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Shots shots shots (thelemmy.club)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 66 points 3 days ago (33 children)

Am I too European to understand this? This minimum shit is stupid and should be illegal

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  • [–] 64 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Visa and Mastercard are horrible companies. For smaller businesses.

    1. If your transaction numbers are low they charge a flat + percentage So like 0.55 EUR + 1.2%. Stores in this tier generally try and keep a minimum spend, because you buy 1 EUR and mastercard charges 56c. From 44c you have to pay for product and make a profit. It's stupid.

    2. You can opt for plans that don't have flat fee, so it's like 2.25% percentage only. Useful if you move a lot of small value items like a small convinience store.

    3. But if you're a chain of convinience like SPAR, they can get custom deals. SPAR had a tiered deal, transactions below 1 EUR, they charge 0.4%, below 4 EUR it was 0.9%, below 10 EUR 1.5% and, above 1.9% This would never be possible for smaller shops.

    4. Every transaction enriches some foreign country as they take the cut. Homegrown system like wero should be dominant, cheap and stays in local economy.

    Also I'd like to note, I've been out of touch of Europe for a while so my opinions and knowledge might be dated, but this is solved problem in ASIA, PayNow, Prompt Pay, UPI etc exist and are fantastic solutions for small businesses.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 days ago (12 children)

    It isn’t illegal, but it’s against the TOS for every major cc company. If you see this shit you should report it.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    $10 is the amount generally outlined as the acceptable minimum. What information are you relying on? Can you provide a source for that?

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  • [–] 17 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Visa/Mastercard rules say that you can't refuse to accept payment with credit cards if you accept them in general. They are pretty adamant about that rule and even have secret shoppers to confirm such cases. The 10$ minimum is only allowed in the US and territories, the rest of the world does not have this exception (https://www.visa.com/en-us/support/visa-rules#6153bdb1)

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago

    The post is in English and using $ specifically, so I'm unsure why they said it's against TOS. I get that the commenter was European, but they were basically asking if this was a legit thing that they didn't know because they aren't from here. They didn't ask "is this true in Europe", so I feel like it's misleading to suggest it's against TOS unless you're specifically suggesting "for Europe it's against TOS but it's fine in the US".

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    It’s against the credit card company tos because the credit card companies want to force small businesses to lose money on small transactions or not have the option to take cards.

    So ratting to Visa helps Visa and hurts the small business. Great job! With friends like you who needs enemies! Just bring fucking cash ffs.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    Which part exactly? The store owner can refuse service to anyone for any reason, I really doubt there's an enforceable agreement that requires them to take transactions simply by have a card pos system.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 days ago* (4 children)

    They absolutely must accept a card presented for any amount. It’s part of the TOS with every major cc company. This is the bar trying to shirk the service fees on small transactions, but it flies directly in the face of what the card issuer tries to guarantee, “accepted everywhere”. If they find out a business is refusing their cards when they don’t hit a minimum, they will warn the business, and if they keep doing it, will no longer do business with them. That’s a big reason some bar are cash only, all the cc companies cut them off. (Also tax evasion, obviously)

    Edit: welp, I just did a little research, and while that USED to be true, it’s now allowed as long as the minimum is no more than $10. As of 2010.

    Everything always gets shittier.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    Why the fuck are you fighting for visa?! You’re on the side of a major international corporation against small business. Fuck you. How’s that?

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  • [–] 13 points 3 days ago (7 children)

    ? I encounter this in Europe regularly.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 days ago

    There are european countries that have made the practice illegal.
    There are countries that said you should always, without extra costs, allow digital payment.
    Funny enough, they bypassed cards then and went for things like payconiq, wero, apple pay, google wallet, ... to bypass the costs of card readers haha

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  • [–] -1 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    You shouldn't. The 10$ minimum transaction is only valid in the US and territories. Report them, this violates their contract with every credit card payment provider. On top of that it's illegal in many countries.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I'm clearly gonna report local shops for stealing a couple of Euros a day from MasterCard/Visa. Bootlicker

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    If they don't want to play by the rules they put their signature under and force people to spend more money than they actually want to, they are also stealing from you. Noone forced them to enter a contract. And the conditions are clear, its not like they got baited or something.

    Also, these are not a few euros per day, this can amount to a substantial amount of money over the course of a month - that costumers have to pay, not Visa or MasterCard.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago

    Indeed it is in most of Europe, I think.

    I did buy something in a takeaway a few years ago and it was like 20p below the minimum, and I just went "charge 20p extra then" and it seemed to break the other customers minds. Never occurred to them you can do that, rather than asking for an extra £2 of stuff you don't want...

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    Credit card and Debit Card charge the merchant per transaction, so most places will have a minimum spend. but usually it is like $3 or something. Same with food bank donations, it has a low minimum because their transaction provider charges fees for handling the donations online

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Local companies in Germany also have a min.limit on card payments like EC?
    They arent everywhere but they exist.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago*

    It's not illegal yet, but it violates Visa/Mastercard TOS. Extra charges for using a credit card are illegal EU-wide.

    Germany is planning for next year to put into law the right for the costumer to choose which payment method he wants to use, without any limitations. This is also being used to make sure that at least one european digital payment service has to be accepted to break the stranglehold of US companies Visa/Mastercard - a very important step towards general security for the european economy.

    And in an unexpected move, the EU is going to make accepting cash payments mandatory - currently you can exclude any payment method with your TOS.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago*

    They generally have to pay a fee per digital transaction, and I once saw it was 0.55€ for a transaction I did, so I can definitely understand that they don't want to lose money on small purchases.

    The alternative would be to require extra payment for digital transactions, or to increase prices for everyone (even more).

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