[ransom1538]

"we weren't allowed to have a card payment fee. "

BTW. Good luck catching that. In SF, that is how many businesses work. You want to use a card? Ok, one extra dollar. Nothing enrages visa more, but, the merchant should have this right.

[devman0]

In a properly working market, every consumer would pay their exact interchange fee and it would be printed on the receipt as a pass-through cost.

This would actively drive interchange fees lower when consumers have to choose to pay 3% on an Amex swipe vs 1.6% no frills MasterCard swipe, or .05% for a debit swipe.

The reasons there is no downward pressure today is because there is because there is no transparency, and no incentive for consumers to choose a lower cost card.

[dhosek]

I think the restrictions on this have loosened over the last (not sure how many) years.

[j45]

One of the best marketing phrases I've seen to charge a fee to use a credit card:

Convenience Fee.

[hx833001]

Massachusetts and Connecticut are the two states that have laws banning credit card surcharges. Massachusetts also has a law requiring acceptance of cash.

[astura]

This isn't really true for Connecticut, because the law allows for a "cash discount" which is functionality identical.

https://portal.ct.gov/DCP/Legal/Credit-Card-Surcharge

>Connecticut law prohibits a business from charging a customer a surcharge for using one payment type (usually credit card) over another payment type (usually cash). However, the law does allow a business to offer a discount if a customer chooses to use one type of payment (e.g., cash) over another type of payment (e.g., credit card). Receiving the discount is not the same as adding a surcharge. As long as the discount policy is clearly written and presented to the customer and the final receipt shows a discount, it complies with Connecticut law

[naniwaduni]

At least it requires them to be honest about what they're charging, I guess, which is more than I can say about the CT DRS.

[steelframe]

Between the Massachusetts Right to Repair Act and requirement to accept cash (Part III, Title IV, Chapter 255D, Section 10A), that state is looking more and more like the right kind of place for me to land once I'm done doing the FAANG thing. Convince me otherwise.

[xtracto]

Or what I've seen some people do here in Mexico: 3% discount when paying in Cash :-)

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

I think the law should be that you state the maximum price for a given transaction and then discount down.

So you can have a cash discount but it's okay to say no credit card fees. These are the "junk fees" that came up in political discourse in the last year or two. Credit card vendors shouldn't be allowed to restrict cash discounts. I know this isn't libertarian, but I want it to be a pre-negotiated thing simply for the sake of keeping cash alive, like how minimum wage is a pre-negotiated wage to avoid the overhead of getting the whole nation into a labor union.

That's why I like free shipping on Amazon. I know it's not literally free, I just want to see what you're _actually_ gonna charge me, it cuts off an avenue of bullshit.