emcampbe

interestingly enough, was in SF over the weekend and was at a cafe where they were surcharging both credit and debit cards. My understanding was they weren’t allowed to surcharge debit cards. I think they were manually putting it in, because the Cc terminal showed the price with the surcharge, and I when I realized I had enough cash, and she saw me paying, she typed something else into the non-cc device and gave me the lower cost. As a point of comparison, at a locally owned ME grocery store near home, they surcharge cards, the terminal shows the amount of charge, then asks you to consent to the $X card fee. If you decline, it won’t let the transaction proceed and you can pay the cashier in cash.

as for Canada, forget the details exactly, but there was a lawsuit many years ago on acceptance of ‘premium’ cards, which got higher swipe fees. Some merchants, particularly small businesses had signs saying they would not accept the equivalent of todays Visa ‘Infinite’ cards because they didn’t want to pay the higher fees. CC companies sued, forcing merchants to either take all a brands cards if they wanted to take any. I think merchants got the right to charge fees though for taking them, and I think they asked, but don’t remember if they got the ability to, charge higher fees based on whether it was a ‘regular’ or ‘premium’ card.

tmiw

Yeah, surcharging both card types is pretty common because debit cards typically run over Visa or MC at a lot of smaller places. From the merchant's perspective, everything is a credit card. Not the correct view, of course, but I get it.

Maybe if mandatory debit routing (e.g. like Interac in Canada) were a thing, places would actually surcharge only credit cards like they're supposed to.

Majuki

There used to be one of the restaurants at Great Mall that had a sign stating that there were different surcharges for debit, standard credit cards, rewards credit cards, and premium credit cards. I never ate there while it was open, and I don't know how they would distinguish among the card types.

rasheed

The merchant software is supposed to figure out the fee from the BIN automatically and line item on the receipt. Elavon is one that advertised as such.

Remember, the surcharge must be listed as a line item or it should be reported to the network. Merchants have to follow the rules if they want to do this nonsense.

emcampbe

I dont know the exact specifics, but the numbers on your CC mean more than you might think. There are various of the digits that identify various things, for example, Visas start with 4, Amex 3, MC 5, there are others that identify the issuer, type of card, check digit, etc. when the card is run, trivial to identify what kind and automatically charge the appropriate fee.

storewanderer

I will emphasize your information that this business went out of business...

They probably just looked at the card and made an assumption.

I again emphasize that this business went out of business...

cbn42

Thousands of restaurants go out of business every year, most of which don't have any sort of card surcharges. I don't think you can attribute the failure to any particular factor.

rasheed

I was just glancing at some of the latest interchange fee schedules. Now, the merchant processor typically adds some fees on-top, but some of the categories I found of interest...

https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCO...ement-fees.pdf
https://www.mastercard.us/content/da...apr22-2022.pdf

Fuel: All MC/Visa credit card types, No more than $.90 to $1.10 max per credit transaction. It makes the argument that gas stations with split pricing for cards versus cash are profiting on the price difference in many cases. I am unsure if that is allowed.

A number of transaction types including taxi/rideshare and restaurants no longer have a per transaction charge to support no need for minimum charge.

If you use use credit with charities, Visa is better than Mastercard. Mastercard is trying to encourage utilities to take card and put a small flat fee lower than processing a check or other payment methods. That means the over on the rebates/points is coming from the issuer. We still don't see many utilities taking credit.

Gaming is also getting a very low rate, but I suspect many issuers will flag it as cash advance that are not rebate eligible.

It is a reminder than business folks should try to not take a flat rate for cards, but should try to get the rate per network plus whatever plus on top for their acquirer/merchant processor.

tmiw

This can be complicated by the fact some processors also provide the POS system (e.g. Square). Though at least in Square's case, you can negotiate fees if you have enough volume.

Majuki

While this isn't strictly surcharging in the US, it has implications for US credit card holders. This was at Sunflower Taiwanese Gourmet in Sydney. I don't know how they can tell between cards, and this likely goes against the card acceptance agreement. My sister-in-law paid with her local card, so I didn't get an opportunity to test this:

cbn42

Does "international card" refer only to cards issued by foreign banks, or any card that runs on a foreign network, such as Visa and Mastercard? It is possible that "local card" refers only to EFTPOS, although I've never heard of a surcharge for that.

invisible

How this 'surcharge' will be applied if one pays with Apple Pay?

Majuki

I saw another establishment where V/MC were 1%, Amex was 1.5%, and UnionPay was 2%. I thought UnionPay typically had lower fees.

rasheed

Australia is another special for surcharges. All hotels there pretty much surcharges if you use a card, even cobranded. I took cash from ATM to pay my bill. If the surcharge is done by the merchant by looking at the card, you are right that there may be ways to skirt it with mobile tap to pay.

I've had similar international card discrimination for extra surcharges in Canada (Niagara Falls). I do believe many merchant agreements do charge more for overseas cards. So, as long as surcharging is allowed, then...

On UP, if it is ran over Discover, it would be at the Discover rate which can be higher except for larger merchants. If a merchant is paying the same rate for all cards, they are likely overpaying for some transactions.

Majuki

I've not seen a higher surcharge applied on the basis of my card. I agree that mobile payments would be an easy way to dodge that. The going rate for surcharges here seems to be 1.5%, which I remember being the case the last time I was here in 2019. It seems that most have just accepted surcharges. Rarely have I seen cash exchanged at restaurants, cafes, and stores. I get 3% on dining with my Chase Sapphire Reserve and 6x on my Marriott Amex, so that still beats the surcharge.

I didn't think Discover was accepted here (outside of some larger merchants), so CUP might be using its own or a different network.