Credit Card Fee

[jis]

I heard on the news this morning that New Jersey is one of the states that can charge the 4%.

It is not the State that can charge anything. It is merchants in the state that do the charging, lest someone get the impression that this is another tax being collected by the State.

It was pretty obvious to me, and am sure many others, that this is what Shanghai meant.

Good for you !

 

[tomfuller]

I've been carrying and using a DEBIT card for over 20 years now. Many of the places that I make a POS purchase will allow me to take $20 or even $50 in change to use where people want cash.

I will not use a credit card in a place that will charge a fee and does not have a DEBIT option.

Most retailers just raise the price a little to cover the CC fees that they pay. A discount for paying cash is also a common practice.

 

[crescent2]

Some additonal info, re debit vs credit: Credit cards offer more protection to the user than debit cards do. Debit cards link directly to the money in your bank account. If your info is stolen, your money can be instantly stolen, and then you have to take steps to get it back. Credit card charges go through the credit card company first and can be easily disputed. Your money isn't "gone" until you choose to pay the credit card bill. It's easier to straighten out any fraudulent use.

But, I don't want to pay an extra fee for using a credit card! For the reasons listed by others, I doubt many of the larger merchants will choose to, or be able to, add the fee. *hoping*

 

[The Journalist]

Ugh, credit fees...terrible practice. Almost as bad as the surcharge to use out-of-network ATMs. I don't understand how gas stations got away with this even before it was allowed. As a cabbie I spend $50-$90 a week on gas. If I'm not using the company pump, I make it a point to buy at stations that don't charge extra for credit cards whenever possible, even if I'm using cash and it means I'm spending a bit more.

 

[Nathanael]

Since VISA and Mastercard charge a huge fee to the merchants for processing credit cards, I'm totally comfortable with merchants who choose to encourage their customers to pay in cash instead.

Obviously Amtrak would never do any such thing, as Amtrak is not really interested in handling giant bags of cash. This is more for small brick-and-mortar stores.

 

[chakk]

I have heard NY and MA laws will prevent the charges but many states are "fair game."

The ten states with laws banning credit card surcharge fees are

• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Florida
• Kansas
• Maine
• Massachusetts
• New York
• Oklahoma
• Texas

 

[PPorro]

And one more thing that I found on the Visa site, which was nice to know:

"If retailers intend to impose a surcharge on credit card purchases, they are required to notify customers before customers make an actual purchase at the store entrance and at the point of sale – or in an online environment, on the first page that references credit card brands."

 

[rrdude]

As I understand the situation Amtrak would currently be prohibited from charging any kind of surcharge. Both Visa and MasterCard have rules that require all a company's outlets to handle credit card sales the same way. Since Amtrak has ticket offices in states where the practice is banned, it would be banned at all locations.
And for reference credit card surcharges are banned by law in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.

--

Bud

Dats da "old rules", as part of financial reform, banks, issuers, and CC companies now "allow" their merchant accounts to recoup their fees, IF they want to. I'm betting that adoption will be slow, but eventually, these "fee recovery" options will just be too lucrative to pass up. Look at airlines as an example, thy charge for virtually everthing.

Years ago, while selling restaurant POS systems, we came up with way for the restaurant to recoup the FEES that they paid on CC tips, JUST the tip portion mind you. For a restaurant doing $1M a year in sales, with 75% paid with CC, it was an absolut , "no brainer."

Whike the servers who got the CC tips "ate" the fees, it was in such little chunks, they didn't feel the pain as bad. And if they complained, well, they were fre to go elsewhere. But to the restaurant, it was many times THOUSANDS of dollars per year in fees.....

Now extrapolate that to Walmart, or Southwest Airlines, or Amtrak...... Unless there is a competitive disadvantage to do so, you can bet businesses will adopt this, over time.

 

[Trogdor]

Now extrapolate that to Walmart, or Southwest Airlines, or Amtrak...... Unless their is a competitive disadvantage to NOT do so, you can bet businesses will adopt this, over time.

Besides the aforementioned requirements that if they do business in any state that prohibits such fees, they're not allowed to charge them anywhere, there are many reasons not to do so (and your statement makes no sense, the "NOT" actually contradicts the point you were intending to make).

As I noted earlier, companies that do massive amounts of business and transactions want to reduce their cash handling as much as possible. Why do you think Southwest Airlines is cashless? If it were to their advantage to encourage cash over fees, they'd accept $5 bills on their planes for drinks. Instead, they only accept credit cards. Clearly, there must be a reason for that.

Imagine if everybody that bought an Amtrak ticket paid cash (Amtrak stopped accepting personal checks for tickets years ago). The amount of security required and potential for theft and loss would simply be too great. I know a few people predicting that when Amtrak finally does away with cash (whenever that may be, many years down the road) for dining car and cafe car sales, the amount of revenue collected and reported will increase by a noticeable amount. I'll let you guess why that might be.

I don't want to repeat myself, so I'll just refer you to my post on page 1 of this thread. The higher the sales volume, the more expensive cash becomes, and the cheaper (relatively speaking) credit card transactions become.