Code of Conduct for the Debit and Credit Card Industry November 2016 Update

The code of conduct for the credit and debit card industry (Canada) has been updated with a number of requirements taking affect in November or 2016. Below is an outline of the new requirements look for changes on your November statement:

• Processors/Acquirers must include a “fee disclosure box” in their agreements (see below)
• Processors/Acquirers must disclose all other fees, e.g. monthly minimums, admin fees etc.
• Statements must include:
  1. Effective merchant discount rate (unfortunately poorly defined so basically useless)
  2. Interchange rates and other rates charge by the acquirer. This is good, many statements don’t show rates making it difficult to determine if you are charged as agreed (unless they find a loophole)
  3. Number and volume of transactions for each type of payment transactions. I would define this as for each type of card rewards non rewards credit debit etc.
  4. Total amount of fees applicable to each rate (see “2” above should work together).
  5. Details of each fee and to which payment card network they apply.

These are part of the effort of the federal government to help businesses better understand their payment processing contracts and statements. Some of the Acquirers have been including all of the necessary information on their statements for some time. Others include as little as possible leave some out completely. Unfortunately the pricing system is very complicated and even with the new requirements most business owners will have difficulty comparing rates.