Let's stop dicking around and talk about ditching something big: Visa and Mastercard - Lemmy.ca
lemmy.ca
Visa 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.
  • jafffacakelemmy@mander.xyzEnglish
    6·
    22 hours ago

    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?

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      22 hours ago

      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