change in law about credit cards

[magenta]

This is true, checked out on Snopes, and got this email from my credit union:

We want you to know that some stores and businesses may begin charging you more when you use your credit card to make purchases.

Beginning January 27, stores and online businesses were given the ability to charge a “checkout fee” for every purchase consumers make when using their credit card. This fee was designed to help businesses recoup the processing cost of each credit card transaction, which ranges from 1.5 percent to 3 percent of the total purchase price. The checkout fee is capped at 4 percent of the total purchase price

Learn if the places you make purchases are charging the checkout fee by looking for signs posted on doors and sales counters, and printed on receipts. Additionally, online businesses are responsible for putting a notice on their homepage. If you don’t see any signs, the store is likely not going to charge you a checkout fee, but if you have any questions, make sure you ask.

The new checkout fees only apply to credit cards. You will avoid excess fees altogether if you use alternative forms of payment such as your debit card, reloadable prepaid card, checks, or cash.

Comments

[redbird]

Note also that this depends on where you are. Eight states have laws against credit card surcharges. However, some of those states explicitly allow cash discounts so long as they are offered to all customers, and in other cases it's not clear.

VISA's policies continue to forbid such surcharges in most places outside the United States. Since I was poking around quickly and found the information on visa.com, I don't know what policies other cards have outside the U.S.

The interesting question for me, living in one of the states that doesn't allow those surcharges, is where transactions are considered to take place if I order something from another state to be delivered here. For example, would Lands' End be allowed to charge me for using a credit card? (I figure the charge for my Wiscon room goes under Wisconsin law, because I'm using it in Wisconsin.)