The battle surrounding the interchange fee continues throughout the world, not just in the United States.
In France, the French Competition Authority has reached an agreement with Visa and MasterCard to cut the swipe fees by nearly half. These are the fees that retailers pay the banks every time they accept a card to pay for a customer transaction.
The interchange fee will drop from 0.50% per transaction to 0.28% beginning on November 1.
In addition, the ATM cash withdrawal fees will be 0.55 euros. Previously, these fees were 0.75 euros for Visa, and 0.60 for MasterCard.
These moves follow the 2011 changes by French banks which reduced the interchange fee by over one-third.