A and C, in principle I am with you however I would guess that the company involved simply have a charge of 50p (seems high) for use of a debit card irrespective of the value of the transaction. The fact your transaction was of 'low value' is a red herring. It would be reasonable to expect cash for low value transactions.

In a former life the cost and inconvenience of taking cards for 'pennies' resulted in me introducing a minimum card transaction value, I think this is common practice.

Never ceased to amaze how many would pay it without complaint.

BB

I appreciate that it might seem a lot on a small transaction, but as I understand it debit cards have a fixed fee transaction amount. 50p could well be the right range if the volume is small. I mean they could well be charged in that region by the bank.

Having said that, I too never like to see additional charges added like that.

I suppose on many small items there is only a very small profit margin so a fixed fee could really be a problem there.

I'm a customer. All I want to see is the overall price, I don't really care what the elements of that are.

Whatever fees you have to consider in your overall price, other traders have to consider the same. Therefore it's core cost. I'll compare your overall price with theirs, when deciding who to buy from.

If you make the price too complicated, I'll think you're Ryanair and not bother with you at all, taking my business to someone who just quotes an overall price and doesn't give me the impression of ripping me off - even though he might be!

The problem there jollyrog, is that the supplier has no way of knowing what fees are involved until they know what payment method you are using.

So you have two options, apply the fees as a surcharge once you know what payment method the customer is using. Or increase all your prices by an average of said fees, so you can hide the fees from the customer.

The first method is the more accurate one, and fairer as it doesn't penalise those customers that chose to use a more economical payment method, however the second method is generally prefered as it prevents customers feeling like they're trading with Ryanair ;)

....or say the service costs (£X+ 50p), but we will accept £X for cash? ;)
I am sure that somebody will have an objection to that but I can't think of one off hand.

I also use Paypal to process card payments, and they charge me £20 pcm +3% of the transaction whether credit or debit card used. Whilst expensive it does save the occasional bounced cheque and the hassle of paying in cash at the bank.

jollyrog, many make the assumption that all business is wanted by all businesses. My intention in having a minimum card transaction value was in fact to put them off, as the type of business was not worth the effort and detracted from core business.

One's business is not necessarily valued by the supplier as highly as it is by the purchaser.

BB

Mr Clegg will, apparently its immoral to pay cash! :}

:):) .... unless you're Boris

From znww5:
For comparison's sake, I do a few days at a local flying club and they prefer payment by debit card. The reason is that it's quick and easy, there's a paper trail, an instant receipt and students aren't expected to wander around with wads of cash.

If you are looking at payment methods from a business point of view, it is important to note that cash transactions also carry a processing cost. Cash is easily stolen, it can be forged and somebody has to be paid to physically go to a bank in order to pay it in - so cash is far from being 'cost free'.

I'm with znww5 on this one. We choose not to make a separate charge for the various payment methods we accept - debit and credit cards and cash, the latter is definitely NOT as cost-effective to us as a debit card, for the reasons given; also not mentioned is the staff cost of cashing-up at the end of the day, especially if things have been mis-rung in the till or the wrong change given, plus of course storing the cash on the premises overnight. I'd do away with cash altogether if I could. We don't take cheques from non-club members, there's no guarantee with them now and they could simply not be worth the paper they're written on.

We've thought about charging for credit cards, but the reputational thing gets to me, so we just look at the charges as a part of the cost of running our Club.

What we're really keen on getting, is a card machine for the fuel pump, but no luck so far.

Cheers,
TOO

Our local garage has, when the parts department is closed. So if you want to buy something, whether a bottle of windscreen wash or a whole car, on a Saturday afternoon it's cards only. The legality of which I choose not to question.

Businesses are not legally obliged to accept any particular form of payment as they choose.

True, in that a business might decline a transaction, but once a debt has been created then cash is a legal means of settlement:
Legal Tender Guidelines

Just wait until banks charge individuals for having a basic current account facility!

Sadly too many banks make too many charges already.

I hate that I got charged an average of £6.00 a pop for the pleasure of using my debit card in France in cash machines a couple of weeks ago. The only upside is at an excahnge rate of £1.00 = €1.277 it's a better rate than the £1.00 = €1.20 in the UK to exchange cash.

A also hate that my US HSBC card attracts additional charges like wasps to jam if I use it in anybody elses ATM.

My biggest gripe was when I got charged 50 p by an ATM in Dubai just to check a balance an a Qatari HSBC account without actually performing a transaction.

That is a lot. You should not be paying over 2% for any CC transaction. The charges from both HBOS (a truly crappy bank though, nowadays) and HSBC are 1.5% to 2%, with the figure depending on whether it is a company issued CC or a private one.

True, but CC payments are easy enough to revoke if somebody wants to scam you. Paypal is a crooked organisation (though very useful for paying for small items on mail order) which makes life particularly easy for customers who are scammers (do a google).

The only form of "cleared funds" is cash :)

Even a bank transfer ("cleared funds" when you get it) can be reversed out later, if the money is the proceeds of fraud, etc. That's why I would not accept even a bank transfer from what is obviously a Nigerian scammer... not that any of them would do a BT anyway; they use CCs, mainly.

PH,

Remember there are "merchant acquirer" fees and banking fees.

Paypal wraps them into one payment, as does Worldpay.

HSBC, RBS etc will split them into two.

Still adds up to 3 per cent whichever way you slice it!

(and three per cent of gross if you have a 20% margin is between sixth and a seventh of your profits!)