Credit card company Visa is calling for a ban on the surcharge fee some merchants charge card-paying consumers at the point of sale.
The Commerce Commission was undertaking a review of card charges, and considering cutting the regulated interchange fee card companies can charge banks by as much as 75 percent, for example.
Card interchange fees were in turn passed on by banks to merchants at whatever rate the merchant can negotiate, meaning that some pay much more than others.
So do I have this right:
EFTPOS is free to merchants and customers
VISA charges a fee for their services
Merchants pass the VISA fee on to their customers
VISA wants the fee removed by law
Merchants will be forced to raise prices to compensate
Customers using EFTPOS will end up paying part of the VISA fee ?
Not quite, but the EFTPOS pricing model is different. No interchange fees. It used to be there were no transaction fees at all, you paid per terminal (and it wasn’t much, like $20 a month) so long as you had internet access, but with more options like mobile phone connected stuff or wireless terminals it seems the pricing is a little more complicated. Still clearly a tiny fraction of the 2% or more of the price that you might see on Visa charges.
Here’s the EFTPOS NZ pricing: https://eftpos.co.nz/online-payments/pricing
But the rest, yeah pretty much.
So 20c per transaction, above $10 the fee is below the 2%.
But if you use a virtual terminal, there is no fee…so only the fixed $10+gst/month.