Originally Posted by percysmith

But with mum and dad shops, esp Secrep Recipe and its manageress (who I believe is the proprietor), it's not hard to imagine the acquirer technicians coming in to perform a "system-wide upgrade" and replace old terminals with DCC ones. The fee structure could be completely untouched, meaning even the merchant is screwed out of his (her) profits too.

Merchant could be innocent here. It could be a lot easier for the Secrep Recipe proprietress to turn DCC off than let a foreign devil screw around the card terminal for minutes.

Originally Posted by jamar

It's actually Secret Recipe and it's hardly a "mum-and-dad" shop. It's a not-so-small Malaysian chain restaurant with locations scattered across the continent from what I can tell. And in that regard I wonder if they've got some region-wide deal with HSBC for the machines. (and it could very well only be the people "back home" benefiting, with the manageress not seeing any of the benefit either)

Though on the other hand, they may not have that much of a connection to the Malaysian corporate parent depending on the franchising agreement (the Chinese subsidiary doesn't even have its own website).