Driving positive change and innovation in the payments industry
Collaboration
- Engages with other prominent merchant trade associations in order to enhance and leverage the merchants’ voice in payments issues.
- Attends most of the largest payments industry and network-hosted events and often is the sole representative of the merchant voice.
- Participates in a variety of meetings sponsored by regional Federal Reserve Banks, and is a member of the Fed's Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup.
Education
- Provides educational sessions at our Annual and Mid-Year Conferences.
- Produces educational materials to help payments professionals at differing levels of expertise including Merchant Readiness Guides, Best Practices, and Quick Reference Guides.
- Supplies the MAG Learning Center (MLC) with webinar recordings, conference session presentations, session recordings, industry publications, member surveys, best practices, and additional tools to help you educate new employees and manage your department.
Advocacy
- Vigorously pursues merchant objectives regarding payments issues of importance, including improving the customer payment experience, lowering the high cost of payment acceptance, reducing payment fraud, ensuring a fair and competitive payments landscape for in-person and digital payments, educating stakeholders on the need for open standards and pressing for meaningful representation in decision-making payments forums.
- Seeks out opportunities to represent its members at payments industry events and in the trade press and actively collaborates with other merchant trade associations, acting as a resource for subject matter expertise on payments matters.
- Promotes a fair and equitable payments system that best serves the needs of U.S. consumers and to ensure merchant choice in payments services is not infringed upon by any stakeholder in the payments chain to Congress and federal agencies.
MAG Engagement
- Engages with other prominent merchant trade associations in order to enhance and leverage the merchants’ voice in payments issues.
- Attends most of the largest payments industry and network-hosted events and often is the sole representative of the merchant voice.
- Participates in a variety of meetings sponsored by regional Federal Reserve Banks, and is a member of the Fed's Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup.
The Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) plays a vital role in helping merchants and the industry shape innovative approaches to payments. Providing unparalleled collaboration and networking opportunities for merchants and sponsors, the MAG collaborates with industry stakeholders and advocates for merchants’ interests. The MAG represents over 150 U.S. merchants which account for over $4.8 Trillion in annual sales at over 580,000 locations across the U.S. and online. Roughly $3.5 Trillion of those sales and over 100 billion card payments are electronic which represents approximately 62%* of total U.S. card volume. MAG members employ over 14 million associates.
*Source of Total U.S. card volumes: Federal Reserve Payments Study 2019