U.S. Senator Talks Swipe Fees With Casey's Leadership Team

TOPEKA, Kan. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) met with the leadership team of Casey's General Stores Inc. in Topeka to discuss the impact credit card swipe fees are having on the convenience store chain.

Marshall toured a local store, met with employees, shadowed the store manager and assisted in serving customers behind the counter. 

[Read more: Casey's Honored as Corporate Champion for Board's Gender Parity]

Marshall was joined by Tom Brennan, chief merchandising officer of Casey's; Doug Beech, senior assistant general counsel and director of government relations for Casey's; and Doug Kantor, NACS general counsel. 

"Small businesses like Casey's General Store are the backbone of the Kansas economy. Across the state, thousands of convenience stores employ nearly 20,000 Kansans. These stores generate more than $7.3 billion in sales annually, and credit card swipe fees remain one of their largest expenses," Marshall said. "Credit card swipe fees are inflation multipliers crushing our small businesses and forcing them to raise their prices on consumers. I have legislation to alleviate the Wall Street megabanks and Visa-Mastercard price gouging tactics and inject competition into the credit card industry." 

Due to the lack of competition in the payment processing industry, Casey's has paid an estimated $17 million in credit card swipe fees in 2023 alone, according to the company. Marshall's office also stated that at the moment, Americans currently pay a swipe fee rate seven times higher than those in the European Union.  

To address the problem of growing fees, in June, Marshall cosponsored the bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act, which would inject more competition into the credit card market in order to drive down costs.  

"With credit card fees rising by more than 50 percent just since 2020, the pressure this puts on the average family only gets worse," said Brennan. "Something must be done, and we can't thank Senator Marshall enough for being a champion of Main Street by working to slow Wall Street's efforts to swipe money right out of our pockets." 

Headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa, Casey's operates more than 2,500 convenience stores across 16 states, with 190 locations in Kansas alone, employing 3,000-plus Kansans. The company is the third-largest convenience store retailer and the fifth-largest pizza chain in the United States.

Casey's is No. 3 on the 2023 Convenience Store News Top 100 ranking.