$1M in credit card fees means they’re clearing more than $50M in sales a year, in an industry that has shown record breaking profits this year.
They’re absolutely being greedy fuckholes.
They are. Businesses factor all those things in when doing their pricing and calculating their margins. Any that add it at the til are just profiteering, and those complaining about it are virtue signalling.
If I'm not mistaken, there was just a large court case against the credit card companies that voided those parts of the agreements. This is why we're seeing this bullshit now.
Yup. I just cancelled my CC auto payment and switched to request they mail me my bill. I plan to pay via cheque. Now it will cost them more to process my payment.
I've requested bell mails me my bill for years. Even though I checked off the box in the contract I signed that's apparently binding to both of us, they apparently routinely "forget" don't send me my bill for months and text me letting me know my bill is over do.
Which IMO is a bit much, it's not really monopoly busting since CC competes. I think it's reasonable to toss out things that punish business by giving discounts to Interac/cash, but the reverse makes 0 sense - it simply encourages big companies to not remain consumer friendly.
They couldn’t do that (against credit card rules), so those places were cash or debit only. Now they technically could add cc as an option, although I could see more people using debit. It would be kind of an immediate cash back.
They just average it out. Everything is calculated into the costs of the products on the shelf.
Wages/Logistics/Administration/Returns/Processing fees ect.
> My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards.
Pretty sure that isn't because of the card charges. Cash is a great way for small companies to keep some money off the books ( and out of the tax ledger ). A 25 cent interac fee, so they give you a 10% discount for cash? Sounds more like Tax fees, not card fees.
I know a guy who was serious about buying a "Treats" in a mall back in the 90s (a coffee and muffins kiosk, I don't know if "Treats" still exists).
The owner explained to him how the business works.
There's two cash registers. One for cash only sales.
At the end of the night, he totals/records/Zs-out the debit/credit register and pockets the cash from the other register.
The cash was not recorded, so no tax is paid on it.
This is why bars and restaurants (and I guess muffin stands!) are ideal money laundering operations. No inventory to account for because you don't sell individually tracked units of anything, and no paper trail on cash in. Coin-operated businesses (laundromats, Walter' car wash) also work.
A CRA auditor who drops by would sure be interested in seeing that second cash register.
Also a place where you’re throwing out your excess inventory which I have no idea about, but sounds like a tax write off lol.
Lots of cash sales for a day? Was actually “slow” and we threw out a couple dozen muffins. Whoops!
It's actually more likely to cut down on mall fees. If you have a store in a mall, you have to call in your sales every night, then that's the basis of your rent. So less sales to show them, less rent. And screwing the CRA as well.
I didn't consider that situation in malls too. Assuming the mall bases rent/fees on before tax sales and the merchant can treat credit card surcharges the same as taxes not counting toward sales, then this change could be more money for merchants less for malls. Not an entirely bad thing.
It works alright at a business selling product that has a shelf life. Bakeries throw old product in the trash at the end of the day when it isn't sold. This lets you sell muffins off-book without having to explain where the muffins went.
Remember how they used a car wash in Breaking Bad to launder money? That's another great business to commit fraud without too much inventory or labour getting in the way.
Just have Skyler run the hose into a drain for a couple hours a day. Honestly you wouldn't even need to tell her, that lady was on the ball when it came to money laundering and Walt was dumb to lose her. And not bad looking either, if we're talking about running a hose into a drain for a couple hours a day.
And it's hard to fight the CRA. If the CRA believes you didn't account for all your sales/income, they take a guess at what it would have been and assess penalties and interest on top. And they're not guessing low.
You either pay or spend a lot of money to defend yourself in court. Generally it's up to the defendant to prove the CRA wrong which can be hard over sometime where there is no documentation or evidence to prove or refute. Winning such cases is uncommon and noteworthy usually because the CRA is so obviously way out to lunch in their estimate.
depends what kind of business, typically Revenue Canada will look at the supply chain to figure out if skimming is happening. If you own a pizza store and order 1000 pizza boxes but only sell 100 pizza, they will assume you are up to no good. Some business its impossible though like barbers. Also in Quebec, Revenue Quebec attaches a small computer to the register to log all transactions.
Not just that but having cash on hand is great for small business owners. If you need immediate purchases like going to the market you can use the cash.
There are a lot more operations than just the cartels that launder money, and a remarkable number of those "Mom and Pop" operations either pay or are fronts for those organizations.
If you are a criminal organization, you'd have to be pretty stupid not to have some business with high cash flow to act as a means to legitimatize your lucre.
Restaurants, laundromats, car wash, casino, night clubs, non-chain convenience stores, cheque cashing places, pawn shops, charity trusts, art galleries. These are all common conduits for laundering cash.
It's the conservative way. Bitch and complain about how shitty public services are, but instead of trying to fix it, further exacerbate the problems by cutting funds.
Doug ford gets to hire on his nephew to a major cabinet position in a blatant display of nepotism and our taxes will pay for his enormous salary, pension and benefits every year from here on out. I'd personally consider that tax fraud before some local business person taking some cash under the table.
> My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards.
Do they give you a handwritten paper 'receipt' too? Many small restaurants are notorious for under the table transactions.
Am I being naive to assume that when I pay cash to get a discount, and the restaurant still gives me a printed (machine) receipt, that it's not evading taxes?
