LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Visa and Mastercard are poised to put up the fees US retailers pay when accepting credit cards, it was reported on Tuesday.

The planned increase has been delayed for two years because of the pandemic. But according to the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter and a document seen by the newspaper, the increase will now happen in April.

The biggest increase will be in interchange fees, which retailers pay when shoppers use their cards to buy goods. The fees go to the banks that issue the card.

According to the WSJ, American merchants paid an estimated $55.4bn in Visa and Mastercard interchange fees last year, more than double the amount paid in 2012.

It is not yet know how much the fees will go up by.

Visa and Mastercard said the fees helped cover costs related to fraud prevention and innovation. A Mastercard spokesperson told the WSJ: "Our focus remains ensuring the safety and security of payments while balancing the interest of all parties."

A spokesperson for Visa told the newspaper merchants could avoid the higher fees if they provided certain transaction data and used its token service, which masks card numbers.

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