As of October 6th, 2022, Canadian businesses will now be allowed to pass on the CC fees to customers. What are your thoughts on this new change?<p>https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canadian-businesses-can-charge-credit-card-fees-starting-oct-6-1.6096370
Vs. the old way - where the credit card cartel forced businesses to accept 99, 98, 97, ... cents on the dollar for credit card sales, while cash customers still had to pay the business 100 cents? Then the cartel could split their take with the customers - to push more and more of a business's gross sales into the "we only get paid 96, 95, ... cents on the dollar" category?<p>It's About Time.
I went to a restaurant on University Ave in Palo Alto and was unpleasantly surprised to find that they tack on a credit card fee, which they don't tell you about. I only know about the fee because I happened to realize that the amount I was rung up for differed (by more than the sales tax amount) from the amount displayed in the subtotal. They assume everyone is paying credit so if you decide to pay cash they have to back up the transaction and re-run it without the extra charge. That tells me that virtually all of their customers pay credit, and probably very few are aware that they are paying this surcharge.<p>I understand the desire to pass on costs to relevant customers, as this is fairer to cash purchasers. But it is not OK to hide the ball and secretly surcharge the vast majority of your customers, who pay with credit.
It's going to get worse before it gets better. I'm travelling in SEA and using my cards for payments (both US and European). The European card started charging me a commission fee for foreign transactions. That was new and the US card still doesn't have that. The fee is around 3.5% of the total transaction.<p>Of course, I've had to swallow the cost. Pretty much every other merchant (Kuala Lumpur) accepts card and some do not handle cash anymore. I'll be jumping to an eWallet thingy (TnG card) that I can reload with cash and pay with in most stores.<p>So these things have consequences but it's going to take time. I don't think they understand what they are doing but it's going to take a little bit of time before it hits them.