Bankers' letter was pandering

As a small retail business owner in Mobile, I must respond to the poorly disguised pandering in the Nov. 20 letter ("Reject checkout fees") from the representative of the Alabama Bankers Association.

Under current law, merchants absorb the cost of credit card and debit card processing fees and are not allowed to pass these charges to the individual customer in the form of a fee, nor can we offer cash discounts to reward those customers who do not use cards. As a result, the cost of processing credit card sales by a business (usually 2 percent to 4 percent) is applied equally to all sales in the form of higher prices.