Get ready for more credit card charges!!

[Stinsok]

No fee transactions gone?

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/atte...here-1C8086499

[bmc]

It is to encourage you to not use your credit card. It has been that was in the UK and Netherlands for a couple of years. If you want to buy plane tickets in those countries with your credit card, you pay the surcharge. Card companies hose merchants of interchange fees and they are not interested in reducing them. So now merchants can retaliate and ding cutomers, or take alternative forms of payment.

[placedesjardins]

It's the other way around. When you bought a product with a credit card, the cost of the product included a credit card fee markup. So when you were paying cash, you were paying for a product which included a credit card fee markup instead of without it.

[fdeck]

Credit card fees are exorbitant. If credit card companies start seeing serious competition from customers who use cash and checks, or from lower-fee cards, we might see the fees go down.

[placedesjardins]

But, I've already seen cash vs. credit card price differences at gas stations in Pennsylvania. It's worth it to pay cash.

[ADbassman]

Reading through the fine print this doesn't really change much unless you're dealing with a merchant that doesn't deal in one of the 10 states listed and also doesn't take AMEX or Discover or anything other than mastercard of Visa. So we're talking local joints mostly, if they choose to pass the surcharge off on to you. That doesn't really help the problems with big business taking over small towns.

[bmc]

Originally Posted by placedesjardins

It's the other way around. When you bought a product with a credit card, the cost of the product included a credit card fee markup. So when you were paying cash, you were paying for a product which included a credit card fee markup instead of without it.

No, you have it the other way around. If Steves Music sells you a $1,000 bass, and the purchase was made on a credit card, the banks will pay Steves $990 for the bass, keeping $10 for interchange fees. What this ruling allows is for merchants to charge you an extra $10 to recoup the fees. It's not a card fee assessed by the bank or card scheme.

[bmc]

Originally Posted by fdeck

Credit card fees are exorbitant. If credit card companies start seeing serious competition from customers who use cash and checks, or from lower-fee cards, we might see the fees go down.

Exactly. This is the whole point. The fees being talked about are not the fees card holdes pay. These are fees assesssed to merchants.

The fees taken from merchants go to the card holders bank and the merchants bank with a small portion going to the card scheme.

Interchange fees vary based on the what is being bought. Airline tickets assess higher interchange. Corporate cards assess higher interchange. Merchants prefer cash, debit cards and any of the 200+ eerging alternative forms of payment.

[Simo98]

It's always been legal to charge a credit card transaction fee here in Australia, provided the customer chooses to pay via credit card, you have to have an option. If credit card is compulsory, you're not legally allowed to a charge a fee. Some online agencies still get away with doing so, but I think this is more of a case of them not being picked up on it yet. Particularly ticketing agencies and stuff that do it, among all the other extra fees they like to charge you (postage, processing fee, credit card fee, carbon neutral offset fee? ticket insurance?! )


It's pretty rare to ever be charge a fee for using a normal credit card (Visa or Mastercard). I've seen it in stores once or twice before, and I've been to a few petrol stations that also charge a fee, it's very uncommon though.

A lot of stores will charge a fee for using another credit card, particularly American Express. The reason for this is that the merchant fees are much higher for these cards, AmEx take 4% of every transaction, as opposed to 0.5-1.5%.

More commonly, stores will just not accept American Express cards to save the hassle of charging fees and that sort of thing.

[bmc]

Hey Simo

I meant to add Australia to the areas where surcharging by merchants is permitted. The US is about 10 years behind. Chip (no PIN) is on the horizon, again, 10 years behind Europe and Asia.

Amex are the worst. There merchant fees for airline ticket sales can exceed 3.74%, double what Visa or Mastercard charge. That's why restaurants, hotels and some airlines refuse to accept there cards.

If current practice in Europe is an indicator of how merchants react, you could very well see low cost airlines implementing this. In the UK, Easyjet and Ryanair do the surcharging thing.

Here's an article from one of the trade sites.

http://www.pymnts.com/regulations/co...m_medium=email

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by bmc

No, you have it the other way around. If Steves Music sells you a $1,000 bass, and the purchase was made on a credit card, the banks will pay Steves $990 for the bass, keeping $10 for interchange fees. What this ruling allows is for merchants to charge you an extra $10 to recoup the fees. It's not a card fee assessed by the bank or card scheme.

I have NEVER seen a bank or other credit card company only charge $10/transaction. The lowest price I have seen lately is about 2%, which is rare- most are 3%. One problem with Amex is that they take a long time to pay the merchant and that's why it's not as easy to find merchants that take it. Discover can be difficult, too.

If a separate charge is added, merchants are allowed to charge the fee they pay, not more.

[bmc]

Originally Posted by 1958Bassman

I have NEVER seen a bank or other credit card company only charge $10/transaction.

I was using that as an example in simple terms, with no real % behind it.

As per late payment from Amex, they'll site a number of things from risk of card holder nonpayment, to the risk of your business going under to....blah blah blah.

[klejst]

No surprise, actually I am surprised this did not happen sooner. Greed rules everything.

[MakiSupaStar]

Does this include debit cards? Didn't Bank of America get protested because of this?

[MakiSupaStar]

I just read this.

“We have discussed the settlement with many, many merchants, and not a single merchant we have spoken to plans to surcharge,” Craig Shearman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation (NRF), said in a statement. The NRF was not involved in the class action lawsuit.

[hdracer]

A couple years ago I started adding 4% to all of my prices to cover CC fees.
If the customer pays with cash or local check I knock 5% off the final price.

[Jaco D]

I could be wrong but isn't it illegal for merchants to have "two-tiered" pricing - one for cash sales and another for credit card sales? To circumvent this rule, some outlets (like Canadian Tire here up North) include the credit card charges in their prices and give out Canadian Tire "Money" to customers who pay in cash (and debit as well, I think). The "bills" are like cash that you can use like any form of legal tender at the Canadian Tire stores. Knocking-off a certain percentage as what HD mentioned above is another way of going around this limitation.

[bmc]

Originally Posted by Jaco D

I could be wrong but isn't it illegal for merchants to have "two-tiered" pricing - one for cash sales and another for credit card sales? To circumvent this rule, some outlets (like Canadian Tire here up North) include the credit card charges in their prices and give out Canadian Tire "Money" to customers who pay in cash (and debit as well, I think). The "bills" are like cash that you can use like any form of legal tender at the Canadian Tire stores. Knocking-off a certain percentage as what HD mentioned above is another way of going around this limitation.

Jaco....every Canadian has drawers full of Canadian Tire money and wonder what to do with it. I know of a guy who picked up a hooker in Rio and paid her with Canadian Tire money.

Canadian Tire money was the first loyalty scheme.

Two bits of useless trivia for ya.