Banks Give To Charity Amidst Public Pressure

The popularity of credit card companies and banks seem to be at an all time low these days. The latest public image drop they experienced centers around charity donations American citizens are sending to Haiti after a devastating earthquake hit the country.

Many Americans are sending donations to their preferred charities in order to give support to the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. A lot of consumers are sending donations through credit cards and according to a recent report from The Huffington Post, credit card companies were taking profits from every credit card donation that passed their way.

Consumers were understandably upset over this situation. Already, consumers have been criticizing credit card companies and banks for the interest rate hikes and new fees that they have been imposing in past few months, well ahead of the new credit legislation taking effect next month. The knowledge that credit card companies were making profits on donations to Haiti, not to mention other, non-related donations as well, just adds more fuel to the fire.

In response to this public backlash, a lot of credit card companies have backed down and are moving to a more charitable stance concerning donation transactions for Haiti. This move not only dampens the fires of discontent among consumers a bit, but it may also deflect possible backlash that they are going to get when they announce their controversial bonus pools which should be happening anytime soon.

Major credit card companies who have decided to assist in the Haiti relief assistance – which coming from all over the world – include Visa, Discover, MasterCard and Discover. These companies have announced that they would be waiving transaction fees for charitable donation transactions or they would be donating profits that they see from the aforementioned transactions to charity organizations helping in the Haiti crisis such as the American Red Cross.

Most of the relief assistance announcements made by credit card companies came after media outlets started pointing out that credit card companies would be seeing millions in profits from charitable donation credit card transaction fees. Even with transaction fees costing only $0.05 per transaction, considering the number of transactions that credit card companies see, the sum total is quite a considerable amount. An amount that should be put towards helping Haiti earthquake victims instead, Senator Dodd pointed out.

The outgoing Senate Banking Committee chairman recently issued a statement urging the waiving of transaction fees for donations to Haiti. He said that, as Americans send their hard earned money to Haiti, their donations would do much more good if credit card companies were not “skimming off the top” of these donations.