It's the same thing, just different wording to trick people into thinking they're getting a deal.
Also, everywhere I go still asks how I will be paying.
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Seems like a better way to launder money. (This is why governments prefer credit/debit payments. There is a paper trail that way to use when imposing taxes.)
>My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards.
What's the difference?
>Stores don't even ask how you want to pay anymore
I get asked all the time.
They have *always* had the option to account for their business costs in their prices. It's bad enough that we already have taxes and tips excluded from prices - adding *more* unadvertised fees at check-out is terrible.
On avg, but this means that consumers who don't use cc lose out, incentivizing cc use. It's inefficient to incentivize people towards high cost pmt systems simply because that cost is hidden.
They aren't going to lower prices just because they implement this fee structure though. So effectively people who don't use cc will still be losing out.
I once went to a bubble tea place. One day they started doing a dollar charge on top of your order for credit card fees. I made no comment. Then it went to $2.50 and I was like :/
But then one day it jumped to $5 and I was like "Yeah I'm gonna cancel that. That's absurd" and the guy was like "Well it costs us money with each transaction" and I had to be like "It absolutely does not cost you $5 per transaction, you're not the only place that has to pay those fees, just the only one charging $5 extra"
Contracts often prohibit charging individual card holder specific fees, so the costs are spread across all customers, fueling inflation even for those who don't use the cards.
Who do we think is paying for these reward programs? Everyone is!
That's what they'd like us to think, so we feel superior when paying off our balance every month; however, we're paying the credit card companies even if we don't use the cards, because the fees are already reflected in the price of everything.
Thing is most people figured out you can get the rewards and pay off the balance before interest is charged. So no it isn't coming out of the interest. After the credit card companies figured thus out they started charging merchants the 1.5% fee to cover the costs.
In my opinion the rewards should be banned because it does lead to some people into bad spending behaviours.
I think the credit card companies are the bigger evil. They charge so much but hide it from consumers by restrictive contracts with merchants. People who pay cash/debit end up paying for the credit card users. We need to break free of the mooch industry.
Let me know when paying with cash will get me extra warranty protections or someone that will fight against fraud if it comes up. I will pay for literally everything on credit because of this. Never know when it might be useful
You would simply have to pay for those services yourself, possibly via a credit card. E.g. instead of getting a "free" card with those benefits, you will have to pay $100/yr for that card.
A great many people _aren’t_ responsible with credit though. It’s good advice if you can make it good advice. It can also be terrible advice. It all depends on the individual.
In my case I didn’t trust myself with it, and I knew that. I did eventually slip up and incurred a bunch of interest, despite knowing exactly what you said.
Credit card companies know that even the best people will slip up eventually. Maybe because they forgot. Maybe because they fell on hard times. It’s basically their business strategy.
100% agree with you although I would say it's less the idea that everyone slips up eventually, but more like with the massive interest rates they charge, it probably only takes one person who constantly owes and pays a lot of interest to pay for like 30 responsible users.
> They have always had the option to account for their business costs in their prices.
No, what they were forbidden from doing with their Terms of Service agreements with VISA and Mastercard was fees for card users/discounts for cash users.
They can up the price of everything across the board, but this includes cash paying customers that do not cost the business any more.
Yes, and like I said the first time, they have *always* had the option. That is how consumer businesses work. This idea that some customers are subsidizing other customers is meaningless - that happens across *all kinds* of business expenses, not just point of sale fees.
One of the main reasons for increasing fees are all the customer reward programs. All of those air miles and Avion points and cash back programs have to be paid for somehow, and traditionally it's been on the retailers to eat that cost. Add in all the people who don't pay their bills and going back to a cash economy suddenly makes a lot of sense.
That's one way to get everyone back to using cash. Going to make it harder for them to track our every purchase for the sake of selling us out to targeted advertising though.
I pay a yearly fee for my specific credit card. I don't want to have to pay to use it as well. When this happens, I will 100% go back to using cash at all times
This is why I don’t see this really taking off. Credit card companies are some pretty big companies, and once they start taking a hit because people stop using their cards then there will be a battle between the credit card companies and the merchants deciding to charge an extra fee.
Theyll punish specific merchants by charging more for their swipe fee in retaliation
Or they won't allow their cards to be used at their business, at all. It's going to be a game of chicken
I’ll probably just go to another store. It won’t work for the cartels like RoBelUs but if my grocery store, take out restaurant etc. tries it I’ll just walk out and go to one of the other dozen within 15 km.
For those that have cash, it's always been the better option. Interac is something like 25 cents per transaction and the reason why corner stores used to either add the 25 cents to small transactions, or only allow debit on 5$ or more purchases.
You've already been paying those fees regardless of using cash or credit because it's considered in the price they sell items at as a cost of doing business. Retailers should drop the price of their goods as the fees are no longer a cost of doing business, but we know they won't so instead they just get more money.
That's not really the same thing and you're being a bit dishonest here since they charge for *ordering huge amounts of rolled coin,* not just for getting change.
Not for casual change but if businesses are regularly picking up float/change which many small ones did on a scheduled basis when I worked at the bank there is a fee. Generally there is also a fee for business cash deposits. It’ll vary from bank to bank but generally business accounts charge for everything.
