tesco wouldn't accept my switch for 93p!

C_Ronaldo

ive bought stuff for under a pound before and ive had no trouble at all

marcellep

I have never had any problems in tesco when I use my debit card to buy a 65p bottle of Pepsi which I do often.

I can't see why people on this thread are encouraging people to spend more money just to allow them to pay with card. tesco accept cards and I have never seen a sign in any store stating you MUST spend over £1.00.

This is Money saving expert site and we encourage people to spend less not buy items for the sake of it.

If Tesco refused my card for under £1 then I would be emailing them.

Kilty_2

After all, the big retailers as well as Visa & MasterCard are trying to introduce the idea of being cashless, using cards everywhere for everything. (Through the use of contactless cards, etc)

I like the idea but if retailers aren't going to play ball then it's not going to go anywhere.

MarkyMarkD

AFAIK it's a breach of the card scheme rules for a merchant to refuse to accept a card. If they have a minimum transaction size to accept cards, they should say so on every sign where they state that they accept cards.

So, if they aren't doing this, you should report them to VISA/Mastercard.

But, to be honest, the chance of the card companies doing anything about it with a company the size of Tesco is next to nothing.

Kilty_2

I don't know if they state this in the cafe or not - it's run by Eurest, not Tesco. Nothing that's clear and obvious though.

buses7675

Kilty wrote: »

Credit Card transactions are charged as a %age whereas Debit Cards are a fixed rate.

As for the Tesco thing, their Self Service will allow me to charge £0.01 to my debit card so see no reason why it should be refused at a checkout (and would point that out to staff in the event of it being so)

Tesco make so much money the cost of processing cards is absolutely nothing to them in real terms.

Hi All,

With this in mind (and the post someone made before stating that their company could process Credit Cards cheaper than Debits) anyone any idea then why Aldi, Lidl and Netto only accept Debit cards but not Credit cards?

Surely in a lot of cases it would be cheaper to process a credit card (or about the same) than a debit card unless the % rate for processing credits was very high?

Cheers

Steve

MarkyMarkD

For a small volume retailer it could be around 4% for credit cards, compared to say 30p for debit cards. So, for transactions *over* £7.50, debit card will be cheaper.

Surely that makes it obvious why Lidl/Aldi/Netto don't take credit cards - the average credit card transaction value would definitely be more than £7.50 IMHO.

Kilty_2

I thought Lidl accepted credit cards anyway? Sure they show the MasterCard logo on their signs and MasterCard debit cards only exist in the US; they'd be treated as a credit card here regardless.

In most cases credit card processing is more expensive than debit cards but in most lines of business this is just accepted and taken as an overhead (and offset against the cost of cash handling)

eyelinerprincess

Lidl do take cards because I ususally pay there using mine.

The place where I work it's a 50p spend to use cards, but in my uni shop it's a fiver but I suppose it's different everywhere.

sellingmysoul666

i always use my tesco credit card in the cafe & its always under £2