||| FROM WASHINGTON STATE FERRIES |||
Starting Sunday, March 1, 2026, a card payment recovery fee of 3% will be applied to all card transactions. Fares, no-show fees, and carpool and vanpool permits will be subject to the 3% fee.
This fee was directed by the Washington State Legislature (RCW 47.60.860) to help recover the cost the state incurs when processing cards online and at terminals.
See more information about this fee on our ticket information page.
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Credit card transaction fees amount to a ~3% tax, levied not by governments but by corporations.
Visa made $40 billion profit last year. Mastercard made $15 billion. What is their product? Access to their networks.
Now the state wants to pass these transaction fees to taxpayers, instead of absorbing them, or raising costs to hide the fees.
Should it be the taxpayer’s responsibility to pad the profits of these large and very profitable corporations?
The state of Washington should develop its own transaction network for low-fee in-state transactions.
Get other states like Oregon and California involved, share the costs.
This could save taxpayers millions of dollars per year, and would begin paying for itself from day one.
A state-owned card network to process Visa, Mastercard, etc. transaction is an interesting idea.
Such a network might be able to lower the credit card “interchange fees” (typically 1.10% to 3.15%) and “assessment fees” for using its infrastructure.
On the other hand, such a move would be seen as government competing with private business.
For example, the Bank of North Dakota (the only state-owned bank in the US) does not issue personal credit cards or debit cards to the general public. As a state-owned bank, BND’s policy is to avoid competing with private financial institutions; therefore, they do not offer retail consumer convenience products like credit cards.
It seems almost everybody, including the ferries, and both our local & state governments are strapped for funds and are reaching deep to make up for lost revenue.
Yes, if doable, I believe that this is an excellent idea David.
And “yes” Frank. The Bank of North Dakota is definitely in a class of its own. I was just reading–
The Web of Blog (Ellen Brown)– Regime Change at the Fed: From Big Bank Bailouts to Local Productivity
“The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) has actually been called a mini-Fed for the state’s local banks. North Dakota has maintained a stable, locally-rooted banking ecosystem while the rest of the country consolidated, and it has more community banks per capita than any other state. The BND provides correspondent banking services to virtually every financial institution in North Dakota. It provides secured and unsecured federal fund lines, check-clearing, cash management, and automated clearing house services for local banks. It participates in their loans and guarantees them. The banks are thus willing to take on more risk, and they have been able to keep loans on their books rather than selling them to investors to meet capital requirements. As a result, North Dakota banks were able to avoid the 2008-09 subprime and securitization debacles and the 2023 wave of bank bankruptcies.
https://ellenbrown.com/2026/02/25/regime-change-at-the-fed-from-big-bank-bailouts-to-local-productivity/