Retailers claim credit card swipe fees are driving inflation

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. 16.7% is the increase in total credit card charges; 12.3% is the increase in the sales this was charged on

If the rate at which swipe fees had stayed constant, then the total credit card charges would have gone up the same amount as the sales.

So the relative increase in fees was 116.7 / 112.3 times = 1.0392 times, or 3.92%. The article says it was 2.24% when it was written, so it had been, in 2021, (1 - 0.392) * 2.24% = 2.15%. A difference of about 0.1%.

Yes, there's a set fee of 10 cents (I forgot to give my source for that - https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R48216 ). Though this has some different figures, for supermarkets at least, in which the credit card fixed fee is just 5 cents: https://www.swipesum.com/insights/visa-interchange-rates - maybe 7 cents as in "All Other Products: 1.50% + $0.07 (Supermarket Tier III)". According to that, the fixed fee for debit cards is typically 21 cents, but the percentage fee 0.05% (for "regulated" debit cards issue by banks with over $10bn in assets).