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Whenever you use a credit card, the merchant pays the credit card company an interchange fee. Usually it’s around 1-2% of the purchase amount, but it varies with the card. It’s also invisible, and credit card companies have long prohibited merchants from passing along the charge to consumers, something they can get away with thanks to their monopoly status. Yesterday, however, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with Visa and Mastercard that changes this:

Under the terms of the proposed settlement, merchants could offer consumers an immediate discount or rebate for using a particular type of payment, a particular credit card network (Visa versus American Express), or a low-cost card within that network (a Visa debit card rather than a Visa credit card).

That may give merchants an incentive to steer consumers toward paying with cash or with no-frills credit cards without rewards programs because the swipe fees for those options are lower. The settlement also allows merchants to post the cost of using different types of payments.

The settlement, however, does not allow merchants to levy a surcharge on credit and debit payments beyond the cost of the transaction, as some merchants had sought.

This is progress, though it’s not my preferred solution, which is to make these fees entirely public and allow merchants to pass them along to customers directly if they want to. As I wrote a couple of months ago:

If they don’t, that’s pretty good evidence that card networks are charging a fair price for the service merchants get from them (increased sales, less handling of cash, etc.). And there’s no harm done. But if they do tack on the charge, it’s pretty good evidence the networks aren’t charging a fair, market-clearing price. I say: let’s find out.

Maybe we’ll get there someday. In the meantime, at least this settlement should allow us to gather more data about exactly who ends up paying these fees and whether or not they’re mostly monopoly rents hoovered up by the credit card networks. Stay tuned.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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