Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

“It’s like vegas,” says Matt Moore, the owner of a small bike shop in Georgetown, a neighbourhood in Washington. “You know you’re going to get screwed, the only question is how to get screwed the least.” The system of interchange—whereby banks and credit-card issuers charge merchants for collecting payments—is loathed by many retailers. Merchants hand over $138bn in fees each year; according to the National Retail Federation, a lobby group, it is their second-biggest cost after wages. And while shoppers are less likely to have strong feelings about the system, being mostly unaware of it, they also suffer as a result of higher sticker prices.