re: #67 Belafon

What type of card readers did they have? I think it’s the readers charging it, not the card companies.

It’s (mostly) not the readers. Those are processing fees. The percentage fees come from the card companies, and the amount varies. Three percent is a lot (mostly on the American Express side of things), but not out of the ordinary. This is something that could change with a Biden administration. Many of these card fees are pure gravy because the infrastructure is in place. But it’s not free because there’s a LOT of fraud out there. (Good God, the fraud…and from my end, if the systems that detect fraud or track fraudulent claims go down, it’s a bad day.)

Here’s a detailed article from the Motley Fool on credit card processing fees.

fool.com

Back in 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, banks talked about charging fees to use ATM cards at places that took them, including charging a fee for, say, getting $20 cash on top of your grocery bill. A lot of people complained. Yeah, I worked for the bank then as well, but I tucked my ATM card into a zippered part of my wallet so I wouldn’t accidentally take it out to pay for groceries or something. The banks backed down after a while and the fees never got implemented.