Originally Posted by
othermike27
I was about to ask if Euronet is a bank-independent ATM network, but decided not to be so lazy and looked it up myself. And guess what - those highway robbers are headquartered in ... Kansas! Here's a wikipedia summary article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronet_Worldwide
Since Euronet (and other companies no doubt) provide outsourcing of payment processing for both ATMs and POS terminals, I wonder if some of those merchant protests that they have no control over DCC might actually be true. If Euronet gets a slice of each retail DCC transaction, and they're willing to add a 10% fee to your ATM draw, maybe they really don't give merchants a chance to control how the conversion is handled at retail POS.
Either way, I'm not paying DCC fees. I got burned once at the FRA Sheraton a few years ago, and that's the last time for that scam!
I don't know the legal ramifications of agreements between credit card processors and the card associations (mastercard, visa, amex). In the old days as a merchant you had agreements with your bank to process your credit card transaction and then agreements with Amex, Diners etc. Then the idea of signing up with a processor came along. But I do know that the operating procedures of mc and visa prohibit the use of dcc scam without permissiion of the scamee. Therefore I do not think it is legal for them to prohibit the bypassing of DCC. Of course lots of things are illegal like not accepting any valid mc or visa whether it is emv or magnetic strip on paper and the credit card associations when you complain call the merchant and say naughty naughty and then do nothing about it. And Amex prohibits DCC. (BTW does anybody know if there is any real effort to enforce this prohibition?)