Originally Posted by
History05
Honestly, the only reason I could see why Walmart would even do this is if they lose money by whatever MG charges Walmart (and I'm not sure if it's a license fee, which wouldn't matter anyways as MO's themselves aren't going away, or if MG charges Walmart a % of each MO). It's likely not in the debit card fees, as federal law caps the max interchange fee on debit transactions at $0.21 (and Walmart probably isn't paying the max fee anyways). In the very least, they increase the chances that if you go in to liquidate a VGC, you're possibly going to purchase merchandise. It drives foot traffic. If that's the case, it surprises me that they would go this route instead of just raising MO fees.
First, that isn't quite true, since the 21¢ limit you mentioned does not apply to exempt institutions like Metabank, although as you wrote, Walmart negotiates swipe fees well below the caps. If it was about profits, yup, they'd raise rates.
Second, I don't think anyone is claiming to know that Walmart is doing this to stem losses. WM/MG did not install a MO network in Walmarts unless it made money. This is about fraud. Either Walmart or another party in the payment stream saw what looked like fraud. MG has already been fined for lax moneylaundering prevention, so it is not surprise that some companies would be a little trigger happy.
IMHO, it is no coincidence that this happened after Staples has spent the last couple of months selling pallets of Metabank VGCs literally as fast as they could ship them to the stores. There must've been a jump in large dollar Metabank VGC swipes that set off somebody's alarm.