Welcome EU proposal to cap credit card charges - Tue 24th September 2013
How much I welcome the recent European Commission's EU credit card cap proposal to cap in particular credit card fees forced upon retailers that tend to get passed onto the consumer.
I recently purchased 2 flight tickets from BA to South Africa and paid a 3% surcharge for using my MasterCard, and yes, I do sometimes go somewhere else other than Spain from time to time. Not only does the airline profit from the sale of the ticket, and yes I paid an extra £140 return for the privilege of choosing seat numbers, but they make at least a 100% mark-up on the card from the credit card issuers, since they would be paying about 1.5% in interchange fees to their bank . The new regulation will cap charges to 0.3% and discussions are currently underway. No doubt the banks will want to make up such a huge shortfall in income, but where I wonder? With just a 0.3% interchange rate then really no surcharges should apply on any transaction and retailers will have reduced their overhead.
If you know you're being surcharged unfairly or excessively then do take action and complain after reading this out-law.
If you use your credit card aboard you'll find that nowadays there's an annoying extra 2.5 to 2.75% charge against every transaction you make, so better to get a Euro card and charge up. Check out pre-paid currency cards from fairfx.com or caxtonfx.com
Posted by Bruce Gibson