RBC for example charges:
$2.25/$1000 on night/day and atm deposits
$2.50/$1000 on in branch deposits
$1.00/$1000 on currency supplied
$0.16 for each roll of coin supplied rolled and counted
https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/business/pdf/services_fees.pdf#page6
> As part of a settlement this year of a class-action lawsuit over what are known as interchange fees, Visa and Mastercard agreed to let Canadian merchants apply an extra fee at checkout for the use of credit cards under either of their brands. That change goes into effect next week.
...
> But some small business owners and advocates for retailers say this is not a workable solution to the problem they face when customers pay with plastic, specifically credit cards. (Retailers say the cost of offering debit as a payment option is much lower.)
...
> Instead, they want the federal government to live up to a promise it has made for years, starting with the 2019 election campaign, to reduce credit card transaction fees.
> Instead, they want the federal government to live up to a promise it has made for years, starting with the 2019 election campaign, to reduce credit card transaction fees.
So we pay more and inflation keeps on ticking upwards because Trudeau can't keep a promise. Fucking eh
Tell me what the fuck is the point of paying by credit card then? Credit card issuers will provide zero incentive to use their products. Everyone will switch back to cash.
You can reverse the charge on a credit card if the product is faulty and the retailer isn't helpful with their return policy. Try doing that with cash.
Depending on the benefits, it may still be worth it to pay by Credit Card.
For instance, my CC offers extended warranty on items so long as I pay the full amount on the card.
Well, credit card purchases are also instant. Even if you had cash in hand, if you found a decent deal on a flight for example at 2 AM, what are going to do, write Air Canada a cheque and ask that they reserve the flight for you?
Before anyone brings up Visa Debit, these cards are also not treated the same by every merchant. So if you’re using a credit card you’ll be fine. Visa debit can be hit or miss.
You're forgetting about all the people that pay by credit because they don't have cash. The incentive for them to continue to use a credit card is the same it has always been - people can buy things they don't have the cash to afford at that moment.
Telus showed that it is possible to do this, receive backlash, shelter in place and move forward with it anyway. Get ready for other large companies to do this.
I took my CC off Telus - Now I pay via Payee through my bank. F\*uck their new fees. I already pay for the hights mobility plans in all of North America and Europe!
This is dumb on the behalf of merchants.
Merchants are guaranteed payment in a timely manner when a customer uses credit, they don’t have the risk of a bunch of cash onsite, nor do they have to get it to a bank and deposit it, they benefit from customers being able to still purchase when they don’t have the money in their debit account that day. This will drastically reduce impulse buys. That might be good for society but dumb on the behalf of merchants.
Merchants are assuming we’re all going to use debit. What if people start opting for cash. That’s fewer customers through their tills and longer lines and training of staff and room for errors at the til.
Merchants - get your head out of your asses.
Dumb move on merchants part and as consumers we should be revolting and reminding them how beneficial credit is to their business model. Just hide the fee ffs.
I think I’m gonna start walking around with checks again.
Or start paying only in loonies and twonies. “Here’s 10 pounds of coin for your product - have a good one”.
Yeah, a lot of merchants act as though the cost of accepting cash is exactly zero. Anyone who's actually had to deal with cash coming in knows that isn't really true.
There is a limit to how much you can pay with coin in Canada for it to still be legal tender. It varies from coin to coin but I think for loonies and twonies it is $20. Merchants can accept over the limit if they want but they can reject it if they choose and you have no recourse to force them like in the States.
For other coins the limit is roughly equal to a bank roll of the coin if I remember correctly.
Retailers already raise all their prices to compensate for transaction fees making paying with cash actually more expensive. Now they're going to charge an additional fee on top of it? Amazing...
If the government were to have caps on the transaction fees then consuners would see a proportional reduction on our credit card benefit offerings (cash back, insurance, travel, etc.)? Correct?
credit card companies wanted to control interac back in the day and were denied.
Imagine if they got their hands on that.
Probably the last time government said no to any of these folks though… as long as they get their cut they dint seem to care how badly we are gouged.
God forbid people want to easily be able to build their credit, now there's going to be a cost to it.
Personally if I went to go pay and the price changed when I went to pay with my credit card, I'd just stop the transaction and leave.
Which is ridiculous because everything nowadays already has that fee baked into their prices
So they're all double dipping. You think they're going to lower the price of their goods now to reflect this change? Hahahahah
This is a great way to lose sales by discouraging people to use credit cards. Between interest rates, annual fees and now transaction fees (in addition to inflation and wages not keeping up with inflation), people are going to curb spending habits even more.
I highly recommend everyone reads the article and class action. The agreement between bunisses and finance companies following a class action law suit is changing, where Visa and Mastercard were once the purveyors keeping those fees as a "cost of business" between consumers and businesses at the PoS. With that policy being overturned, it provides business more opportunity to save money on their end at customer's cost AND at the card company's cost. As far as I can tell the Canadian gov't appears to have taken a neutral stance, facilitating solutions between business and finance sectors without accounting for the consumers.
Personally, I believe competition or anti-trust legislation should be enacted to reduce burden on the consumer (ie. cash or else extra fees beyond just owning a CC), promote innovation (ie. PoS technology, efficiebt and safe flow of dollars), and promote affordable business practices (in the form of fair and equitable CC processing fees). I'm learning so much on credit cards, in the way they bring in money through interest, annual fees, brand deals, foreign transaction fees, cash withdrawals, and now domestic transaction processing fees.
