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Comment by yardstick | Hacker News Reader

In many countries it’s illegal for merchants to charge differently based on payment method. So ironically you are better off using Amex or some high fee card with rewards because the merchant has to factor it into the sticker price.

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In many countries being the USA, whose Supreme Court deemed it anti-competitive for courts to strike down Visa/Mastercard/AmEx's clause that makes it illegal for merchants to pass along processing costs to consumers.

Also the UK

Fortunately, there are countries where it's not the case. When you think about it for a moment, it's extremely clear how unfair this clause is for everybody except credit card companies.

Honestly, I prefer it as a consumer. In the US, one can relatively easily find a card that gets 2% back on every transaction, if not more, with 3-7% not uncommon for certain spending. Even at 1-2% back, most of the price increase by a merchant is recouped, and some nominal extra amount is perfectly acceptable to me for the convenience. Cash isn't free to accept either for most merchants, given the security risks, so I can't imagine I'd be saving much (if anything) if different prices were allowed for cash transactions.

It is not true in the US either since 2010. See my adjacent comment above.

Contract clauses don't make things illegal. In the countries where it's illegal it's because the government has made it so, presumably because of lobbying by the card companies or large businesses. See the UK for example: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/card-surcharge-ban-means-...

Surcharges are generally considered anti-consumer, because businesses often hide them until the final payment step, disguising the true cost of the product and reducing price transparency.

Same in Sweden, no card charges here. They used to decline card purchases on smaller amounts, but I don't see that anywhere anymore either. Our credit card rewards are absolutely terrible in comparison to the US though.

Interesting. A minimum purchase of $10 or $15 for credit cards is still common at bars and small, independently-owned stores in the US.

I was at the grocery store the other day to pick up a package, bought an energy drink for 8 SEK (<1$). In a convenience store prices are just higher to cover fees. (I guess)

I haven't paid for a beer with cash since I came home from a trip to Indonesia & Australia ~3 years ago. A normal bar-beer would set you back between 30 and 90 SEK (commonly 65) in Sweden, exchange rate is about 1$ to 9 SEK.

This is incorrect. It would not even make sense on its face, as all business costs get passed down to customers. If they did not, then the business is losing money.

As of 2010, Dodd-Frank legislation explicitly made it illegal for payment card networks to prevent merchants from offering discounts for different payment methods:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/new...

> A PCN cannot stop you from offering your customers a discount or another incentive for using a certain method of payment, as long as you offer it to all your customers and disclose the offer clearly and conspicuously. For example, you can offer your customers a discount or a coupon if they pay with cash or a debit card rather than a credit card.

In Mar 2017, Supreme Court went further and said state laws banning credit card surcharges were a violation of merchants’ first amendment rights:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressions_Hair_Design_v._Sch...

What you may be thinking about is rules prohibiting charging different payment card network prices for various credit cards (i.e. different price for Visa vs Amex vs Mastercard vs Discover). This was deemed allowable by the Supreme Court in Jun 2018:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_v._American_Express_Co.

As an aside, this Ohio v AmEx ruling was of great benefit to tech companies that operated market places, because

> This decision was considered to have created a new type of rule that could make it difficult to seek antitrust litigation; with credit cards being a two-sided market serving two distinct sets of customers, a successful antitrust argument would have to show how both sides of the market were harmed.

In Australia, the merchant surcharges are allowed, but not more than the cost to the business, with the regulator (ACCC) paying a lot of attention to that.

Most small operators will have a 1-2% surcharge for credit cards and Amex sometimes either not accepted or higher.

https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts...

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