Yes, but in reality, the program comes from an upside down approach to overcoming the obviously anti-competitive practices that VISA/MC use to forbid retailers from offering discounts for not using VISA etc..
You can't say "Get 2% if you use cash instead of VISA". (Notice that nobody ever advertises that?) Because VISA doesn't allow it.
You also can't say "$1.99 + 20 cents processing charge" - no, the price must be listed including charges. (Notice that nobody every does this?)
But you can possibly find ways to give points, or 'cash-back'.
Until now ... [1]
VISA is now saying that even such 'cash back' rewards programs are a violation of its rules.
Have a look at the press release - it's positively Orwellian:
"In order to maintain a level playing field" -> "In order to avoid all transparency and maintain our hidden monopoly" we require that nobody can take steps which highlight the how our transaction fees are embedded in the price.
These are pretty blatant anti-competitive practices and taking them on is tantamount to taking on the entire banking system. It's not going to happen.
There would need to be an 'outside disruptor' like the Word Processor to the Typewriter kind of thing.
The outside disrupter was supposed to be Apple Pay, but that didn't work and now Apple just issues credit cards (through Goldman Sachs). Visa/MC has such a monopoly stranglehold that getting kicked off their Network is tantamount to going broke. There are esoteric options aka Bitcoin, money order, check, but if being able to accept credit cards makes this drastically more difficult. (Ask the legal cannabis industry how it's going.) More modern attempts at disruption - Zelle/PayPal/Venmo are totally at the mercy of the banks. Who are quite happy with the status quo.
Apple Pay charges a fee as well. It also isn’t a payment system but a tokenization system similar to the chip on credit cards. Zelle was created by the big bank which is why you don’t see it at the small local banks. None of the competitor banks(fintech) have zelle support and I guess this isn’t their choice. They have to move money by ach with is much slower.
Any payment/money movement system needs a license and you’re still bound by federal rules on AML and KYC. It makes it hard to support the cannabis industry. AML laws will force you to report large cash movements.
They may be referring to Apple Pay Cash, which is an iMessage-based venmo style service where you cash out via ACH or pay in stores using your Cash balance.
I wasn’t aware of the cost TBH. I guess they can always develop their own zelle substitutes if they feel it’s worth it, not sure the economics of that are in their favor. Just saying you can’t ignore the upfront investment the builders put into creating and maintaining it while also pointing to the unit costs they charge the network partners. I’m sure it’s all negotiable with volume.
The outside disrupter was supposed to be Facebook currency and I am glad it didn't happen as Facebook has enough power already and this would starting to go in WeChat direction.
The vending machine in my Apartment bldg has a sticker saying that credit card price is $0.10 more than the stated price and to use cash/coin to get the stated price. The machine does not accept bills or coins.
I should add because I cannot edit my comment that some of these parameters have changed in the last few years, however, it various by jurisdiction. Also, the universal incumbency established by these players was deeply entrenched before such programs were relinquished.
You can't say "Get 2% if you use cash instead of VISA". (Notice that nobody ever advertises that?) Because VISA doesn't allow it.
I see this all the time. * At more than one bookstore, the dry cleaner, markets, my current and previous landlord, my accountant, and pretty much every gas station since the 1990's.
It’s really only one chain I see doing that, and I’ve never bought gas from them and never will. The first time I lied in and they told me they were charging more for card I left.
(1) Cash discounts were always permitted ("2% off for paying with cash")
(2) Credit surcharges and minimums used to be forbidden, but they are not anymore ("2% surcharge for paying with credit, minimum $10 for card payments")
(3) It wasn't federal law, it was the merchant agreements that precluded credit card minimums and surcharges as a condition of signing up to accept credit card payments from each of the major issuers.
There are many places in Europe that have weird rules... Like some dutch places not accepting EU debit cards. Aldi in Ireland doesn't accept out of country debit cards.
Small dollar transactions really need a better solution. Idk swipe rates, but something like 2.9% + $0.30 being a total transaction cost of 5.9% is just insane. Especially if you’re business is majority small transactions such as could be the case in a bodega or gas station.
> You can't say "Get 2% if you use cash instead of VISA". (Notice that nobody ever advertises that?) Because VISA doesn't allow it.
> You also can't say "$1.99 + 20 cents processing charge" - no, the price must be listed including charges. (Notice that nobody every does this?)
We see these a lot in Australia. I wish they'd enforce the same pricing here for cash and card — I don't like to carry cash around, and I hate it that I have to pay a surcharge when paying by card.
In Australia, there are two environments, the Visa/MC networks, and EFTPOS. EFTPOS is owned by the AU banks and is AU only.
A Visa or MC credit or debit card txn go via the Visa or MC networks.
An EFTPOS txn goes via the EFTPOS network, it's much cheaper.
In AU, the fees are regulated and must be disclosed to the user as an extra charge. Most businesses much prefer the EFTPOS network because it's much cheaper.
Until recently, the contactless environment didn't support EFTPOS, so it always used the Visa or MC networks. Same applies to Google and Apple Pay.
I remember being charged 5aud for paying by card at a hostel, being Swedish this was a very weird experience. While I do like the anonymity of cash, cards are very convenient.
People who pay in cash are subsidizing the store’s costs to handle cash. Paying employees to count the cash (usually after closing), putting it in the safe, distributing the cash to cash registers, refilling when they run out of change, paying for the security service (Brinks etc) to deliver cash to/from the bank, insurance against robbery...
