 5% of our base.

Industry committee  No, we're not pushing their use. We made a program available because we were at risk of losing cardholders and issuers to American Express.

Industry committee  It did, but at a lower cost than American Express.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  Actually, we've turned down several program proposals because they didn't meet the criteria. We have to keep the system balanced. A widespread issuance of these cards with no justification in terms of a value proposition to the merchant is not in our best interests.

Industry committee  No, and I don't know if it's workable to identify them. We've had this conversation with the CFIB. It's not workable to expect a clerk in an operating environment to recognize a card.