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24/06/2010 -
An unlikely figure showed up on Capitol Hill this month: rap mogul Russell Simmons.Simmons came to protest the Durbin amendment, part of a financial-overhaul bill currently in the United States Congress that would cap the amount that credit card companies can charge merchants in "swipe fees" - and won. Thanks in part to Simmons' argument, prepaid credit cards will be exempt from the proposed fee limits.
In addition to owning Def Jam Records and clothing line Phat Farm, Simmons owns a Cincinnati-based company called UniRush which sells prepaid Visa debit cards. The service has about 2.5 million users - many of whom are low-income.
Simmons said that if the bill passed as written, he would have been forced to charge his customers more, making him unable to compete against enormous corporations like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, which also provide prepaid cards.
In 2009, Visa's total debit and prepaid card transaction dollar volume was $1.18 trillion, up 9 percent from the previous year. The company processed 26.9 billion debit and prepaid card transactions.
