Credit card company Visa is calling for a ban on the surcharge fee some merchants charge card-paying consumers at the point of sale.
The Commerce Commission was undertaking a review of card charges, and considering cutting the regulated interchange fee card companies can charge banks by as much as 75 percent, for example.
Card interchange fees were in turn passed on by banks to merchants at whatever rate the merchant can negotiate, meaning that some pay much more than others.
Alternate title: “Visa, who has control over the contracts they have with banks to the point that our biggest bank ANZ doesn’t offer Mastercard as an option, complains that their gouging of consumers for using paywave has led to merchants passing on the cost if customers want to use that method, which is encouraging people to use EFTPOS which doesn’t charge for transactions. Visa proposes to go back to the gouging thing.”
Interestingly with the popularity of surcharges, I notice way more places accepting credit cards (if you’re willing to pay the fee).
it’s not just about the free money they’re getting from people using cards, it’s also the customer shopping data points they collect. that information used to cost billions of moneys to market researchers–now you’re handing it over, also for free
Maybe they could try a pricing model that competes with EFTPOS then? Especially if they are getting valuable data points.
well it sounds like visa’s trying to force small businesses to take the hit to their bottom line instead. and visa’s got all the leverage–they’ll get whatever they demand
Yeah that’s what I’m afraid of.
Alternate, alternate headline.
EFTPOS still refuses to pull head out of own arse, won’t offer competition to price gouging Visa. Even though consumers would flock to their service in a heartbeat.
Online EFTPOS is now a thing. A small number of places but it’s pretty new.
Is paywave the only thing they don’t have feature parity on? Other than overseas stuff, which will be a lot trickier to do.
Online EFTPOS is only a thing for some banks. Not universal like card based.
Universal online EFTPOS and a version of paywave, and I’d almost never need a credit card.
The paywave one is an odd one. The technology is there, and they clearly already have agreements with banks. Is the only reason for not having EFTPOS paywave that the banks turn them down, whether due to user confusion (can paywave different cards at different places - seems not too different to using credit cards at some places and not others), or is it because they can’t get the big banks on-board due to their contracts with Visa, etc?
And if so, how come they managed to get online EFTPOS?
I use eftpos in Australia because Aldi chargers a 0.5% credit/debit card surcharge.