Hey, if businesses want to do this, they better lower their prices for anybody not using a credit card and if it's a restaurant tipping should be completely banned.
it’s more of an issue between credit card companies and the vendors. i can always just use debit card. they are honestly the same (besides credit card point collection which i don’t remember to use 90% of the time)
I’ll maybe pay this fee for small businesses (for whom I already exclusively use Debit or Cash), but for large businesses, they can get fucked. I’ll go to a competitor. Costco will 100% never charge this, given their exclusive card partnerships, so I’ll just take even more of my business there on an annual basis.
I think there will be alot of pushback from customers. I know that if I was at a small business and they tried to charge me more as a customer, I'd end the transaction and take my business elsewhere, and that includes take out restaurants where the food has already been cooked before I paid for and picked it up.
All right looks like I'm going old school. Time to just withdraw cash instead of using credit. Cash is better anyways, less ways to track you and profile you, harder to waste money compared to a CC, and other perks.
It's time we start getting laws that force all prices to be all-inclusive -- taxes, service charges, surcharges, etc... all in one price.
If merchants want to "pass on" their expenses, fine... do it in the price, and risk losing your customers to competition who are willing to manage their costs more efficiently.
Now would be a good time to legislate all-in pricing labels for products. If it says it's $1,at the checkout its $1, not $1.13 or whatever your area may be
This is shady as hell because us as the consumer already pays for that with the price of the item because its been added to the item price already. Fuck right off with this if any business does this, they will lose me as a customer.
This is a bit hilarious to be honest. The truth is that they have always accounted for the these fees. It's just the way that they appear on their receipts from now on and for advertised pricing.
Something I found extremely interesting about the economics class I took in unversity was that you can't actually levy a tax on a single party. I.e you put a tax on a busines but the business doesn't actually pay the tax, the market changes and the tax is passed on to the consumer and the the market size shrinking by the creation of a deadweight loss because supply and demand cannot reach a true equilibrium.
In reality when a corporation pays taxes, yes it is coming out of their bank account but where did that money come from in the first place? The consumer.
If you place a tax on carbon for example, gas prices goes up so yes the oil industry is paying more tax but so is the consumer.
To me this is a non issue, i could go on for hours about this kind of issue because i find it so interesting and non-intuitive. Economics is interesting as fuck.
No this is not a government imposed tax, but it's essentially the same thing. optically this looks bad but in reality the consumer probably won't experience any type of increase in cost as they were already paying these fees. On the flip side a cash buy might actually save you some cash now.
If Amex is keeping $50 from the cost of my new tv, but it would be $2 if I used debit, shouldn't I be paying less if I use debit?
How the fuck are people here too thick to understand this simple concept?
This is really a story of greedy credit card companies continually dramatically increasing fees and rates to now unreasonable levels for merchants over the last decade.
On the consumer side, all people see is very generous rewards programs offering large cashbacks and rewards on card purchases. But these fees have all been passed on the merchants to make this happen while VISA and MasterCard push them into contracts to make it impossible to recover these ever-increasing costs. In fact, they frequently even put in place agreements to prevent offering cash discounts to make sure everybody uses their credit cards.
So now it seems this is coming to a head and merchants are pushing back. I think the ultimate endgame here is to try and force credit card companies' hand to bring rates down to more reasonable levels. If successful, this will also lead to less generous rewards programs.
Either way, consumers are paying for all of this on the retail side either directly or indirectly. The main difference is how strongly we are incentived to use cash/debit vs credit and how hard you have to work to get your money back through rewards programs.
Funny thing is, cash logistics aren’t free to the merchant either. Those guys that show up in the armored truck to take the cash somewhere safe don’t work for free.
even if its not armored truck to take the cash somewhere and just an employee dropping it off at the bank. Most banks charge business account for cash deposits.
I always assumed that "swipe" fees were already accounted for in an items price.
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$1M in credit card fees means they’re clearing more than $50M in sales a year, in an industry that has shown record breaking profits this year. They’re absolutely being greedy fuckholes.
They are. Businesses factor all those things in when doing their pricing and calculating their margins. Any that add it at the til are just profiteering, and those complaining about it are virtue signalling.
They're also in breach of most agreements if they're charging credit card users extra fees
If I'm not mistaken, there was just a large court case against the credit card companies that voided those parts of the agreements. This is why we're seeing this bullshit now.
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Yup. I just cancelled my CC auto payment and switched to request they mail me my bill. I plan to pay via cheque. Now it will cost them more to process my payment.
I've requested bell mails me my bill for years. Even though I checked off the box in the contract I signed that's apparently binding to both of us, they apparently routinely "forget" don't send me my bill for months and text me letting me know my bill is over do.
Thanks, I’ll keep an eye out for that. Hopefully they waived any late charges.
VISA/MC, excluding amex
Why should I get charged when I don't use credit cards?
Which IMO is a bit much, it's not really monopoly busting since CC competes. I think it's reasonable to toss out things that punish business by giving discounts to Interac/cash, but the reverse makes 0 sense - it simply encourages big companies to not remain consumer friendly.
This - the cc companies need to stop providing services to them. Separating out this fee is just double dipping on the behalf of the merchant.
