To politicians, banks are both incompetent behemoths waiting for public bail-outs and conniving profiteers pulling a fast one on their customers. Just as one arm of the European Commission has been finalising new rules that will force banks to have much more capital on their balance-sheets in order to make them safer, another arm has been writing rules to stop the "unjustifiably high" fees charged whenever a credit or debit card is used. A proposal released by the commission on July 24th (which it hopes will become law next spring) plans to cap "interchange fees", charges levied on merchants by payment-card firms and their member banks whenever consumers use cards to pay for things.
展开▼
