Retailers defend credit cards surcharge

[Walter_Plinge]

THE retail industry has hit back at suggestions that excessive surcharging of credit cards is becoming more widespread.

...

He said the biggest offenders of surcharging were airlines, the taxi industry, telecom companies, holiday travel businesses and utilities.

Retailers defend credit cards surcharge -- The Age

 

[oz_mark]

My own experience is that retailers aren't the worst offenders in all of this. Unfortunately for them, there is evidence in other industries of excessive fees (with Taxi's being the obvious one!) and if anything happens, then the rules will lilely apply to everyone.

Even better than that, is the suggestion that a change in the ways bank charge fees to each other in the Efptos network is going to translate to a 3% to 5% surcharge. And we are talking about a 5c charge between banks here!


Read the story here: Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia warns eftpos fees will hurt consumers | News.com.au

and consider these two extracts:

"Some people will build it into their costs, while others will take the option to say, well, if you use a card you've got an extra 3 per cent or 5 per cent added to the cost of the transaction," executive director Peter Strong said.

[...]

Under the proposed changes, eftpos Payments Australia Limited (ePal), the company established to manage the eftpos debit payments network, will charge merchants' banks a 5c fee for all eftpos transactions over $15.

 

[travelislife]

Well airlines are definitely one of those industries where the fee to use a credit card is no where near the real cost! I don't know the best way for them to regulate this, the consumer wants the option to pay however they want without incurring an extra cost, but the business ideally wants cash in the bank today for minimal cost. The 'cheapest' way of this transaction occuring for the two parties is cash, taking out the costs of actually banking and tracking this cash.

If they say business can only charge the fee passed on to them from the merchant this doesn't allow for fixed costs such as EFTPOS terminals for the retailer.

Something does need to be done though, funny how it seems to be service industries where they like to add the surcharge in for card payments.

 

[drron]

But cash has a cost.has to be accounted for.staff have to take it to the bank.Just as expensive as the lease of the Eftpos device.That is a red herring.
When in business I preferred people paying by CC rather than cheque or cash.Nothing further needed to be done and money was in the overdrawn account quicker.

 

[Walter_Plinge]

But cash has a cost.has to be accounted for. Staff have to take it to the bank. Just as expensive as the lease of the Eftpos device. That is a red herring.
When in business I preferred people paying by CC rather than cheque or cash. Nothing further needed to be done and money was in the overdrawn account quicker.

Exactly. Cash and cheques have direct costs -- the staff time required to process them yet there's never a levy for that.

 

[travelislife]

I did mention the cost of using cash in my post above. And you are right about it having costs. It is just harder for a retailer to go "everytime I receive cash it cost's me $1.25 of labour to deal with it", compared to a set fee on all of their card transactions which is readily itemised.

 

[djfuzz]

It's a wonder people don't just carry around bags of 5c pieces with which to pay without being penalised.