credit card minimum spends?

stephenjwz

Hi,
Does anyone know how much you have to spend in the supermarkets in order to use credit cards? I was in asda the other day and realised I'd paid for not very much at all on my credit card at the self service till and wondered if this is allowed everywhere - I was sure most places had a £5 minimum, though that may just have been pubs. Any advice appreciated

benf90

I don't think any of the major supermarkets have a minimum spend for credit card transactions. I've used my credit card to pay for a pack of mints before (about 30p), when I literally had no cash on me at all.

Each time a credit card payment is processed the retailer is charged a fee. As Asda and the other supermarkets process literally thousands of transactions a day they are able to negotiate significant discounts on these fees.

The supermarkets will be charged a lot less to process each card transaction than your average shop or pub or other retailer. The supermarkets can afford to potentially take a loss or make very little profit on small value transactions. Also, they're not going to want to annoy/inconvenience a customer that could come back in a few days later and do their weekly shop, spending a lot more money.

The local pub or small retailers can't afford to process small value transactions by credit cards and so it's only usually the smaller retailers that have a minimum spend in place, to ensure they're able to cover the fees.

finbow

Most large companies don't seem to have a minimum spend, e.g. the major supermarkets, co-op, currys etc etc... It only seems to be pubs to me that do, minimum spends seem to vary between £3 and £6. Shop's I've worked for have suggested that by the time labour and security measures are taken into account cash costs the same for a company to handle as the credit card fee. Don't know how true this is though.

Enterprise_1701C

The Martin's I work in has no minimum - not unusual for people to pay for a 30p newspaper by credit card!!

King_Of_Fools

Given that the credit card fee is a percentage of the bill (~1.5%) then I doubt the supermarkets care. Debit cards, on the other hand, have a flat fee of around 25p-50p.