In some countries there are laws that make it illegal for prices to vary based on payment methods, this means that sellers must decide to either take the 1.5% fee so that the prices are fair for cash payments, or increase all of the prices by 1.5% to cover the fees, regardless of payment method.
This means that in those countries, everyone is paying more just to enable the system of cards, even if you don’t use one.
A common loophole for that (because the credit card companies themselves demand no fees for using a credit card) is to offer a discount for cash/debit. So everything is priced with the CC fee built in, but they take it off the price when you don’t use a CC.
Though I have the most respect for the places willing to say “nah, we won’t take CC at all”.
fyi I live in one of those places and giving “discounts for cash” is illegal (It does happen anyway) and “nah, we won’t take CC at all” is also illegal… so yeah…
The first one I can kinda understand (though in a “yeah, corruption” kinda way, not a “great idea”), but the second one sounds more like an outright racket because there’s fees and shit involved in just being able to process CC payments.
I’m curious about where, though understand if you’d rather not share.
Isn’t that the case in most countries? I’ve never seen in European offline shops different prices advertised based on payment method. They’d put up the annoying “cards only above 10 €” and such, but never “cash 9€, card 10€”
Fun fact:
In some countries there are laws that make it illegal for prices to vary based on payment methods, this means that sellers must decide to either take the 1.5% fee so that the prices are fair for cash payments, or increase all of the prices by 1.5% to cover the fees, regardless of payment method.
This means that in those countries, everyone is paying more just to enable the system of cards, even if you don’t use one.
A common loophole for that (because the credit card companies themselves demand no fees for using a credit card) is to offer a discount for cash/debit. So everything is priced with the CC fee built in, but they take it off the price when you don’t use a CC.
Though I have the most respect for the places willing to say “nah, we won’t take CC at all”.
fyi I live in one of those places and giving “discounts for cash” is illegal (It does happen anyway) and “nah, we won’t take CC at all” is also illegal… so yeah…
The first one I can kinda understand (though in a “yeah, corruption” kinda way, not a “great idea”), but the second one sounds more like an outright racket because there’s fees and shit involved in just being able to process CC payments.
I’m curious about where, though understand if you’d rather not share.
Isn’t that the case in most countries? I’ve never seen in European offline shops different prices advertised based on payment method. They’d put up the annoying “cards only above 10 €” and such, but never “cash 9€, card 10€”