Unlike in the UK and the European Union where card surcharges are banned, retailers in Australia are allowed to recoup their payment costs through surcharging their customers, as long as they are not making a profit out of it.
“Australian Banks profit nearly $1 billion a year from card surcharges as RBA does nothing”
I don’t think the banks see much of that money. It mostly goes to infrastructure companies such as Visa (who guarantees a refund if your card is stolen) and Telstra (network infrastructure isn’t free) and of course the actual card processing hardware itself isn’t fee either.
I would be curious to see how much money Australians save by not paying a million people to handle cash (which they generally do poorly).
In any case, the RBA tut tutting will change precisely nothing.
Card surcharges are just another way for retail outlets to gouge their customers with hidden cost.
Any honest business absorbs the cost of credit card fees because they know that the labour cost of banking cash or the transactional cost of EFTPOS is a rounding error.
Dishonest businesses who deal with cash under the table don’t account for the labour cost of banking cash, so just perceive as credit card fees as an extra expense.
so split across the big 4, say $250m each and $5-10b in profit each… they can afford to stop
Isn’t it the merchants themselves who impose these 1.5% charges? I usually pay it, but it does annoy me.
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of the ‘minimum purchase for card purchase’ policies.I should not be punished for putting the money straight into your account and saving you the hassle of constantly managing the till cash, counting takings at day’s end and going to the bank.
i dont get why it’s a percentage… the database on the server thats on whether transactions are happening or not, the always on internet connection, doesnt cost more because i bought a pastry with my coffee today… what the!?
