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Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

bloomberg.com

31–40 of 102 posts

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#31

This system is completely convoluted, with the incentives all over the place between merchant, bank, CC processor, consumer. It's the kind of thing that will never change until you go to a different country or start an alternative payment system that is 10x better, because no one has the power or will to displace the existing infrastructure. Consumers don't care because they don't (directly) pay the bill for these be…

What do other countries do?

The same stuff

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip cards aren't without their problems, also. I've yet to have one last more than 9-10 months before the chip stops working reliably.

I've been running into that a lot... I'm replacing my card once a year because the chip stops working. It's one of the most embarrassing things when your card is declined repeatedly and there are people in line behind you. Or worse you're on a date and your date thinks you're overdrafted.

Is your wallet made out of any odd materials?

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#34

This system is completely convoluted, with the incentives all over the place between merchant, bank, CC processor, consumer. It's the kind of thing that will never change until you go to a different country or start an alternative payment system that is 10x better, because no one has the power or will to displace the existing infrastructure. Consumers don't care because they don't (directly) pay the bill for these be…

What do other countries do?

Cap fees or just have more competition in general (typically tied to smartphones).

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#35
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately the problem is with the banks/issuers who refuse to support and require more secure solutions like chip cards, instead of clinging on to the hopelessly outdated standard of authenticating payments with knowledge of a number printed on a card.

Chip cards aren't without their problems, also. I've yet to have one last more than 9-10 months before the chip stops working reliably.

That's strange... I wonder if some card issuer has a quality problem? I haven't had any issues with mine at all, but I've had a lot of issues with the barcodes slowly wearing away.

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#36

This system is completely convoluted, with the incentives all over the place between merchant, bank, CC processor, consumer. It's the kind of thing that will never change until you go to a different country or start an alternative payment system that is 10x better, because no one has the power or will to displace the existing infrastructure. Consumers don't care because they don't (directly) pay the bill for these be…

It's insane that credit card rewards are even legal, given that they're basically just a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy.

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#37
post #17

I don't like retailers storing my credit card info in dodgy databases that end up on the dark web. I understand that stores don't want to lose all their profit to interchange fees. That's reasonable. At the same time, I personally wouldn't be so dogmatic about using Apple Pay or an Apple Card if I hadn't had my debit card ganked five times in the last seven years. In other words, they've brought this on themselves, a…

When I was in the US (Nevada and Cali) I was so surprised how many places don’t accept contactless payment. Here in Hungary, even the smallest convenience stores accept it.

I used contactless and Chip n Pin in remote Botswana 2 years ago, and this summer in America I was still repeatedly asked to sign for stuff.

The future. It's not in America.

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#38
post #8

> “It’s almost like an arms race of who can offer the most rewards,” says Chris Ligan, vice president for acquisitions at Auric, which has seen use of premium cards climb 7% this year. “The person stuck with the bill is the merchant.” And they pass it on to us.

I've always thought this fee + cashback thing is weird, because the merchants just add it back to the cost of the item. Sure, you may be getting that cost back as cash, but the merchant charges you the same if you don't have the super elite card. So isn't this just a sneaky underhanded way to tax the poor which obviously don't have credit to get the super elite card?

The intent is not to "tax the poor" though that is effectively an outcome. Rather the intent is for credit card issuers to have a profit potential from short term credit (and to make a given line of credit more attractive for use through rewards).

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#39
post #6

This isn't really about Apple Card, it's just about high reward cards in general. The heading is clickbaity to generate more traffic. The tl;dr is: high reward cards (like Apple Card, or any other "premium" card) incur a high transaction fee for the credit card processor, thus they eat into the retailer's profits.

That's why, say, Diners Club is accepted in so few places (on Europe). Germany even goes further and often doesn't accept cards to begin with.

Re: Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Apple Card

#40
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately the problem is with the banks/issuers who refuse to support and require more secure solutions like chip cards, instead of clinging on to the hopelessly outdated standard of authenticating payments with knowledge of a number printed on a card.

Chip cards aren't without their problems, also. I've yet to have one last more than 9-10 months before the chip stops working reliably.

My last debit card's chip lasted at least the three years it took for the card to expire.
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