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Let's stop dicking around and talk about ditching something big: Visa and Mastercard - Lemmy.ca
lemmy.caVisa and Mastercard are American companies, and they essentially tax everybody
by taking a percentage of purchase prices for themselves. Not exactly a small
percentage either, 1.2% to 2.65%
[https://money.ca/credit-cards/how-much-are-canadian-merchants-really-charged-by-visa-mc].
Ever wonder why so many merchants say they don’t accept American Express? That’s
because they charge quite a bit more to merchantes, 50% more than Visa or
Mastercard. Anyway, we’re letting American companies tax us and we love them
because we get rewards when we use cards. But it’s just a shell game because we
pay more up front because businesses need to charge more to make up for payment
processing charges. They get to sit in the middle and rake in the money. Now the
alternative in Canada is Interac. Interac charges a set amount per transcation.
How much? 2 to 5.5 cents
[https://www.interac.ca/en/payments/business/understanding-fees/]. Unless you’re
going through Apple or Google Pay, and then it’s a percentage again. Interac is
also Canadian. Want to stick it to Trump? Stop using credit cards (and Google
Pay or Apple Pay) and switch to Interac. Want to make Canada better? Stop using
credit cards and switch to Interac. Is it going to be inconvenient? Yes. Online
shopping will be much harder but I have seen online Interac payments before and
we can ask our favourite Canadian merchants to accept Interac online.
Maybe you dont have too many extra fees, but when you use your visa card or MasterCard to buy from a merchant, 3% of the purchase price is paid by the merchant to visa/MasterCard. In the long run that puts prices up because the vendor is passing on those costs to you, the buyer. Its a tricky issue because if you pay cash, the shop has to store, transport securely, and pay to deposit the cash into a business bank account. That might cost around 3% of their takings too. The feeling here is that if you buy 100 pounds worth of shopping, it doesn’t cost visa/MasterCard anything like 3 pounds to process that payment, more like a few pence. So perhaps we are being taken advantage of?
I see, that makes sense. Y’all might be talking me into switching to Revolut. Though I’ve gotta say that Visa’s insurance saved my ass this very weekend by handling everything to bring me and my gf home after a visit to the ER that left us stranded 800 km from home (even though we are both on the cheapest visa cards available in our country), so I’ll have to see if they have similar stuff