As you know, The Green Sheet published Visa and MasterCard prices in the December 15, 1997 issue and reviewed and summarized that issue in our March 23, 1998 issue. While we have received no official comment from either bankcard organization, we have begun to receive letters and calls from both ISOs and financial institutions who are in turn receiving pressure from Visa and MasterCard to make changes to biographical data which has appeared in past Green Sheets.
As an example, First of Omaha Merchant Processing has taken exception to some 1997 and 1998 ISO company backgrounds, which listed either First National Bank of Omaha or Retriever Payment Systems as financial institutions who were doing business with California Bankcard Systems, Custom Credit Card Processing, Inc., Retriever Sales APS, or Valley Payment Systems. We are informed that as of March 24, 1998 these ISO organizations do not represent either of these organizations.
In addition, we received a letter from Southwest Financial Services, Inc. Visa brought to their attention that a prior listing indicated that Southwest represented Old Kent Bank, which is no longer correct. We also received a letter from American Financial Service noting the previous January l997 story, which seemed to indicate that they were doing business with Bank of America; this is no longer correct. Bank of America states that there could be fines issued to all the parties involved if the historical information is not corrected.
Finally, in a letter to an ISO who has represented many organizations (credit, debit, equipment, and check) for more than a decade and is one of the most respected organizations in the industry, First of Omaha states that the ISO is not an ISO for them, but rather an Independent Sales Representative, and can not advertise as an ISO in The Green Sheet. In the Resource Guide listings in The Green Sheet, I have not created an Independent Sales Representative category, so advertisers only have Bank or ISO to choose from. In addition, I write the stories on companies and lump together the wide variety of products and services that they sell, as I believe space permits.
While it is clear to me that in the world of Visa and MasterCard they make all the rules, it still comes as a surprise, when bankcard represents only 16.4% of the point-of-sale payment mechanism, that they believe they can determine when a sales organization can call themselves an Independent Sales Organization (ISO). This is particularly true when these organizations represent a wide variety of payment options, each using their own terminology.
But this really gets to the last point. In my opinion, it seems that Visa and MasterCard want to strike back at The Green Sheet, and they have chosen to strike at banks and ISOs as perhaps the only way of doing so. It appears to be an interesting direction: if ISOs are afraid to have stories on their business appear in The Green Sheet, the bankcard associations could succeed in stopping The Green Sheet from being published.
After nearly three decades in the Financial Services marketplace, I thought that not much could surprise me, but I must admit that needing to explain the First Amendment to financial services associations in the U.S. is a shocker.
Paul H. Green
Editor-in-Chief
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