The credit card agreement prevents that. When a business signs up with a credit card processor, part of the requirement is to not add any fees for accepting credit cards. Some businesses offer a discount for paying in cash, but your advertised price has to be the price that a person paying with a credit card would pay.
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Okay, thatâs just stupid.
In the UK, retailers typically enforce a minimum charge for credit card purchases to help cover the additional costs, but Iâve not seen that in the US.
Itâs written into the merchant agreement here in Canada as well. The merchant agreement also stipulates youâre not supposed to charge a different price for credit card, cash or debit.
Most business owners I know like to have a handle on their expenses and I think that knowing the fee that youâre going to be charged, upfront, before accepting a card should be a fundamental part of the transaction. The terminal already identifies the card so showing if the card carries a premium charge shouldnât be all that difficult.
While I have accepted all cards presented, I have a sign that says I prefer cash or debit. Most customers are OK with that and use their debit, some have no choice but to use a credit card and some customers always pay with a credit card because of the premium. When someone asks about the sign I state flatly that merchants pay for their card usage and that my prices eventually reflect the cost.
Anyone who thinks that any reward they get from a credit card is free is dreaming. Whenever has a banker ever given anything without expecting a return? Itâs the biggest racket going.
http://www.wincofoods.com/about/an-employee-owned-company/ According to this, itâs employee-owned, although Iâm not sure if you were replying to anyone else. But itâs definitely not a publicly traded company, and when I used to shop at one when I lived in a town that had one (Come to Seattle, WinCo!) multiple employees were super positive about the place.
I think I said specifically that I wasnât questioning why you would want to pay it. If you detected something negative in my tone it was probably because we essentially all walk around paying it all the time whether we use credit cards or not, which is kind of frustrating. I would rather that we pay for the cost of that particular service when we actually use it, just like we pay for our telephones and electricity.
And I prefer forms of payment that are more secure and protect my rights and interests. I mistrust vendors who put up signs saying they âpreferâ forms of payment that give me little or no recourse in the event of a problem. My family owns a not-so-small business, and we are not charged a âpremiumâ for different Visa and M/C transactions. We pay our negotiated discount rate for all transactions. I accept Visa and M/C through my smartphone personally, and I am not charged a âpremiumâ for any card, just my, admittedly high, discount rate. Your discount rate is a cost of doing business, just like electricity and water.
âDiscount for paying in cashâ and âmarkup for paying with credit cardâ are really the same thing. Around here, many gas stations advertise the cash price. Maybe theyâre not supposed to but they do.
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