Cash is not free for a store to handle. Stores pay transaction fees on credit cards, sure, but they save on all the costs of cash. A hypothetical store that takes credit cards only would not have any of these costs and their vulnerability to robbery/theft would be limited to merchandise and capital only, saving the cost of insurance against theft of cash. For some types of businesses (services rather than retailers), this makes their office a pretty unattractive target for burglars and eliminates employee theft of cash.
This is an interesting argument, but it is not backed up by actual store behavior.
Stores generally try to give extra charges for using credit cards, not the other way around.
It seems like the fair thing to do, should be to allow a store to do whatever it wants, and make these credit card requirements illegal.
So, it would be allowed for stored to charge extra for either cash or credit, whatever they choose, and the credit card companies would be forbidden from stopping this.
It's common for online stores to charge a few percent extra for credit card payment (the base price usually applies for the most common form of online payment, iDEAL, which is cheaper, I guess because the banks cut out Visa/MC).
On the other end of the spectrum, there are some physical stores and restaurants (usually chains) that don't accept cash. They're allowed to do that, given that they state so very clearly upfront.
that's like saying opening the doors everyday to customers is not free. it's true, but misses the point. handling cash, like paying for utilities, is a fundamental cost of doing business, and so it should be, because the right to anonymity and privacy is woven into cash. not so much with electronic transactions, which are optional, alternative costs.
Indeed. And if stores make their accounting and realize that cash handling costs more than credit card handling, they should be able to add a cash surcharge as well.
It just happens that they dont want to do that, because dealing with cash is cheaper
In many places, paying cash is faster than paying by card. Before contactless, with optimized (rounded) pricing, you would often get 3x the throughput (nowdays less) and for small transactions the fees were ridiculous (smaller with contactless).
I wonder how much more expensive credit cards actually are? Cash costs money/time to handle and deposit, it's easily stolen, and easy to commit fraud with (like the classic move where a drive thru employee pockets the cash from a sale without ringing it up)
One issue I know smaller retailers sometimes have is that it can take a long time to get cleared funds into their account.
One small cafe near a place I used to work said it usually took 30-60 days for funds to clear into their account after a card transaction. That, for them, was a major problem as it meant that they couldn't then pay their suppliers in a timely manner when cashflow was highly variable.
Then again, a bakery I visited that was in a small town said they'd stopped taking cash, as they got robbed some huge number of times.
The computerization of order taking and kitchen tickets would seem to make it harder to charge a customer without ringing it up? I know you could cancel it in the system, but that's gotta be counted somewhere where a manager is going to see it eventually?
> So you think your use of a credit card should be subsidized by people who pay in cash?
I don't think it should be so clear cut like that. The credit card processing fees charged by the processor is a cost of doing business and should just be factored into the pricing without being explicitly passed on to a subset of customers. For example, a shopping centre or convenience store may have toilets that only a subset of customers would use. Should the customers who bought something without using the toilet be "subsidising the cleaning costs"? If a store offers online ordering, should customers who ordered online be "subsidising the rent of the physical store"?
It's a valid business decision to NOT charge extra for the toilets, too. Just like shops usually don't charge people who are a bit slower in the checkout line more for taking up cashier time.
Interestingly, in Japan most electronic shops (like Bic Camera or Yodobashi Camera) have a point card where you get 5% not directly as cash back but as "points" that you can use any time for a further purchase.
But that's only if you pay by cash, you don't get any point by paying by card.
Since Jan. 27, 2013, all retailers have been allowed to charge a fee for using credit. However, there are a lot of rules which are hard for regular retailers to follow, but easy for gas stations to follow, which is why you mostly only see it at gas stations.
The ability to purely make transactions is trivial - you can just use a debit card. The value of credit cards comes from other factors like fraud protection, SCI compliance, actual credit, etc.
Debit cards also charge some fees, but typically lower.
The fraud protection of credit cards mostly comes out of the pockets of the merchant, I think? So the merchant could give people a discount for using means of payment without a chargeback, like cash.
You are right about the actual credit. Though eg in Germany people usually use their overdraft in a same way that American seem to be using their credit cards for short term credit.
(For either convenience is the main selling point. The fees and interest rates for overdraft and credit card debt are usually quite high, I think?)
Yes, but in reality, the program comes from an upside down approach to overcoming the obviously anti-competitive practices that VISA/MC use to forbid retailers from offering discounts for not using VISA etc..
You can't say "Get 2% if you use cash instead of VISA". (Notice that nobody ever advertises that?) Because VISA doesn't allow it.
You also can't say "$1.99 + 20 cents processing charge" - no, the price must be listed including charges. (Notice that nobody every does this?)
But you can possibly find ways to give points, or 'cash-back'.
Until now ... [1]
VISA is now saying that even such 'cash back' rewards programs are a violation of its rules.
Have a look at the press release - it's positively Orwellian:
"In order to maintain a level playing field" -> "In order to avoid all transparency and maintain our hidden monopoly" we require that nobody can take steps which highlight the how our transaction fees are embedded in the price.
These are pretty blatant anti-competitive practices and taking them on is tantamount to taking on the entire banking system. It's not going to happen.
There would need to be an 'outside disruptor' like the Word Processor to the Typewriter kind of thing.
[1] https://www.pymnts.com/visa/2018/non-compliant-cash-discount...