Business Notes

Credit Card Swipe-Fee Reform Picks Up Steam

On September 19, U.S. Representatives PeterWelch (D-Vermont) and Lance Gooden (R-Texas) introduced a bipartisan bill targeted toward the high swipe fees paid by businesses and passed on to customers, reports Convenience Store News. “Credit card companies and mega banks keep finding new ways to squeeze our small retailers inVermont,”Welch said. “In a well-functioning market there is competition and choice.That does not exist in our current credit card network market. The new bill follows the U.S. Senate version introduced in July. If passed into law, the Credit Card Competition Act would require the largest U.S. banks that issueVisa or Mastercard credit cards to allow transactions to be processed over at least two unaffiliated card payment networks. “The Credit Card CompetitionAct of 2022 is intended to inject true competition into the market by lowering the barrier to entry for new entrants, encouraging innovation, and exerting competitive pressure onVisa and Mastercard’s fee rates,” says Convenience Store News. Credit card routing competition would reduce swipe fees by $11 billion or more annually, noted the article, according to payments consulting firm CMSPI. Around 83 percent of general-purpose credit cards areVisa or Mastercard.

Banks in the U.S. that issueVisa and Mastercard credit cards charge a swipe fee averaging 2.25 percent of the purchase price when a transaction is processed over their networks. This means that Americans pay the highest swipe fees in the industrialized world. When NACS General Counsel Doug Kantor testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in May, he said: “Credit card fees are rising because they are a percentage of the total transaction amount.That means there have been many times during the past few months when retailers were paying more in swipe fees selling fuel to customers – often about 10 cents per gallon – than they were ultimately making on those sales.”

Swamped

As merchandise continues to flood into the U.S. from across the Pacific, the busiest warehouse complexes in the country – the “Inland Empire” located east of Los Angeles – are running out of room, reports Reuters.The situation is what experts call the “bullwhip effect.” It occurs when companies panic-order goods to keep shelves full but then get caught in a downturn in demand. Meanwhile, goods continue to arrive. “Aconsumer spending pullback threatens to swamp warehouses around the country with more goods than they can handle – worsening supply-chain snarls that have stoked inflation,” says the article. “Retailers left holding unwanted goods are faced with the choice of paying more money to store them or denting profits by selling them at discount.”

The sprawl of Inland Empire is centered in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It’s visible from space.According to Reuters, the warehouses anchor an industrial corridor that encompasses 1.6 billion square feet of storage space that extends from the busiest U.S. seaport in LosAngeles to near the borders of Arizona and Nevada. It’s 44 times larger than New York City’s Central Park and 160 times bigger thanTesla’s new Gigafactory inTexas, says the article.Vacancies there are among the lowest in the nation, running at a record 0.6 percent versus the national average of 3.1 percent, according to real estate services firm Cushman &Wakefield.

Trucking company yards and spare lots around the region have already been converted to makeshift container storage, “so entrepreneurs are marketing vacant stores as last-resort warehouses in waiting,” Reuters says. In addition, investors have almost 40 million square feet of space under construction in the Inland Empire, although 38 percent of it is already spoken for. Among the space isAmazon’s biggest-ever warehouse.

Five Trends in Office Design

From the summer edition of Commercial Investment Real Estate (CIRE), with insight from Steelcase.

Less drywall

Atraditional office layout has a center core with private offices around the outside. It has, maybe, 51 staff members with 37 executives, notes the CIRE article. Sixty percent of the space is open, and 40 percent is behind doors.

Anew idea keeps two sides of the floor plan as is but

eliminates the offices from the other two sides to allow light to come into the core. Cubicles can be used there for workers. The new configuration reduces the amount of space behind closed doors to 17 percent – instead of 40 – which translates into lower construction and tenant improvement costs.

Shared private enclaves

Reducing the standard work-station size from 8 by 9 feet to 8 by 8 feet creates enough leftover space for a private enclave – to be shared among, say, five people. The enclave can be equipped with two pieces of lounge furniture, a table, a laptop connection, a phone connection, plus a door for privacy.

“Touchdown spaces”

The first thing workers do today when they come in is check e-mail and voice mail. To do so, they only need a small desk and open space.

After they’ve “touched down,” they might have a meeting. If it’s not confidential, they can have it in the conference space. If it is confidential, they can use the private enclave. While the trend may be toward smaller spaces for each worker, there are more spaces available for their different functions or activities.

Whoever is in most often gets the biggest space

Basing the amount of space each worker occupies according to the amount of time they spend in the building is a big switch. It means that an engineer who is there working on a project more than 60 percent of the day will get a bigger space than management team members who are in the office only 10 percent of the day.

The walls will talk

“Eventually the shell of a building and its infrastructure will link together. The walls will have technology that talks to the furniture, which talks to the postand-beam system and the floor,” predicts CIRE. The floor will be underlaid with modular electrical, which the furniture plugs into, which also powers the lights. The walls will be personal property that defines private areas but can be taken down and moved.”

KYDZ SUITE®

Make the most of your space with KYDZ Suite—now available in taller panels! Separate rooms and build kid-friendly areas for playing, individual learning, group projects, and more!

www.jonti-craft.com

The #1 Manufacturer of Gym Bleacher Boards in North America

We offer a wide selection of Bleacher Boards in an assortment of finishes and dimensions.

We use B & B grade Southern Yellow Pine for our bleacher boards. Each board can be custom cut and finished to your specifications.

Gym and Sports Solutions • 1-903-752-6626 • sales@gymbleacherboard.com PO Box 2006 Flint, TX 75762