BOISE -- Credit card fees are continuing to add up for U.S. consumers -- $90,000 a minute, which equals $48 billion a year.
It's an amount small businesses say credit card companies made this year, because of fees they are forced to pay.
That fee has to be made up from somewhere, and it is usually put into the price you pay.
But now businesses around the country are pushing for reform, and some local companies are joining their effort.
It's called the Credit Card Con.
Businesses say they are paying too much in interchange fees every time a customer swipes their card.
The City Peanut Shop on Bannock Street in downtown Boise is one shop.
It's a mom and pop operation that opened in November and features all types of peanuts.
Balluff was a corporate man before he opened the shop, but when he switched careers, he quickly learned a valuable financial lesson.
"My cost of doing business is a fairly low cost of business with the way I have got this set up," said Balluff. "But fees from credit cards are a significant portion of it."
Each time a card is swiped in Dan's shop, it costs him.
On average it's 25 cents for a credit card, and 75 cents for a debit card.
Not only that, if a credit card features a reward for the consumer, the credit card company doesn't pay the price, instead, Dan says it's business owners like him.
"It's actually more expensive than my packaging, every time I put a bag of my product together, the bag costs less than my credit card transaction," said Balluff.
It's a problem small business owners around the nation are facing, so several of them took their concerns to Washington.
Among them, Bardenay Restaurants and Distilleries owner Kevin Settles.
"You know, it's a major fee for us, it's almost as big as our utility bill," said Settles.
Kevin, like all the others has built the additional cost into his prices, but he says that amount has gone up since he opened his doors 10 years ago, and it's become too expensive.
He's restricted from asking people to pay with cash or offer any type of reward to those who do, and he wants that changed.
"I'm in the restaurant business. We sell hamburgers, we buy lettuce. We want to buy lettuce, if a head of lettuce comes in and we don't like the price, we can decline to purchase that." said Settles. "There's nothing else in our business, we can't turn the heat down, we can dim the lights, we can't control what we have to pay, but with credit cards, it's a blind fee and there is nothing we can do about it."
His only option now, lose credit cards all together.
"We're up to about 90 percent of our customers pay with a credit card. We can't afford to lose 90 percent of our business, obviously," said Settles.
"It is modern life, and that's just the way it is," said Balluff.
Like the others, Dan's looking for regulations and a competitive system for credit card companies, because he knows he can't completely eliminate them from his shop either.
"I use it myself, but I try to be sensitive to it also," said Balluff.
The companies are making a push for the regulations now, after President Obama signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009.
It calls for complete disclosure to protect consumers, but not protect their interchange fees.
