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Card payment surcharges should be banned for debit and credit payments, RBA says
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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I'm with the RBA on this one. The price on the sticker should be what I pay no matter the format I pay in. It's one of the great things about aus.
Cash still has significant overhead and businesses manage to account for that. Digital should be no different.
Then it should be cheaper for cash payment.
Oh for sure. Cash is expensive to count, store and move. Never understood how an armour guard car with 2 people emptying ticket machines made much sense, even back in the day.
However, the infrastructure to run electronics payments is not trivial. The combination of volume, security and reliability needed adds up in hardware and software. I doubt it will ever be free to transfer money in any form.
Least with debit (not CC) you don't pay fees to credit card companies.
Crypto networks are doing it for microcents, for massive volumes and amounts, see Robinhood on Ethereum in Europe.
The percentage that gets passed onto users is thanks to MasterCard and visa...
I have seen plenty of places here charging a percentage rate for debit card use, as recently as last week. Not saying they should but it happens.
Who ends up benefiting from all the cash skimming I'm not sure, but chances are they are already filthy rich.
Several neo-banks provide. free, instant SEPA transfers. Sure, it's not debit, but it's a form of free money transfer. Also monthly charge.
Yes, one might argue that you are the product then. But I really don't see what they might be getting from these clients. Must be something I'm not aware of. No ads, no upsell (apart from occasional offer to paid plan), ...
I don't like this because it doesn't incentivise low cost cards. If you don't then regulate the fees cards can charge, and how payment providers are allowed to pass on those costs to the retailer, it'll become a race to the bottom on rewards cards, and how much they then turn around to charge the retailer.
We'll all bear the cost then.
And frankly, I don't want to pay for others frequent flyer miles.
I'd go one step further and just outright ban rewards cards. That shit is just perverse incentives all the way down.