Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluecalm | Hacker News Reader

There should be credit card charges added to every bill. This way we would have competition to make things cheaper instead if pointless reward systems - the sole purpose of those being to stifle competition.

If the stores want to give discount for paying with card they could do for example 0.5% or 1% and add the rest of the charge to the bill so there is still incentive for CC companies to compete.

As it is customers paying with cards get a hidden discount in comparison to those who pay with cash. Shops are forced to cover that discount as well. There is no incentive to provider cheaper payments either as the customers won't benefit. We really need a law that prohibits those hidden charges.

View on HN

The EU has recently gone in the opposite direction by centrally banning such surcharges: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2018/01/cards-fees-to... ; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40655333

This really does feel like a hidden subsidy to cards, presumably with the aim of moving towards full cashless operation. Norway is almost there already.

The EU also capped interchange fees though, in most cases at least.

I'd rather pay whatever payment fee (cash, debit, credit) the merchant sees fit. I have no problem paying a little more for my own convenience, but I'd rather not subsidize Amex and corporate cards.

It's vital to protect our "the advertised price is the price you pay" rules. Before these fee rules we had e.g. Ryanair advertising prices that were only available when paying with one rare credit card, and a substantial surcharge on all the cards people actually used.

I believe merchants can still offer a cash discount, which seems like a better way of handling it: cards shouldn't be subsidised, but advertised prices should be the prices when paying the way most people actually pay.

What always surprised me is how much we're willing to put a few private firms in the dead centre of the cashless economy vision. Even assuming Visa and Mastercard stay in business forever, what's going to prevent them from pulling the plug on legal businesses that are too controversial, or enforcing a "it may be legal in YOUR country, but we won't let you accept payments because it's not in OURS" paradigm?

I'm surprised there's nobody developing a 100% state-run payment processing network which would be a near drop-in replacement for the current credit card networks. Things like bank wires and ACH aren't really set up to provide responses fast enough for retail point-of-sale.

In my area a lot of gas stations are now using signs with two prices: the cash price and the credit card price with the cash price being lower. It seems some merchants are starting to be able to handle this at scale to rebalance.

It seems there was a time when as a consumer it didn't make sense not use a rewards card, but now that the ramifications are becoming apparent it is likely that some people may opt to switch back to cash.

In Australia, despite vociferous opposition from the CC lobby, it's legal for merchants to charge reasonable fees to cover CC costs and many do. Free Amex acceptance, in particular, is quite low.

That could be an interesting approach, although I suspect the current arrangements between credit card processors and retailers are more complicated than a simple fee that would be known at the time of each transaction.

I feel like maybe the store should just receive the payment in full. Then e.g. Visa could decide how best to make money off the system (say by charging the credit card users fees for usage).

If you charge credit card customers extra, credit card companies block you from network.

That is not true everywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com