Really irritated with credit card fees for merchants

posted by Jeff | Friday, August 5, 2005, 1:16 PM | comments: 3

When you swipe your credit card to pay for something, you probably don't think much about it. It doesn't really cost you anything directly, if you pay off your balance every month. But the truth is that it does cost you something, because the merchants get screwed and they have to pass that cost on to you.

I accept credit cards for CoasterBuzz Club memberships, to pay for event tickets and subscriptions to this site. Right now, if you add all of the fees and discounts together and divide by the amount I charge, my costs come to 10% of the transaction amount! So that $20 membership costs me $2 just to process. How ridiculous is that?

Visa and Mastercard need oversight. They can charge whatever they want because there is no one else. I've seen studies that estimate the true cost of a credit card transaction, for everyone including Visa/MC and the banks, to be around five cents. Yeah, five cents. So why am I paying $2 on a $20 transaction?

Write your congressman. Ultimately you pay this as a consumer.


Comments

Alex

August 5, 2005, 5:29 PM #

How much do you think Taco Bell actually gets when I swipe for a $1.26 Grande Soft Taco?

Jeff

August 5, 2005, 6:06 PM #

They do a huge volume, so their discount fee is likely very low, probably under 2%, and the transaction fee is likely under a dime.

Part of my problem is that I'm low volume and Internet only, but the point was that Visa/Mastercard very recently hiked their fees.

james k

August 8, 2005, 4:40 AM #

There are a couple Gas stations here in detroit that have started charging the % fee and Transaction fees directly on top of the customers total bill.

How they get away with that, I have no idea. I refuse to go to those stations anymore...


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