alt Hacker NewsThe only way to solve this is to have the user of the credit/debit card pay the fee. Sure, you can do an EU thing of 0.2-0.3% or whatever it is, but this might still be 0.2-0.3% more than it could be in a competitive market.
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code-blooded • today at 8:57 AM
Handling cash is expensive too, so what EU does is probably beneficial (as in cheaper) to the society as a whole.
I wonder if true transaction cost even reaches the 0.2-0.3% or could be further lowered.
Australia tried this, but it led to a different problem of payment processors being able to gouge card payers because merchants were allowed to pass on whatever their costs were, and consumers didn't really have a real choice of paying the fee or not. Also since the fee had to be stated before the card was presented for tap and go payments, it didn't solve the OP problem: debit cards and premium cards all got hit with the same surcharge.