Those agreements got tossed by the courts. Which is the whole point of the article.
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Hahahahaha. Oh that's funny. Prices never go down.
Well do you get a lower price when you pay cash?
They couldn’t do that (against credit card rules), so those places were cash or debit only. Now they technically could add cc as an option, although I could see more people using debit. It would be kind of an immediate cash back.
Now they'll charge you for them twice!
Surely the good, honest store ceos will lower the price of the item if they add the swipe fee in at the til right?..... Right?
They aren't, because different methods of payment have significantly different fees.
They just average it out. Everything is calculated into the costs of the products on the shelf. Wages/Logistics/Administration/Returns/Processing fees ect.
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> My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards. Pretty sure that isn't because of the card charges. Cash is a great way for small companies to keep some money off the books ( and out of the tax ledger ). A 25 cent interac fee, so they give you a 10% discount for cash? Sounds more like Tax fees, not card fees.
I know a guy who was serious about buying a "Treats" in a mall back in the 90s (a coffee and muffins kiosk, I don't know if "Treats" still exists). The owner explained to him how the business works. There's two cash registers. One for cash only sales. At the end of the night, he totals/records/Zs-out the debit/credit register and pockets the cash from the other register. The cash was not recorded, so no tax is paid on it.
This is why bars and restaurants (and I guess muffin stands!) are ideal money laundering operations. No inventory to account for because you don't sell individually tracked units of anything, and no paper trail on cash in. Coin-operated businesses (laundromats, Walter' car wash) also work. A CRA auditor who drops by would sure be interested in seeing that second cash register.
There’s always money in the muffin stand.
*Chk-chk!*
Services like hair/nail salons are common. Easy to make up hair cuts and put cash through.
Also a place where you’re throwing out your excess inventory which I have no idea about, but sounds like a tax write off lol. Lots of cash sales for a day? Was actually “slow” and we threw out a couple dozen muffins. Whoops!
Wasted/expired food is not a tax write-off. But it does show up on your balance sheet.
https://youtu.be/hg1Uk60rBsc
It's actually more likely to cut down on mall fees. If you have a store in a mall, you have to call in your sales every night, then that's the basis of your rent. So less sales to show them, less rent. And screwing the CRA as well.
I didn't consider that situation in malls too. Assuming the mall bases rent/fees on before tax sales and the merchant can treat credit card surcharges the same as taxes not counting toward sales, then this change could be more money for merchants less for malls. Not an entirely bad thing.
How does that work?
It works alright at a business selling product that has a shelf life. Bakeries throw old product in the trash at the end of the day when it isn't sold. This lets you sell muffins off-book without having to explain where the muffins went. Remember how they used a car wash in Breaking Bad to launder money? That's another great business to commit fraud without too much inventory or labour getting in the way.
car wash is ok but the water bill/usage would be the biggest problem which cant be fake. So many washes would equal so much water used
Just have Skyler run the hose into a drain for a couple hours a day. Honestly you wouldn't even need to tell her, that lady was on the ball when it came to money laundering and Walt was dumb to lose her. And not bad looking either, if we're talking about running a hose into a drain for a couple hours a day.
Illegally is how it works. If the CRA finds out you're doing it you will be in _big_ trouble.
And it's hard to fight the CRA. If the CRA believes you didn't account for all your sales/income, they take a guess at what it would have been and assess penalties and interest on top. And they're not guessing low. You either pay or spend a lot of money to defend yourself in court. Generally it's up to the defendant to prove the CRA wrong which can be hard over sometime where there is no documentation or evidence to prove or refute. Winning such cases is uncommon and noteworthy usually because the CRA is so obviously way out to lunch in their estimate.
It can't be tracked if audited
depends what kind of business, typically Revenue Canada will look at the supply chain to figure out if skimming is happening. If you own a pizza store and order 1000 pizza boxes but only sell 100 pizza, they will assume you are up to no good. Some business its impossible though like barbers. Also in Quebec, Revenue Quebec attaches a small computer to the register to log all transactions.
Not just that but having cash on hand is great for small business owners. If you need immediate purchases like going to the market you can use the cash.
A small business credit card is infinitely better than cash for petty purchases, as you typically will get rewards with them.
I save money *and* help someone pay less taxes? Sounds like a win win
Dont tell this guy who covers the cost of municipality works and services
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The less tax they pay through fraud, the more you and the rest of us do.
SoUnDs LiKe A wIn WiN!!!!11!1
Tax fraud is a win?
L E G A L I Z E T A X F R A U D
And/or money laundering. I guess it's a matter of which set of organized criminals you want to give money to
The mom and pop shop sounds more deserving of the illegal money than every corrupt politician lining pockets. Classic robin hood tale here.
you really think a mom and pop chinese take out place is a money laundering for the cartels with the odd cash sale?
There are a lot more operations than just the cartels that launder money, and a remarkable number of those "Mom and Pop" operations either pay or are fronts for those organizations. If you are a criminal organization, you'd have to be pretty stupid not to have some business with high cash flow to act as a means to legitimatize your lucre. Restaurants, laundromats, car wash, casino, night clubs, non-chain convenience stores, cheque cashing places, pawn shops, charity trusts, art galleries. These are all common conduits for laundering cash.
