New York's new credit card surcharge mandate takes effect: What to know
nbcnewyork.com
nbcnewyork.com
Laws like this make great talking points on the campaign trail, but I doubt anyone thinks there’s a path to enforcement…especially since almost no Americans care enough to change their behavior on these fees.
[1] exceptions are usually some sort of limit. For example in a restaurant there may be a mandated service charge for large parties, that sort of thing. But 99% of the time if I see a price, I pay that number, to the penny.
I freaking love how trivial comparing prices comes when the unit price is shown on the price label. This also really gets through the bullshit of misleading packaging design. (Making products look like they have more product than they really contain)
If a large developing country (almost on par in population and area size to the USA), with extremely messy bureaucracy and taxation system can do that, why can't the USA? I have to believe it's by design and choice, not from a lack of need or capability.
How did the federal government end up nationally banning all fun drugs aside from nicotine and alcohol? (it just did it, and even when states legalise e.g. weed, weed vendors are locked out of the proper banking system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Drug_Abuse_Preve...).
How did the federal government make ~every state have the same (mad) drinking age of 21? (federal highway funding blackmail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...).
the constitution is not an actual barrier to the federal government doing things over the heads of states.
In Germany and Europe it's simple: the price on the item is what you pay at the cashier, at least of you pick the cheapest payment option (cash).
Most don't bother to charge for other payment methods, a surprise price basically never happens.
Credit card payments are capped at 0.3% of the transaction value.
Large credit card cashbacks don't exist for that particular reason. But it's dead simple to know the price.
Yikes! I'm not in NY, but this seems tricky to implement. I process credit cards and frankly I'm never sure of the "exact amount" they charge. Firstly, different cards have different rates, the issuing bank can play a part, and foreign cards come with another set of rules. (Fortunately the use of foreign cards in NY is, um, very rare...? )
I get how calculating the fees can be challenging. But I assumed that shops could calculate if they were adding it as a surcharge.
This is actually two “common sense” laws that I feel are unambiguous enough that I’d probably vote for a candidate if they supported this. The other being no daylight savings.
Other than that, one big practical problem is that e.g. when shopping online, there is no way of knowing your tax rate before providing your ZIP code. Sure, retailers could eat the tax rate differences themselves like they do in the EU, but they won’t be happy about it.
What I do hope should be possible is a “no bullshit fee” law, though. What is a service charge anyway? I thought that’s what I’m paying a service provider for!
You can probably get a majority of people to agree on “no DST shifts anymore”, but you’ll lose a half of them again on the decision on whether that should mean “always standard time” or “always DST”.
Update: classic HN to downvote something like this
If earnest: why anyone would want a public record of everyone’s transactions is beyond me. The opposite of privacy
If in satire: people really do post comments like yours in earnest!
If the record existed it would obviously be a gold mine, many people, [foreign] governments and faceless corporations would be all over it, they would be uncovering all kinds of things we couldn't have imagined and most likely didn't want to share and/or have terrible implications.
Why should we pay 3% of the economy to middlemen because they were lucky to position themselves appropriately? If someone wants to use credit card rails, certainly offer them, just have the customer pay instead of all of us. I don’t want to pay for someone else’s reward points, ~21-30 day float, or chargeback capability.
(“The new rule does not apply to debit cards.”)
I do this because:
1) don’t like carrying cash
2) like the security of never giving merchants direct access to my bank
3) chargeback in rare times I need it
4) don’t like having to worry about overdrawing checking
5) benefits like insurance, warranty
Basically it’s a useful buffer. I don’t think I’d pay 3% extra everywhere for the privilege, but since it’s usually baked in, I like it.
So I don’t think they are “parasites” but I think there’s a discussion around whether their fees are worth it for merchants.
And for 4, why should overdraft fees/interest actually be socialized to literally everybody buying things (since interchange, which pays for them, gets baked into prices in the end)?
They can steal my credit card all day long and I don’t care.
I’m not talking about what should and shouldn’t be in a better world. I’m just using tools available to me.
I can think of a big reason; you'd have to charge a ~3% fee per transaction to pay for it. Likely more since interest payments aren't helping to offset it.