Colorado Gov. vetoes law barring swipe fees on taxes
2026-06-04 · payments
Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature last month that would have barred banks and credit card companies from charging interchange fees on taxes, arguing that the bill would create too much legal risk for businesses and consumers.
Product Blueprint SwipeTax Shield is a SaaS tool that automatically splits payment transactions at checkout to route the tax portion through ACH or lowest-cost rails while the goods/services portion runs on card, eliminating interchange on tax components without waiting for legislation.
Why it matters Colorado's veto signals that legislative relief is dead in the near term, forcing processors to solve this operationally — the $700B+ in annual US tax payments processed by card represents roughly $14B in interchange that processors and agencies are desperate to reduce right now.
Target user Payment operations managers at mid-market government payment processors, utilities, and tax collection agencies (50-500 employees) who are eating 1.5-2.9% interchange on tax line items they legally cannot surcharge back to consumers.
Go-to-market Sign 3 municipal utility billing platforms (think Invoice Cloud, Paymentus resellers) as design partners with a rev-share on interchange saved; build the MVP as a webhook middleware that sits between their existing payment gateway and their billing system, requiring zero front-end changes; pitch the first 10 customers as a cost-reduction guarantee with 90-day ROI or free.
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