The federal government says it has hammered out the final details with Visa and Mastercard to lower credit card transaction fees for merchants, but small business advocates say the deal doesn’t go nearly far enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The federal government says it has hammered out the final details with Visa and Mastercard to lower credit card transaction fees for merchants, but small business advocates say the deal doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Walmart managed to cut a deal because it had the leverage to do so, but small businesses have long maintained the fee takes money out of their pockets — and those of their customers.
“Instead, this decision caters to the banks and credit card companies who continue to report record profits on the backs of our local businesses.”
We have to pass that along to our customers… That then puts us [at a] higher price than the big corporations [so] we have to really appeal to our buyers to support us as opposed to getting it elsewhere," she said.
This week’s deal has come about because of a legal fight for more than a decade led by the CFIB that reached the first stage of resolution last fall, when rules were updated to start allowing merchants to pass on the cost of interchange fees directly to consumers.
And while Kelly is trumpeting the new fee deal as “a benefit to obviously small business owners, but for consumers as well” even he acknowledges it won’t provide any immediate relief.
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@sik0fewl Nice to see a bit of movement on this but it’s clear that the #FinanceIndustry in #Canada is still calling the shots given its limited scope.
High interchange fees are basically a tax on the poor. Everyone pays but high net worth individuals are the ones offered #CashBack or Points cards so get some of it back.
They’re even horning in on essential costs as I wrote about a few years back http://galbraith-was-right.sheamuspatt.ca/2014/01/credit-card-issuers-elbowing-in-on-more.html
#cdnpoliI really wish we could just do away with credit cards (for the most part) when shopping in person (vs online). Rewards points are basically just a scam to make you pay with credit cards so that you’re not “losing out”, since you’re subsidizing them either way through merchant fees.
Something that might also help is charging merchant fees only on transactions that are paid via credit cards - Telus recently won a lawsuit to be able to do this.
@sik0fewl Just scanning the net and discovered that #Telus has backed down after customer complaints - they’re back to burying the interchange fee in their charges. Of course, customers aren’t really saving money as a result - it’s back to everyone pays.
#CanadianTire has successfully made credit card customers pay for years by giving less #CashBack on their points cards (Canadian Tire money) for credit card payments. No one else seems to get away with this though.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/telus-credit-card-fee-1.6882341Ugh, that’s disappointing. Probably the same people complaining about inflation, too.
It’s a shitty game. The worst part to me is that there’s a whole culture of avoiding credit card debt(which is good), that cut out credit cards altogether and many are never even aware that they’re leaving those rewards on the table let alone the other benefits (fraud protection, extended warranties, price protection, etc.) that are commonly available for credit card purchases.
I think the fee structure could be better, and that would change a lot. In many ways, the merchant fees are worthwhile as the transactions are easier to process than cash, there’s merchant side protections from fraud, it reduces crime(businesses having less cash on hand), etc… The issues are that pricing is negotiable so companies that do the biggest volume pay the lowest fees, its percentage based which hurts companies that tend to have higher transaction values, and bigger companies get more benefit from being able to track customers by their card.
