Walmart, the worlds’ largest retailer announced last week that they’re kicking out Visa in Canada. But I doubt that’ll happen.
Walmart claims they pay over $100 million in merchant discount fees. Those are the fees charged by credit card issuers when you use your credit card for payment. These amount of these fees depends on how much business a retailer does on credit cards. With MasterCard, for example, it’s as low as 1.26% when there’s $3 billion in business a year. Mine, on the tiny business side is 2.75% with Square.
There are over 72 million Visa and MasterCards in Canada, according to the Canadian Bankers Association. Ballpark, 60% are Visa cards, so I doubt this will come to pass. I just can’t see it happening. The average credit card charge in Canada is $103 and the typical Walmart customer isn’t likely to just switch to using their debit card, instead. The “no more Visa” plan is supposed to start rolling out July 18th in Thunder Bay. OK, they didn’t exactly pick the city with the largest volume business in the country. And they made it effective six weeks out. That means we’ll just have to see who blinks first: Visa in lowering the fees for Walmart, or the retailer in realizing this isn’t a winning idea.