3 ms·

Credit card is a percentage of the purchase price. Mastercard/Visa charge roughly 2%, and IIRC roughly 1.7% on their debit cards. I know here in Canada debit ch

Credit card is a percentage of the purchase price. Mastercard/Visa charge roughly 2%, and IIRC roughly 1.7% on their debit cards. I know here in Canada debit charges through the Interac system are a flat fee between $0.05 and $0.25 and can be charged as a surcharge by stores (however as far as I can tell they're charged full service fees if they surcharge it, like many convenience stores). However, because of the Interac system's flat fee some businesses will give you a 2% credit for using a debit card over a credit card. Here in Canada we have a $1 and $2 coin and I find it saves a lot of hassle, I can pay for a lot of things by just grabbing my change. I don't like taking my wallet out in a crowded area when I've got a couple 100 dollars in there.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
silencio 16y ago
That ultimately depends on the merchant agreement. Regardless, it's a percentage and/or a flat fee (and usually the flat fee that makes no sense for micropayments), and varies depending on other factors (which creditor, what kind of card, etc). But that's not what I'm talking about. Typically in the US the merchant is responsible for paying all fees and is not allowed to explicitly charge the customer for it in any extra way except through methods like "cash discounts". So the customer will pay for this some other way (like raising the price of the product). I guess that's the difference I'm nitpicking about here...just as ridiculous as it is ok to provide cash discounts but not credit card surcharges, it's ridiculous to claim you're not paying anything for those additional fees, because retailers that have to deal with the possibility of micropayments aren't exactly oblivious to the fact that a percentage+flat fee just killed their profit on a $2 purchase. There is a lot more to the cost of accepting credit cards than just the transaction fee, just as there are costs of accepting cash. It's just that the benefits of accepting cash (i.e. tax fraud as I mentioned above) is a lot more appealing than accepting card payments to many businesses. But I digress...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

silencio 16y ago

That ultimately depends on the merchant agreement. Regardless, it's a percentage and/or a flat fee (and usually the flat fee that makes no sense for micropayments), and varies depending on other factors (which creditor, what kind of card, etc). But that's not what I'm talking about. Typically in the US the merchant is responsible for paying all fees and is not allowed to explicitly charge the customer for it in any extra way except through methods like "cash discounts". So the customer will pay for this some other way (like raising the price of the product). I guess that's the difference I'm nitpicking about here...just as ridiculous as it is ok to provide cash discounts but not credit card surcharges, it's ridiculous to claim you're not paying anything for those additional fees, because retailers that have to deal with the possibility of micropayments aren't exactly oblivious to the fact that a percentage+flat fee just killed their profit on a $2 purchase. There is a lot more to the cost of accepting credit cards than just the transaction fee, just as there are costs of accepting cash. It's just that the benefits of accepting cash (i.e. tax fraud as I mentioned above) is a lot more appealing than accepting card payments to many businesses. But I digress...