Originally Posted by
der_saeufer
I think you're referring to my post, which I've now clarified. The 1% fee to which I was referring was the fee charged by Visa to American cardholders making purchases in currencies other than USD. There are a few Visa cards that don't charge this and more than a few where the bank gets an additional 2% for doing exactly nothing. AmEx gets 3% except plat/cent where there is no forex fee.
As far as merchant surcharges in Oz go, I'd say surcharges are rare and generally applied only to AmEx and Diners. It seems like the chain stores take all cards for free and the majority of small businesses take MC/Visa for free and don't take AmEx or Diners at all. No one but the airlines here has charged me to use Visa. A few places (hotels, restaurants and the Tasmanian Hertz affiliate) have wanted 3% on AmEx, so I just paid with Visa. A couple places in Indonesia did the same.
Surcharges weren't rare last time I was in Europe, and I think they're only specifically prohibited by the merchant agreement in the USA (which may be changing according to a recent WSJ article)
Thanks for the clarification; however about two or three years ago, I read that a law was passed in Australia authorizing surcharges and that many merchants were charging 2.5% on credit card purchases.
Of course recently in our country, for reasons I still don't understand, in the Durbin banking bill, they allowed him to put in clauses allowing minimum purchase limits by merchants and allowing credit card surcharges....