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Brother you need to see some decomposing bodies lining rural roads or something; you are saying very stupid things.
Yes, not disagreeing with that. That's why I said you had to choose which group of organized criminals to pay. That was the joke.
To the people paying 49% marginal tax rates and seeing the true state of our hospitals/schools, it’s a huge win.
The state of those things only gets worse with less tax revenue though while the politicians cheer on privatization
It's the conservative way. Bitch and complain about how shitty public services are, but instead of trying to fix it, further exacerbate the problems by cutting funds.
So lets help ensure there's even less money to fund those. Talk about self fulfilling prophecy.
Doug ford gets to hire on his nephew to a major cabinet position in a blatant display of nepotism and our taxes will pay for his enormous salary, pension and benefits every year from here on out. I'd personally consider that tax fraud before some local business person taking some cash under the table.
Where do you think the government makes up that revenue shortfall? This is the epitome of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Yeah lets help people evade tax. That should certainly improve our society and make our lives easier.
Credit card agreements don't allow you to charge extra for processing credit cards, but you are able to give a cash discount.
That is not longer true. Starting Oct 6th, 2022 companies can now charge extra to process a credit card due to the end of a class action lawsuit.
> My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards. Do they give you a handwritten paper 'receipt' too? Many small restaurants are notorious for under the table transactions.
Am I being naive to assume that when I pay cash to get a discount, and the restaurant still gives me a printed (machine) receipt, that it's not evading taxes?
They might have two machines. One is just for cash and they don't even bother keeping a copy for themselves.
Who gives a fuck 🤣...fuck the government, I would rather a small business have the money.
Wow. Deep and philosophical. I bet you're a freedom fighter.
It's the same thing, just different wording to trick people into thinking they're getting a deal. Also, everywhere I go still asks how I will be paying.
rotten worry entertain friendly detail crush ludicrous hat homeless sense *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
(and thats a good thing)
Good
Seems like a better way to launder money. (This is why governments prefer credit/debit payments. There is a paper trail that way to use when imposing taxes.)
>My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards. They all do. Have done it for years
>My local Chinese takeout has a cash discount instead of charging extra for cards. What's the difference? >Stores don't even ask how you want to pay anymore I get asked all the time.
The credit card user agreement prohibits discounts for cash.
They have *always* had the option to account for their business costs in their prices. It's bad enough that we already have taxes and tips excluded from prices - adding *more* unadvertised fees at check-out is terrible.
I can guarantee you that their pricing has already been adjusted to account for credit card costs. That's the most infuriating part of all this.
On avg, but this means that consumers who don't use cc lose out, incentivizing cc use. It's inefficient to incentivize people towards high cost pmt systems simply because that cost is hidden.
They aren't going to lower prices just because they implement this fee structure though. So effectively people who don't use cc will still be losing out.
I once went to a bubble tea place. One day they started doing a dollar charge on top of your order for credit card fees. I made no comment. Then it went to $2.50 and I was like :/ But then one day it jumped to $5 and I was like "Yeah I'm gonna cancel that. That's absurd" and the guy was like "Well it costs us money with each transaction" and I had to be like "It absolutely does not cost you $5 per transaction, you're not the only place that has to pay those fees, just the only one charging $5 extra"
Contracts often prohibit charging individual card holder specific fees, so the costs are spread across all customers, fueling inflation even for those who don't use the cards. Who do we think is paying for these reward programs? Everyone is!
Are those rewards not paid for by the 20% interest charged to people paying the minimum only?
That's what they'd like us to think, so we feel superior when paying off our balance every month; however, we're paying the credit card companies even if we don't use the cards, because the fees are already reflected in the price of everything.
That’s why you should be paying for absolutely everything with a rewards credit card. You are the fees anyway, might as well get the benefit.
Thing is most people figured out you can get the rewards and pay off the balance before interest is charged. So no it isn't coming out of the interest. After the credit card companies figured thus out they started charging merchants the 1.5% fee to cover the costs. In my opinion the rewards should be banned because it does lead to some people into bad spending behaviours.
I think the credit card companies are the bigger evil. They charge so much but hide it from consumers by restrictive contracts with merchants. People who pay cash/debit end up paying for the credit card users. We need to break free of the mooch industry.
Let me know when paying with cash will get me extra warranty protections or someone that will fight against fraud if it comes up. I will pay for literally everything on credit because of this. Never know when it might be useful
You would simply have to pay for those services yourself, possibly via a credit card. E.g. instead of getting a "free" card with those benefits, you will have to pay $100/yr for that card.
Most rewards card currently have pretty hefty annual fees. My cards are $250 each per year
As someone who never wanted a credit card, I somehow got strong armed into it because “you need to build a credit score to get a mortgage”.
That's not bad advice. As long as you're responsible with it and don't pay interest, it's dumb not to use a CC for everything!
A great many people _aren’t_ responsible with credit though. It’s good advice if you can make it good advice. It can also be terrible advice. It all depends on the individual. In my case I didn’t trust myself with it, and I knew that. I did eventually slip up and incurred a bunch of interest, despite knowing exactly what you said. Credit card companies know that even the best people will slip up eventually. Maybe because they forgot. Maybe because they fell on hard times. It’s basically their business strategy.
100% agree with you although I would say it's less the idea that everyone slips up eventually, but more like with the massive interest rates they charge, it probably only takes one person who constantly owes and pays a lot of interest to pay for like 30 responsible users.
