USA Technologies, Inc., a provider of wireless, cashless payment and M2M telemetry solutions for self-serve small-ticket retail industries, announced that there will be no increase in its credit and debit processing rates to its customers. The company will continue to accept Visa- branded debit and pre-paid cards in addition to all major credit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express at its current processing rates.
“As a leading provider of cashless payments systems to the small-ticket, unattended markets like vending, USAT moved swiftly and successfully, working with its card processing partners, to develop a solution to overcome the potential negative impact to our industry arising from recent increased debit card interchange fees,” said Michael Lawlor, senior vice president of sales at USA Technologies in a prepared statement. “With this latest announcement, consumers will continue to enjoy the convenience of using their Visa-branded debit and pre-paid cards, as well as their Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express credit cards at the over 100,000 unattended point-of-sale locations we service. Our customers, as well as others in our industry, can now take comfort that there is a solution available to help them avoid an increase in their processing fees.”
On Oct. 1, 2011, MasterCard and Visa increased regulated debit card interchange fees to the U.S. Federal Reserve regulated cap of 0.05 percent plus $0.22 per transaction as precipitated by the Durbin Amendment, a step that disproportionately impacts merchants who sell products or services for less than approximately eleven dollars per transaction.
USA Technologies believes that this development has caused confusion in the marketplace, and the company will be hosting a series of webinars for members of the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), as well as others in vending and other small-ticket, unattended markets, in an effort to help clarify the background of these rate increases, the potential impact on small-ticket markets like vending, and the stabilization of USAT’s own debit and credit card processing fees. For information, call 800-633-0340.
“USA Technologies has experienced significant increases in acceptance points and in dollar volume of credit and debit cards the company handles during our 2010 and 2011 fiscal years —which we believe is a testament to the fact that consumers increasingly prefer to use their credit and debit cards to make every-day, small-ticket purchases at self-service point-of-sale terminals like vending machines and kiosks,” continued Lawlor. “Visa credit and debit cards, combined with all major credit cards, represent approximately 85 percent of all cashless transactions on our network. It is important to us that our customers and the consumer be able to continue to use whatever is “top of wallet” for them — in this case, their Visa debit card or any major credit card. By continuing to accept Visa debit and pre-paid cards and all major credit cards, with no increase in processing rates to our customers, we believe we have shown our commitment to providing our customers with what we believe are the best, highest value, most scalable solution with the lowest total cost of ownership on the market today.”
