WASHINGTON— Credit card “swipe fees” could add nearly $600 million to Americans’ Easter spending this year, according to the Merchants Payments Coalition, which said the added cost underscores fresh pressure on Congress to revive the bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act.
The coalition said that based on the National Retail Federation’s estimate that consumers will spend an average $195.59 on Easter this year — or $24.9 billion overall — merchants would pay about $587.6 million in Visa and Mastercard credit-card interchange fees if all purchases were made with credit cards. Using the current average 2.36% fee rate, that works out to roughly $4.62 per shopper.
That means swipe fees alone would cost more than many common Easter staples, the group said, including a $2.50 dozen eggs, a $2.99 egg-decorating kit, a $3 plastic Easter basket and even an eight-count pack of Peeps priced at $1.52. The coalition added that because some credit-card fees can run as high as 4%, the actual impact on Easter spending could be even higher.
The Merchants Payments Coalition said swipe fees would account for roughly $177 million of Easter food spending, $92 million of gift purchases, $87.3 million of clothing sales, $82.6 million of candy spending and $51.9 million of flower purchases.
“Swipe fees drive up the cost of nearly everything we buy, and Easter is no exception,” Dylan Jeon, senior director of government relations at the National Retail Federation, said in a statement.
The Easter estimate comes as merchants intensify their broader campaign against interchange fees, which they say have surged well beyond inflation. According to MPC, combined credit and debit card swipe fees climbed 80% since the pandemic to a record $198.25 billion in 2025, up 5.9% from a year earlier and faster than both the 5% increase in card purchase volume and average 2.7% inflation. The group said Visa and Mastercard credit-card fees alone totaled $118.8 billion last year and now add more than $1,200 annually to costs for the average family.
Merchants are using those numbers to push for passage of the Credit Card Competition Act, which would require the largest card issuers — those with at least $100 billion in assets — to enable transactions to run over at least two unaffiliated networks instead of routing them almost exclusively through Visa or Mastercard. Backers say the measure would inject competition into a market dominated by the two networks, which control about 80% of U.S. credit-card volume, and could save merchants and consumers an estimated $17 billion a year. America’s Credit Unions and the Defense Credit Union Council have been lobbying aggressively to keep the CCCA out of legislation, arguing the measure would harm credit unions and their members while restricting access to credit for many Americans.