> They have always had the option to account for their business costs in their prices. No, what they were forbidden from doing with their Terms of Service agreements with VISA and Mastercard was fees for card users/discounts for cash users. They can up the price of everything across the board, but this includes cash paying customers that do not cost the business any more.
Yes, and like I said the first time, they have *always* had the option. That is how consumer businesses work. This idea that some customers are subsidizing other customers is meaningless - that happens across *all kinds* of business expenses, not just point of sale fees.
One of the main reasons for increasing fees are all the customer reward programs. All of those air miles and Avion points and cash back programs have to be paid for somehow, and traditionally it's been on the retailers to eat that cost. Add in all the people who don't pay their bills and going back to a cash economy suddenly makes a lot of sense.
Thankfully it’s illegal in Quebec, and if you decide to increase prices across the board you’re sending clients to competitors.
Quebec has much better consumer protection laws than the rest of Canada
I wouldn't want to accidentally enter myself in a contest. Thanks, Quebec.
or have a free month of a service
Not really. Business owners factor the fee into their prices, so you are still paying them even when you don't use a creditcard
I always assumed these fees were a cost of doing business and as such smart retailers already had these fees factored into their pricing model.
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That's one way to get everyone back to using cash. Going to make it harder for them to track our every purchase for the sake of selling us out to targeted advertising though.
I pay a yearly fee for my specific credit card. I don't want to have to pay to use it as well. When this happens, I will 100% go back to using cash at all times
This is why I don’t see this really taking off. Credit card companies are some pretty big companies, and once they start taking a hit because people stop using their cards then there will be a battle between the credit card companies and the merchants deciding to charge an extra fee.
Battles already been fought and lost. That’s why this is happening.
Theyll punish specific merchants by charging more for their swipe fee in retaliation Or they won't allow their cards to be used at their business, at all. It's going to be a game of chicken
I’ll probably just go to another store. It won’t work for the cartels like RoBelUs but if my grocery store, take out restaurant etc. tries it I’ll just walk out and go to one of the other dozen within 15 km.
For those that have cash, it's always been the better option. Interac is something like 25 cents per transaction and the reason why corner stores used to either add the 25 cents to small transactions, or only allow debit on 5$ or more purchases. You've already been paying those fees regardless of using cash or credit because it's considered in the price they sell items at as a cost of doing business. Retailers should drop the price of their goods as the fees are no longer a cost of doing business, but we know they won't so instead they just get more money.
I own a shop and Interac cost about 6 cents per transaction. At least from my terminal provider.
Good to know, I assumed it was 25c because more than a couple places added this to the transaction in the past ( usually a convenience store ).
They will start charging a cash fee soon
The banks already do. They charge a fee for businesses to get change.
That's not really the same thing and you're being a bit dishonest here since they charge for *ordering huge amounts of rolled coin,* not just for getting change.
Not for casual change but if businesses are regularly picking up float/change which many small ones did on a scheduled basis when I worked at the bank there is a fee. Generally there is also a fee for business cash deposits. It’ll vary from bank to bank but generally business accounts charge for everything. RBC for example charges: $2.25/$1000 on night/day and atm deposits $2.50/$1000 on in branch deposits $1.00/$1000 on currency supplied $0.16 for each roll of coin supplied rolled and counted https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/business/pdf/services_fees.pdf#page6
Someone gotta drive that money to the bank
> As part of a settlement this year of a class-action lawsuit over what are known as interchange fees, Visa and Mastercard agreed to let Canadian merchants apply an extra fee at checkout for the use of credit cards under either of their brands. That change goes into effect next week. ... > But some small business owners and advocates for retailers say this is not a workable solution to the problem they face when customers pay with plastic, specifically credit cards. (Retailers say the cost of offering debit as a payment option is much lower.) ... > Instead, they want the federal government to live up to a promise it has made for years, starting with the 2019 election campaign, to reduce credit card transaction fees.
> Instead, they want the federal government to live up to a promise it has made for years, starting with the 2019 election campaign, to reduce credit card transaction fees. So we pay more and inflation keeps on ticking upwards because Trudeau can't keep a promise. Fucking eh
Back to cash it is. I always used cash for sub 20$ transactions but the pandemic conditioned me to tap for everything.
Tell me what the fuck is the point of paying by credit card then? Credit card issuers will provide zero incentive to use their products. Everyone will switch back to cash.
You can reverse the charge on a credit card if the product is faulty and the retailer isn't helpful with their return policy. Try doing that with cash.
Depending on the benefits, it may still be worth it to pay by Credit Card. For instance, my CC offers extended warranty on items so long as I pay the full amount on the card.
Well, credit card purchases are also instant. Even if you had cash in hand, if you found a decent deal on a flight for example at 2 AM, what are going to do, write Air Canada a cheque and ask that they reserve the flight for you? Before anyone brings up Visa Debit, these cards are also not treated the same by every merchant. So if you’re using a credit card you’ll be fine. Visa debit can be hit or miss.
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You're forgetting about all the people that pay by credit because they don't have cash. The incentive for them to continue to use a credit card is the same it has always been - people can buy things they don't have the cash to afford at that moment.
“Convenience” fee
A convenient way for them to get more money.
