I'm honestly surprised with that graph. Over the last few years there has been a huge uptick in credit surcharges, I've started using EFTPOS a lot more because of it. Perhaps that's represented in the flattening of the decline rather than the increase in EFTPOS use that I expected.

[–] Rismoor@lemmy.nz 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

This always bugs me because businesses charge customers for the fees when they should be taking the responsibility for them internally.

In a cash business, a person is paid to count tills and ensure money matches up. Then, someone has to do a bank run and deposit that cash. This takes time and labour. This is not directly charged to the customer as a service fee.

Meanwhile, Stripe or whatever payment processing platform a business uses does all of that for a business, and charges the business a fee. This includes a ton of value added services such as financial overviews and analytics, traditionally something an accountant on payroll would work on.

Businesses should be eating the cost as it's cheaper than equivalent billable hours for an accountant or allocating labour to count, manage, and deposit cash. I'm all for cashless businesses but it should be the owner's responsibility rather than fees for customers.

I have a small business plan with Stripe and I'm charged 0.40 cents + 0.4% per card transaction. A bit more for certain types. It's cruel that these businesses are charging more than that to the customer, I assume the larger businesses likely get a better deal than that.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

When you go to the supermarket and pay with credit, it's likely only a small percentage fee is being charged. They have huge negotiating power.

When you go to the local cafe and see a 2% charge, this is almost certainly in the ballpark of what the fee is they are paying. Before paywave, the credit card fees were much lower. In the early days there were stories of places being charged 3% or more for paywave compared to 1%ish for credit card transations by inserting the card. This has led to the culture of surcharges. It's crazy greedy on behalf of the bank, and many places do not have credit at all because of it. Having a surcharge allows the business to offer credit to those willing to pay for it.

I feel small businesses are well justified in charging a surchage for such a crazy fee compared to the service provided. Even for your Stripe payments, that's a 8.4 % fee on a $5 payment. In particular, hospitality businesses struggle to compete and break even, and this is the sort of place I mostly see the surcharges.

[–] flashmedallion@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just spent a month in Europe and tapped-to-pay my credit card every I went, from the center of London to a train station in the south of France to a small cafe in Poland - without a surcharge.

Why are they getting away with it in NZ? Are we just too much of a captive market to do anything about it?

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

I would guess Europe has competition between banks that lead to much lower service charges. Our small market has ample examples of our lack of competition leading to higher prices.

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