Comment by krunck
17 days ago
This. And don't forget that most businesses have in their payment processing contract terms (set forth by Visa/MC ) that prevent the business from directly charging card users the card processing fees. Which means that everybody - even cash users - pay for those fees. What a racket.
I think this is one of the biggest issues here, that the EU is actually forbidding to charge credit card users the transaction fee. On the contrary, it should make it mandatory that card users have to pay the transaction fees themselves. This would automatically force card providers to reduce their fees, because nobody wants to use cards with high fees. It would also get rid of nonsensical cash-back systems.
The EU also regulated the fee to be very low, something like 0.1% of the transaction value, comparable to the implicit costs of handling cash. If it was America–style 5% then it would be a problem, but at 0.1% it's not.
The official Apple store (McShark) in Vienna used to pass this ~3% charge on to consumers (a few years ago, not sure if it's still true today - and also there is a real Apple Store now).
Wow I didn't see that. Usually it's forbidden in the terms of agreement between the merchant and the payment processor to add a surcharge for using the card so everyone else ends up subsidising it.
Vienna/Austria is such a strange place wrt payment right now. Some places are cashless, many are cash only, many are card only above a certain amount. I had one lady running a ramen restaurant accept instant SEPA.
And it's going to be interesting tax wise when they remove the requirement for receipts on transactions under 35 EUR.
There are lots of restaurants in the US these days that charge 3% for use of any credit card. One that I've been even has a sign posted at the entrance about it, that it's legal to do so. Must have gotten a lot of complaints that it was somehow illegal, or perhaps against card processing rules. Because it's one thing to post a sign that says you charge the fee, it's another for that sign to mention the legality of it.
This has broke down in the last 5 years in the Asean region. Now most shops (that still accept cards) charges you 3-5% if you pay with Visa/Mastercard.