This is a good move but we have gone full circle.
- Vendors cover cost to offset the cost of cash handling.
- Vendors then pass on costs but at extra on top, stop trying to push using eftpos or cheaper methods. Coincides with tap to pay even on debit cards.
- Government mandates that vendors can charge whatever but it has to reflect their actual cost and be shown
- Vendors don’t bother to negotiate and charge 1.21% quite often.
- My eftpos (0.3% or less) is now getting a 1.2% mark up at one provider i go to, so I just use the credit card because they didn’t bother.
- vendors to cover costs (see #1)
The whole country now sending way more to visa and master card for 0 gain to the country.
To my international friends, eftpos is an Australian bank card processing system but only works for bank cards not credit cards.
Long overdue, the price displayed should always be the price paid, end of story.
Great… Now card issuers will demand the vendors cover the cost to use the network,
And vendors will factor that cost into the item price.
Yes that’s literally the whole idea. Unlike the US many other developed countries don’t get surcharged to death at the point of sale. See also tipping culture.
Uh, it literally says the RBA had required “the maximum a card issuer can charge a small businesses for each payment drops from 0.80% to 0.30% of the transaction”. The vendor is better off, the aggregators and issuers are the ones footing the bill. The card owner will likely lose rewards and get higher fees so the bloodsuckers can keep the same (or better) bottom line. Watch for changes in your terms.
Sure, but you can trust the parasites to find other ways to mitigate that loss, whether it’s with a daily service fee based on number of transactions, or some bullshit like an ‘security checking fee’ - I suppose we’ll have to wait to find out.
Somehow all prices have increased 10% !
Card companies are changing their annual card fees and any loyalty points associated. Apparently frequent flyer points etc used to cost the vendor heaps as they didn’t know which cards have them and they got slugged with various costs. A lot of the POS terminals just add the surcharge automatically.
This change means the buyer pays when they sign up for the card in the first place. Just another RBA mistake when they first introduced the card charges in the first place.
Retroactively? I’m not sure how I would be paying anything when signing up for a card
Updated terms and conditions.
Does Australia have alternatives to Visa/Mastercard?
I think a few places—ones that cater to a large number of Chinese students, mainly—might support WeChat or AliPay. Not that those are exactlygreat options.
Not really, unless AMEX counts. RIP Bankcard
Behind the scenes there are several routes your card can be charged via. IIRC EFTPOS is one of the cheapest, but doesn’t support card tap, instead you have to insert and use your pin?
EDIT: Yes
When a card is waved OR is a credit card it is processed by the credit network and receives the ‘valuable protections’ attributed to credit cards regardless of whether it is a credit or branded (eg Visa or Mastercard) debit card. If it is inserted and identified as an EFTPOS card it is processed through the interbank (cheaper) network; if a debit card it depends on the selection (eg savings, cheque, or credit).
If you use a debit card, it’s likely a “dual network” card, meaning it can be used to make payments via the Mastercard/Visa network (depending on the issuer) as well as the eftpos system.
Using the lower-cost eftpos system can help reduce card surcharges and sometimes avoid them completely.
To do this, you typically swipe or insert your card and pay using the “savings” option.
I guess I know what I’m doing from now on.
