Xed

nubus said:

eightzero said:

Merchants are adding these fees. Thing is they are adding way more than what they are actually charged. And handling cash is indeed expensive...and difficult to quantify. I don't see people believing that it is an actual cost, and trying to do so would be troublesome. These are really overhead costs, but merchants are learning to add fees to collect more by claiming "someone else made them do it." Ive seen restaurants not only add a tip option at the PoS (for things where no service is rendered) but a "government required payroll fee." Folks, there is a minimum wage law because if there wasn't, they'd pay less.

Well.. i live in a country without minimum wages and one where we don't tip. Sweden is the same, and they have made it optional for shops to accept cash. As a result a lot of shops, restaurants, and museums no longer accept cash. It works fine.

I would like to see competition on payments, and I don't like paying part of the bill for those having expensive cards.Yes, shops will try to inflate the cost, and so they should always offer one "0%" option. Could be their own card or a debit card or... but taking 2-3% on every transaction is a rather heavy tax. It could be 0,35%. As this is "after tax" money the difference to consumers is real.

Where iI live in the US there are places that no longer accept cash and are far too small to offer their own card. These are places like coffee stands where  theft would be a lot more common in these 1 or 2 person, 24-hour operations if they had cash on hand, as well as theft from employees who may not ring up all purchases.

Since a merchant should be able to adjust a price to cover their costs I'm not opposed to them accounting for a merchant fee, but I can tell you that I have chosen not to business because of a fee added to a CC purchase. If it was the standard price with a small rebate for cash (or other non-CC/DC payments) I'm more fine with that which makes this more psychological than anything else.

I do have some large purchases each year that require my checking and routing number online that can also be had with a 3% CC/DC transaction fee. I do the virtual check for an ACH payment because I don't want the fee even if I hate using those accounts online like that — but I have the option to use a very specific checking account for such purchases so I put the money in as needed and have it set that it will not permit the account to be overdrawn to minimize the potential issue for my accounts to be stolen.

I think we'll eventually have the merchant fees included everywhere as standard as cash continues to be less popular.

chasm said:

eriamjh said:

It would be nice to know what min, max, and average merchant fees are in the world of credit cards.  

This is what pays for things like daily cash, and cash back, and all those perks.

As you note, the merchant fee is a service charge by the credit provider that comes out of the merchant’s selling price. Broadly speaking, it varies by card from one percent to three percent.

To put this in the simplest terms, there are four parties involved in a credit card transaction: the customer, the customer’s issuing bank, the merchant, and the merchant’s bank. Amex and Diner’s Club do things a little differently, since they aren’t issued by the customer’s bank, but the idea is the same.

Apple Pay only comes into play when you use an NFC terminal and an Apple device to pay with your card. At that moment, Apple Pay becomes the platform to provide a whole new level of security on the transaction, and coordinates the payment and fees between the customer’s bank, the merchant, and the merchant’s bank.

Apple’s fee for this comes out of the merchant’s bank fees. Without getting into the details, this amounts to 0.15 percent of the value of the transaction. So if you bought something (say a new Mac) where the total price before taxes was $2,000, Apple would get $3.*

*this estimate is based on the total fees Apple charges the merchant’s bank as of 2014. To the best of my knowledge, that total hasn’t changed, but it might have.

The merchant is supposed to “mark up” the price of the items to cover their base cost, the cost of doing business, and allow for profit. So Apple’s “slice” of this entire transaction should already be covered as part of the fee the merchant’s bank charges the merchant, i.e. part of the cost of doing business.

So I can sort of see why Apple Pay has to be included in a lawsuit challenging the fees banks and credit card companies charge merchants, but Apple isn’t actually the source of the issue in any way IMO, and frankly they more than justify their tiny fees for the services they provide, which have made using credit cards VERY significantly safer than they were before, since:

A. The actual card information is never exposed when you use Apple Pay, and

B. Then entire transaction is encrypted to avoid interception, and

C. Apple Pay eliminates the possibility of theft, unauthorized use, or leaving behind a physical credit card by accident.

1) Don't forget the payment processor the bank partners with for their cards.

2) I'd wager that using Apple Pay over a physical card has led to a savings for the merchant bank that far outweighs what they agree to pay Apple. 


Off Topic: I have two cards that send me a physical letter in the mail when Apple Pay is set up on a device. I hate the waste of paper and the stamp for what would suffice in an email.

The worst about poor actors like this is that when the inevitable coincidences occur because conversations and ads on any device many people will assume it's because it's because all devices are actively listening, recording, and analyzing everything you are doing.

longfang said:

nofeer said:

Xed

great suggestions but how to do this--4 character long press ???
PS: I recommend to not use a PIN. Use a complex passcode. You have those long-press characters on the iOS and Mac keyboards, too, which means you can make a simple 4-character passcode that has over 3 billion possible combinations by using one of those characters. It also makes it a lot more difficult for something to see what you're typing in over a regular keyboard or a number pad.

I have an iPhone 5 that’s currently locked out for the next few months because I forgot which pin i set for it and kept inputting the wrong one. 

It sounds like you’re suggesting that no one should use decent security because you forget something. My suggestion  is to use a robust password manager to store personal data so losing it is far less likely.

maltz said:

dk49 said:

Why don't they allow to prevent switching off the device without unlocking the iPhone? If the user has esim, then the thief cannot switch off the device, and then it can easily be tracked by logging into Apple account.

At least for newer phones (I can only speak to iPhone 11 and newer)  Even if you turn the device off, it's still "on" enough to be tracked via Find My.  That can be disabled to turn the phone COMPLETELY off, but... you need the pass code.

Intersting.