Earlier this year, the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA) became aware of the active stand that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has taken to see that the issue of increased credit card processing fees is addressed by the Government of Canada and the credit card companies themselves. Since the majority of the ACTA membership are also small businesses ACTA joined with CFIB on the earlier 'call to action' and has welcomed the opportunity to work with CFIB in this endeavour as we try to protect our members from these rapidly increasing costs.
'Over the past year our respective organizations and our members have raised concerns about the increasing costs of processing credit cards and the additional merchant handling charges that have added unreasonable costs to Canadian businesses.' said ACTA President and COO, David McCaig. 'In our recent letter writing campaign ACTA and CFIB has invited all Canadian airlines, travel wholesalers, tourism stakeholder partners and consumer advocacy groups to join in our efforts to lobby the federal government and the credit card companies to reduce these costs. We have also put forward our request to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance pre-budget consultations this fall.'
McCaig advises, 'As we share common cause, we request that our industry partners work together to fight these unfair charges rather than giving any consideration of passing the costs on to consumers.'
