Frankly, so's using a credit card at all. Every time you use a credit card - at least in the US - the merchant is charged a percentage by the card-issuer. This is why when cards were first becoming popular, many merchants charged a surcharge for credit card purchases and why many merchants still won't take credit cards on purchases under a certain amount. And you think the /merchant/ ends up swallowing those costs? Nope; when credit cards became so widespread that it wasn't Acceptable Business Practice to charge differently for them to recoup the expense, they simply had to calculate the predicted number of credit card purchases right into the cost. Which everyone winds up paying.
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Date: 2006-08-15 05:20 pm (UTC)Every time you use a credit card - at least in the US - the merchant is charged a percentage by the card-issuer. This is why when cards were first becoming popular, many merchants charged a surcharge for credit card purchases and why many merchants still won't take credit cards on purchases under a certain amount.
And you think the /merchant/ ends up swallowing those costs? Nope; when credit cards became so widespread that it wasn't Acceptable Business Practice to charge differently for them to recoup the expense, they simply had to calculate the predicted number of credit card purchases right into the cost.
Which everyone winds up paying.