NFC Times Exclusive Insight – While Chase Pay will offer merchants in the MCX consortium a potential consumer base of 94 million Chase payment card accounts and the promise of integration with their loyalty programs and offers, the essential element of the deal was the very low transaction fees Chase will charge.
Lowering transaction fees was the top founding principle for MCX in 2012, and an early strategy document that circulated before the formation of the joint venture showed that leaders of the group saw the coming era of mobile payments as a unique opportunity to change the economics of the payments industry, as NFC Times reported in early 2013.
Chase cards chief Gordon Smith, speaking last week at the Money 2020 fintech event in Las Vegas said the fixed pricing the bank will charge MCX merchants to accept Chase Pay would drive down costs. A Chase Pay representative told NFC Times the fee would be lower than merchant discount fees or transaction fees charged by banks using the traditional payments networks. There would be no additional network, processing fees or fraud-liability costs for MCX merchants, Chase has said.
