topic ‘Burdensome’ credit card swipe fees could add $2.5 billion to back-to-school spending in Credit in the News

‘Burdensome’ credit card swipe fees could add $2.5 billion to back-to-school spending

gdale6 — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 15:16:16 GMT

Swipe fees, which are charged every time a credit card is used to make a purchase, have long been a point of contention for retailers.
Amid soaring inflation, merchants say they are particularly burdensome.
However, electronic transactions are also essential as Americans abandon cash.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/credit-card-swipe-fees-to-add-2point5-billion-to-back-to-school-bills.html

All I have to say is boo hoo, then pony up to pay more to go back to the old school way of doing things. I really have had enough of despicable companies bellowing when they are raking in huge profits.

Re: ‘Burdensome’ credit card swipe fees could add $2.5 billion to back-to-school spending

RobynJ — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 17:23:20 GMT

I read recently a chain of grocery stores in the Midwest are no longer accepting any credit cards other then debit. They claimed that they are known for being the best "discounted" grocery store in the area and with rising costs they felt this was the only way to tackle prices.

In my opinion it will probably end up costing the same or more when you factor the labor in counting (done three times prior to leaving store, once from cashier to close shift, sencond from manager to verify, and third for deposits) the extra time it takes to count payment and change vrs swiping as the extra time will be more in labor costs there also, more deposits means for safety more armored truck pick ups, also speaking of safety what about the higher risk of robbery and thus needing more security measures all costs money. Plus I believe what the article stated about the consumer spending more when on a card vrs cash. So that would be loss revenue. At the end of the day would it really be a better option to not use them? Absolutely not in my opinion!

Re: ‘Burdensome’ credit card swipe fees could add $2.5 billion to back-to-school spending

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 23:00:52 GMT

We could go back to cash and paper checks (where the merchants get burned bad)!

Why can't Congress apply the same safeguards to Debit Cards that Credit Cards enjoy? It may encourage more folks to use Debit.

Inquirying minds want to know?

Re: ‘Burdensome’ credit card swipe fees could add $2.5 billion to back-to-school spending

iced — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 15:00:11 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
We could go back to cash and paper checks (where the merchants get burned bad)!

Why can't Congress apply the same safeguards to Debit Cards that Credit Cards enjoy? It may encourage more folks to use Debit.

Inquirying minds want to know?

Because those safeguards cost money, which the credit cards can recoup via merchant fees.

I admittedly haven't dug deep into the matter, but I'm not aware of any laws on the books that mandate those security features. Most of the laws are to protect consumers from predatory fees and practices, but the fraud protections are value-adds credit cards provide to, ironically, encourage more folks to use Credit.