Government to ban card payment surcharges, businesses to pick up the tab
The Government is planning to ban merchants from adding surcharges to most in-store card payments.
The change will save shoppers, but cost merchants, who will need to absorb the cost of offering contactless payments or pass it onto customers by hiking prices.
The change is expected to be made by May next year.
Ok.
Before I kick the shit out of this, let’s celebrate the tiny win.
Yay, people too posh to press buttons and those using credit cards to pay for food won’t be screwed over every time they buy something.
In a Cost of Living crisis like we are all experiencing right now, every saved cent matters, so good on the Government for making this tiny, tiny almost insignificant to the pain we face, tiny change.
Now let’s the kick the shit out of this.
Firstly, it doesn’t come into effect until May next year, so it’s announcement now is little more than a promise for a tiny change in the future while we bleed out right now on the Supermarket floor.
National takes today what their tomorrow never brings.
Secondly, why the fuck are we putting the charge on the Retailers?
You ask anyone in Retail right now how tough it is and they are hurting bad!
We’ve all seen the empty shops, we all know how tough our brothers and sisters in retail are doing right now.
So adding an additional cost to them is like throwing a drowning person an anvil!
WHY THE FUCK IS IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THIS GOVERNMENT TO PUT THE TRUE COST ON THOSE THAT CREATE IT?
Just like with the polluters, instead of ensuring those that are creating the cost pay for it, the Government makes the cost a user pays charge rather than tax the one causing the problem!
It’s not retailers who should be force to take on the cost, it’s the fucking Banks who have created pay wave cards with a $200 threshold which is highly exploitable!
MAKE THE BANKS PAY!
MAKE THE BANKS WHO MAKE BILLION DOLLAR PROFITS PAY!
MAKE THE BANKS WHO HAVE CREATED A PIN-LESS CARD SYSTEM, TAHT IS HIGHLY EXPLOITABLE TO THEFT PAY!
NOT! THE! RETAILERS!
Honestly sleepy hobbits, how you get played so good by this Government?
Why is National incapable of making their rich mates pay for the social cost their rich mate products create?
Why you so easily played Kiwi?
Why you so easily played?
Stop being a chump, demand the Banks pay!
Get off your knees to the interests of the wealthy!
We need to be kinder to individuals and far crueller to Corporations.
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Next May National in the lead up to the election are going to be ‘look we took away the credit card surcharge’. Labour won’t be able to promise we will remove the surcharge.
The 2% Warren Buffet Tax (he and his shareholder group are major owners of Visa) will remain.
New Zealands eftpos system which is a local bank to bank card pay system has a fee 10 times less than Paywave 0.2% vs 2%. The actual operating costs are pretty similar.
National are removing the prompt currently given to consumers to remind them they have the option to avoid the Buffet Tax. National are going to enforce the private 2% Buffet Tax by forcing the retailers to pay it. They are the mob enforcer for the banks.
And it’s pure inflation.
NACT have rammed through most of their really awful stuff in the first half of their term. Now, during the second half, they’re going to try to bribe people into voting against their own interests once again. This is the damage control and sweeten the deal phase in the run up to the next election. It’s the phase during which they test Kiwis to see just how abysmally stupid they really are. It’s going to be super dirty and loaded with racist dog-whistles and appeals to the anti-vax tinfoil-hat demographic. All the big donors will do what they usually do and throw money at them.
Also, despite their tediously predictable rhetoric, NACT don’t particularly care about small businesses. They do care about giant corporate banks though, so tough luck “Mum and Dad” retailers.
Total in store retail sales in NZ is $31billion. The enforced 2% Buffet Tax paid to banks and card companies by Kiwis every year is going to be $620million.
Total in store retail sales in NZ is $31billion. The enforced 2% Buffet Tax paid to banks and card companies by Kiwis every year is going to be $620million.
When the Montreal mob does taxing it’s prison. When the banks do taxing National’s response is ‘thank you very much for your kind donation’.
This change is a gift to the big banks yet it is claimed by the government and reported by the msm as some sort of saving for consumers. At least we are getting some honest reviews now, and you have perfectly described how deceitful it is. Yet, a significant part of the population still thinks it is a big deal, even while the economy is collapsing around them.
When the Mongrel mob does taxing it’s prison. When the banks do taxing National’s response is ‘thank you very much for your kind donation’.
One could- to some degree- justify the Paywave usury being charged by the banks, if they charged it on ALL TRANSACTIONS WITH A PAYWAVE ACTIVATED CARD including chip/swipe transactions. Or charged a monthly flat ‘extra insurance’ fee for Paywave activated cards.Because it is certainly true that walking around with a card that if stolen, can just be used for transactions without even having to enter a PIN, is a risk to the banks.
The fact that that isn’t the model used shows the banks are just ripping us off for laughs.
OF COURSE THE GREEDY BANKS SHOULD BE PAYING THIS FEE! Willis has to be as thick as two short planks. All she is doing is ‘spreading’ the additional cost over all of us, whether we use PW or not! Someone tell me, what is the point of having four digit pin numbers to safeguard your cards since with PW anyone can ‘steal’ a card and run amok. Well done Willis – you are a real star and the right complained about Robertson! We now have the worst PM and worst FM in the history of NZ politics. Hope that makes the enablers happy.
“Willis has to be as thick as two short planks.”
You reckon? Shes locking in a half a billion dollars annual profit for the banking sector. What kind of ceoship or directorship would you receive when you had performed the 9 years required for that awesome politician super package including free air nz flights forever?
This is typical unpopular government pretending to do something useful.
Took away the surcharge instead of tax bribes before the election mmmmm?
Too late, the corrupt nature of this government is complete and the voters know it. It will be a landslide to the left next year.
Sack this government and Make New Zealand Great Again right Zelda?
Nicoliar is a joke, and she thinks we are all naive why would you charge people paying cash or by eftpos more because of tap and go/payWave nah! just more bad policy.
So retailers will just add 1% to the price of everything in the shop and customers will be paying 0.99% more for everything than they were the week before = more inflation and more profit for the retailer .
So I use EFTPOS and cash and pay nothing. And now I get to pay higher prices to subsidize those too stupid or lazy to remember a PIN number.
I think I’ll use the savings to buy shares in Visa. . .
So pay wave is only for the lazy. It’s like business owners, too lazy to work so get others to make them money.
I use cash for small purchases and object to subsidizing those who use a card. Next step will be for more businesses to refuse cash.
Never going to happen.
These are the treacherous brain-dead morons that worship John Key, who is banking that surcharge – 1% higher than the rest of the world pays of course, to acknowledge the economic incompetence and spinelessness of these wretched clowns that claim they know something about economics!
“Stupidity Is the Same as Evil If You Judge by the Results.” Margaret Atwood
Business are saving money with the current card system, which has replaced cash and cheques.
Previously banks charged business cash and cheque handling fees. Along with theft from the till by employees.
An issue smaller businesses may have is that all card transactions now go through their accounting and banking systems, so they can’t take “tax free” cash out of the business
Those that choose to wave cards around currently pay a cost for the convenience of doing so. Thos ethat don’t use it don’t pay for it.
That’s a user pay arrangement.
Ceasing that simple arrangement and instead spreading the costs elsewhere, including ultimately to non-users of the practise is to dismantle a clean user pays arrangement. To claim the opposite is Trumpian doublespeak.
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