Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
This confuses interchange fees and credit card processing fees. The former are capped at 0.3% for credit cards, the latter are between an additional 1.5% to 3% depending upon the provider.
Quite. AMEX have their own rates as they are by and large independent from merchant accounts that deal with MC/Visa etc, and in recent years have dropped their rates considerably in the travel industry - it's the one place I guess they want high acceptance rates as they are first and foremost associated with travel, but still hover around 2% +/-.
The travel industry got hit badly by the removal of cc fees / surcharges as by and large (not exclusively as some naughty companies around) the surcharges covered the costs of the charges in a very low margin industry, and there were ways to avoid (debit cards, BACS) whilst maintaining financial protection (ATOL, trust funds etc). There is no scope to 'cover' the fees charges so prices across the board have increased to cover the increased costs. There was very little scope to cover the AMEX/CC fees in most travel companies margins. In my field costs to the consumer have increased to meet the average cost incurred now by not being able to chargeback the fees (which as mentioned vary considerably).