It’s called a swipe fee – the amount of money that banks and credit card companies charge merchants to process transactions. They can be as much as four percent of the purchase price and Visa and MasterCard are planning an increase to those fees in October.

US Senator Dick Durbin is reintroducing a bill to bring competition to the market. The Credit Card Competition Act would require the biggest banks and credit card companies to enable two options to process purchases.

Durbin says competition is needed - currently Visa and MasterCard control about 80 percent of credit card transactions.