3 ms·

it is illegal for Merchants to charge credit card processing fees by law, they have to absorb these fees and cannot display them to the customer. This naturall

it is illegal for Merchants to charge credit card processing fees by law, they have to absorb these fees and cannot display them to the customer. This naturally protects the artificial oligopoly of visa/mc/discover systems. The moment you allow Merchants to charge cc fees (even 2-3%) and allow customer to choose low processing option (ACH/debit card/cash), the whole scheme falls apart and Visa/MC will slowly go bankrupt

colechristensen 5mo ago
>it is illegal for Merchants to charge credit card processing fees by law, This is only true in 4 states.
- bijowo1676 5mo ago
  the typical Merchant<->bank agreements all have clauses forcing them to absorb these fees and explicitly barring them from separately charging customer CC fee. and most small/med businesses dont have clout to protest that, so they have to accept these terms in order to earn money
  - lxgr 5mo ago
    > the typical Merchant<->bank agreements all have clauses forcing them to absorb these fees and explicitly barring them from separately charging customer CC fee. These clauses would be illegal in many states and countries these days, so they don’t.
  - colechristensen 5mo ago
    This hasn't been the case for a wide variety of payment processors for quite a while now. Many of the new startup-based ones have features to help you pass through the fees even. Small business can use Stripe, Square, Clover, or one of many other payment processors that don't ban them from passing credit card fees forward to consumers.
  - Scaled 5mo ago
    FYI there was a lawsuit about this a while back and part of the settlement was merchants can pass on fees now.
FireBeyond 5mo ago
> they have to absorb these fees absorb and then pass on as general "costs have risen". It's not like it's coming out of their profits, exclusively.
- bijowo1676 5mo ago
  if people could choose Debit card for no fee vs Credit card for 2.5% fee, then customers would reduce their usage of cc for purchases

colechristensen 5mo ago

>it is illegal for Merchants to charge credit card processing fees by law, This is only true in 4 states.

bijowo1676 5mo ago
the typical Merchant<->bank agreements all have clauses forcing them to absorb these fees and explicitly barring them from separately charging customer CC fee. and most small/med businesses dont have clout to protest that, so they have to accept these terms in order to earn money
- lxgr 5mo ago
  > the typical Merchant<->bank agreements all have clauses forcing them to absorb these fees and explicitly barring them from separately charging customer CC fee. These clauses would be illegal in many states and countries these days, so they don’t.
- colechristensen 5mo ago
  This hasn't been the case for a wide variety of payment processors for quite a while now. Many of the new startup-based ones have features to help you pass through the fees even. Small business can use Stripe, Square, Clover, or one of many other payment processors that don't ban them from passing credit card fees forward to consumers.
- Scaled 5mo ago
  FYI there was a lawsuit about this a while back and part of the settlement was merchants can pass on fees now.

FireBeyond 5mo ago

> they have to absorb these fees absorb and then pass on as general "costs have risen". It's not like it's coming out of their profits, exclusively.

bijowo1676 5mo ago
if people could choose Debit card for no fee vs Credit card for 2.5% fee, then customers would reduce their usage of cc for purchases