50p charge on all transactions under £10

Morgan_Ree

A lot of the smaller shops around me do do this 50p charge thing

Just wondering are shops genuinely charged a certain amount for card transactions under a tenner, or are they just pure money grabbers, hoping you will spend more than you need just to avoid this 50p charge?

Freddie_Snowbits

Go to the cash point first, then you do not have to pay.

No, they are not money grabbers. The transaction costs them money, hence the charge. You have a choice, if upset, see first response.

And why have you not named and shamed said establishment, as our Honourable Marc, with his ability on Google will soon pass on the credentials of some CEO

Takoda

Think it is genuine but I think a worse situation is those cash machines in local shops which charge you £1.50 for taking money out. OK if you want £500 or so for an emergency but if you just want a tenner to avoid the 50p charge it really isn't worth it!

If I find myself having to pay a charge like that I tend to buy some Piat D'Or or something which we will eventually need and which will keep rather than bumping up the groceries.

more_money_for_me

It depends really on the volume of transactions a shop does. We pay a couple of percent on each transaction, often there is a minimum charge as well. Sometimes you will need to pay for rental of equipment as well. To answer your question though, would suggest 50p would make a small profit for the shop, it can only be a small profit as you only have 50p to start with. Yes they will be trying drive up your spend, but also stopping themselves making a loss on very small transactions.

paulinespens

I know roughly it costs about 20p-30p for a shop to process a debit card transaction.

For a credit card its like 2%-3% of the total transaction to process the transaction.

xocbc

There are charges, usually a fixed rental charge for the equipment/service, plus either a fixed amount per card transaction (debit card) or a % (credit card).

For small shops, those charges may well mean that they make a loss on a small sale.

For example, if you were to buy a packet of cigarettes and a newspaper with a card, the card processing fee could well be more than the profit that they make on the sale.

Larger companies like Tesco who process their own transactions can afford to absorb the costs on smaller sales.

Hence the charge in many small shops.

vikingaero

xocbc wrote: »

There are charges, usually a fixed rental charge for the equipment/service, plus either a fixed amount per card transaction (debit card) or a % (credit card).

The transaction charges are normally:
(1) a % of a credit card, subject to to a minimum
(2) a fixed charge for a debit card

Then there are the merchant fees of:
(3) a monthly fee
(4) equipment rental

And the other costs of:
(5) Telephone line rental
(6) Thermal paper

The average profit on grocery products is very low - around 6-15% and if you're only processing a couple of dozen transactions per month then you're looking at a hit on profits.

chuckley

at my local its 30-40p depending on who serves ya, and it dont matter how much u spend. they used to give u cashback on credit cards too, where they put it through as a purchase and gave u the cash!

i only have 2 free cash machines locally. the petrol station 1 is forever out of order and the other one is either out of money on the sat afternoon until monday morning, OR the card bit has been smashed in. record of fraud from said machine aswell.

DCFC79

It is common for shops to charge a fee for not spending over a set limit, ive onyl seen it in small shops