Archives For Canada

New Report: Canadian Interchange Fee Caps Would Hurt Consumers

Kristian Stout —  15 November 2017

Canada’s large merchants have called on the government to impose price controls on interchange fees, claiming this would benefit not only merchants but also consumers. But experience elsewhere contradicts this claim.

In a recently released Macdonald Laurier Institute report, Julian Morris, Geoffrey A. Manne, Ian Lee, and Todd J. Zywicki detail how price controls on credit card interchange fees would result in reduced reward earnings and higher annual fees on credit cards, with adverse effects on consumers, many merchants and the economy as a whole.

This study draws on the experience with fee caps imposed in other jurisdictions, highlighting in particular the effects in Australia, where interchange fees were capped in 2003. There, the caps resulted in a significant decrease in the rewards earned per dollar spent and an increase in annual card fees. If similar restrictions were imposed in Canada, resulting in a 40 percent reduction in interchange fees, the authors of the report anticipate that:

  1. On average, each adult Canadian would be worse off to the tune of between $89 and $250 per year due to a loss of rewards and increase in annual card fees:
    1. For an individual or household earning $40,000, the net loss would be $66 to $187; and
    2. for an individual or household earning $90,000, the net loss would be $199 to $562.
  2. Spending at merchants in aggregate would decline by between $1.6 billion and $4.7 billion, resulting in a net loss to merchants of between $1.6 billion and $2.8 billion.
  3. GDP would fall by between 0.12 percent and 0.19 percent per year.
  4. Federal government revenue would fall by between 0.14 percent and 0.40 percent.

Moreover, tighter fee caps would “have a more dramatic negative effect on middle class households and the economy as a whole.”

You can read the full report here.

In Credit Cards, Financial Regulation, Truth on the Market , , , ,
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The song remains the same: Exceptionalists against the application of the law

Neil Turkewitz —  8 February 2017

In a recent article for the San Francisco Daily Journal I examine Google v. Equustek: a case currently before the Canadian Supreme Court involving the scope of jurisdiction of Canadian courts to enjoin conduct on the internet.

In the piece I argue that

a globally interconnected system of free enterprise must operationalize the rule of law through continuous evolution, as technology, culture and the law itself evolve. And while voluntary actions are welcome, conflicts between competing, fundamental interests persist. It is at these edges that the over-simplifications and pseudo-populism of the SOPA/PIPA uprising are particularly counterproductive.

The article highlights the problems associated with a school of internet exceptionalism that would treat the internet as largely outside the reach of laws and regulations — not by affirmative legislative decision, but by virtue of jurisdictional default:

The direct implication of the “internet exceptionalist’ position is that governments lack the ability to impose orders that protect its citizens against illegal conduct when such conduct takes place via the internet. But simply because the internet might be everywhere and nowhere doesn’t mean that it isn’t still susceptible to the application of national laws. Governments neither will nor should accept the notion that their authority is limited to conduct of the last century. The Internet isn’t that exceptional.

Read the whole thing!

In Copyright, Google, Intellectual Property, International, Jurisdictional Competition, Platforms , , , , , , , , , ,
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