Credit Card Swipe Fees Begin Sunday In USA

An anonymous reader writes "A speedbump on the road to a cash-free economy will go into effect Sunday in the U.S., as retailers in 40 states will have the option of passing along a surcharge to customers who pay with credit cards. The so-called swipe fees arose from the settlement of a seven-year lawsuit filed by retailers against Visa, Mastercard, and big banks, who collect an electronic processing fee averaging 1.5 to 3 percent on transactions involving credit cards. The banks naturally have opposed the consumer surcharges, preferring that the extra costs to be passed along in the form of higher prices. Consumers in ten states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Texas) won't be affected, since laws in those states forbid the practice (it seems that gasoline station owners here in Massachusetts got a different memo, though). Also, the surcharges won't be collected for debit or prepaid cards."

Comments

Re:I'm curious to see how many retailers actually

[Runaway1956]

The US treasury mints what, exactly? Nothing that I'm aware of. All the currency in circulation today belongs to private banks, not to the government. The Federal Reserve is misnamed, intentionally, to hide the fact that they are neither "federal", nor are they a "reserve".