Finance committee  No good deed goes unpunished, Mr. Del Mastro.

Finance committee  That's a tough one. What we do know is that retail is a customer-driven business. What the customer wants, the customer gets. Merchants who have tried to charge the customer for taking their money have quickly found that the customer says no. So that really hasn't picked up or go

Finance committee  There are the costs paid by our members. I mentioned access to financial services, particularly for SMEs, as well as credit service costs for retailers. This is an area where technology is developing on an almost daily basis. Consequently, fees paid by retailers are increasing. T

Finance committee  Indeed, there is a cost to accepting credit cards and having the institutions process the accounts. This is a market where fees charged by the various institutions—the acquirers—are almost the same. We believe that we should at least consider that. With regard to the fundamental

Finance committee  We believe that Canada has an excellent system. Many changes are underway, and we have to examine this situation carefully. In various countries, such as the United States or Australia, certain things have been done, either through the courts or through regulations, and studies

Finance committee  We have appeared before this committee a couple of times on this matter. We submitted to the finance discussion paper last year and in 2001 as well. I'd be glad to make those available to the committee again, or your researchers could get those for you.

Finance committee  We've been at the table on this issue for some time. One of the key points we've been making is the need to look at the availability of services through individual banks as well and the requirement for our smaller members to often go directly to a bank branch for many of the ser

Finance committee  In our submission, you will see that we report on a piece of research done by the Canadian Bankers Association that says that about two-thirds of Canadians who hold debit cards opt for the cash-back service at some point.

Finance committee  It varies with the format of store. If you're a clothing store, if you're a footwear store or a confectionery store, it's not something you would normally offer to your customer, because a lot of your business is no longer cash. If you're a mass merchandise store or a supermarke

Finance committee  Most of our members are paid on the spot. It's about 50% debit, 25% credit, and 25% cash.

Finance committee  One of the great advantages of the debit system is that it's virtually instant. That's one of the great features of debit, that you're guaranteed payment. It's final, it's settled, and you know you have the cash. On the credit side, our small merchants can sometimes wait two or

Finance committee  Sure, a pleasure. From our perspective, what we're seeing is a system that is evolving very rapidly. We've seen new players come into the marketplace; we have some of them here today. We've seen mono-line banks issuing credit cards into Canada. We've seen a whole variety of new

Finance committee  It is. But, Mr. McKay, as signatories to the debit card code of conduct, we're really concerned that this would involve the customer giving away his or her PIN. That's an open key to someone's bank account. We think that the protection of the financial affairs and the financial

Finance committee  Understood. My apologies to the committee.

Finance committee  I'm almost done anyway. I know you're a stickler.