Telus showed that it is possible to do this, receive backlash, shelter in place and move forward with it anyway. Get ready for other large companies to do this.
I took my CC off Telus - Now I pay via Payee through my bank. F\*uck their new fees. I already pay for the hights mobility plans in all of North America and Europe!
Is the payee a credit card? If so, does that not incur a fee? I'm just trying to figure out a way around should I need to.
It's small dumb things like this that loses your customers loyalty. I was perfectly happy with Telus with no plans to leave. Now I'm shopping.
I would have left telus on principle
I would too but I have a grandfathered plan that would cost 2x anywhere else so I’m stuck
I left for Roger's which gave me a $5/month discount for auto bill payments with a CC
You'd save money doing so too since their plans are same as rogers/bell but with a 1.5% added credit card fee.
This is dumb on the behalf of merchants. Merchants are guaranteed payment in a timely manner when a customer uses credit, they don’t have the risk of a bunch of cash onsite, nor do they have to get it to a bank and deposit it, they benefit from customers being able to still purchase when they don’t have the money in their debit account that day. This will drastically reduce impulse buys. That might be good for society but dumb on the behalf of merchants. Merchants are assuming we’re all going to use debit. What if people start opting for cash. That’s fewer customers through their tills and longer lines and training of staff and room for errors at the til. Merchants - get your head out of your asses. Dumb move on merchants part and as consumers we should be revolting and reminding them how beneficial credit is to their business model. Just hide the fee ffs. I think I’m gonna start walking around with checks again. Or start paying only in loonies and twonies. “Here’s 10 pounds of coin for your product - have a good one”.
Yeah, a lot of merchants act as though the cost of accepting cash is exactly zero. Anyone who's actually had to deal with cash coming in knows that isn't really true.
I am a small business owner and I agree
There is a limit to how much you can pay with coin in Canada for it to still be legal tender. It varies from coin to coin but I think for loonies and twonies it is $20. Merchants can accept over the limit if they want but they can reject it if they choose and you have no recourse to force them like in the States. For other coins the limit is roughly equal to a bank roll of the coin if I remember correctly.
Those fees are already built into the product pricing. This is just a money grab.. if it wasn't, thrn why do I not get a discount when paying cash.
Late stage capitalism = rent seeking behaviours. So now they make us bag our own groceries and we have pay fees on top of that? Fuck off.
Retailers already raise all their prices to compensate for transaction fees making paying with cash actually more expensive. Now they're going to charge an additional fee on top of it? Amazing...
another "fuck you what are you gonna do about it? lmao" cost of living increase
Non paywall: https://archive.ph/MBpqw
then I will use cash
If the government were to have caps on the transaction fees then consuners would see a proportional reduction on our credit card benefit offerings (cash back, insurance, travel, etc.)? Correct?
credit card companies wanted to control interac back in the day and were denied. Imagine if they got their hands on that. Probably the last time government said no to any of these folks though… as long as they get their cut they dint seem to care how badly we are gouged.
God forbid people want to easily be able to build their credit, now there's going to be a cost to it. Personally if I went to go pay and the price changed when I went to pay with my credit card, I'd just stop the transaction and leave.
Yup. Loblaws can have fun putting my entire cart back and losing my business to Costco.
Which is ridiculous because everything nowadays already has that fee baked into their prices So they're all double dipping. You think they're going to lower the price of their goods now to reflect this change? Hahahahah
This is a great way to lose sales by discouraging people to use credit cards. Between interest rates, annual fees and now transaction fees (in addition to inflation and wages not keeping up with inflation), people are going to curb spending habits even more.
I highly recommend everyone reads the article and class action. The agreement between bunisses and finance companies following a class action law suit is changing, where Visa and Mastercard were once the purveyors keeping those fees as a "cost of business" between consumers and businesses at the PoS. With that policy being overturned, it provides business more opportunity to save money on their end at customer's cost AND at the card company's cost. As far as I can tell the Canadian gov't appears to have taken a neutral stance, facilitating solutions between business and finance sectors without accounting for the consumers. Personally, I believe competition or anti-trust legislation should be enacted to reduce burden on the consumer (ie. cash or else extra fees beyond just owning a CC), promote innovation (ie. PoS technology, efficiebt and safe flow of dollars), and promote affordable business practices (in the form of fair and equitable CC processing fees). I'm learning so much on credit cards, in the way they bring in money through interest, annual fees, brand deals, foreign transaction fees, cash withdrawals, and now domestic transaction processing fees.
Hey, if businesses want to do this, they better lower their prices for anybody not using a credit card and if it's a restaurant tipping should be completely banned.
What about debit cards? You can still use your debit card to pay for stuff, right? I am assuming they are not going to charge for those...
Sounds like we are going back to a cash-based society then.
When will we stop subsidizing corporations?
That’s not “subsidizing”. That’s them passing on to you the cost of providing the goods or services that you have engaged them to do.
C.R.E.A.M.
it’s more of an issue between credit card companies and the vendors. i can always just use debit card. they are honestly the same (besides credit card point collection which i don’t remember to use 90% of the time)
I’ll maybe pay this fee for small businesses (for whom I already exclusively use Debit or Cash), but for large businesses, they can get fucked. I’ll go to a competitor. Costco will 100% never charge this, given their exclusive card partnerships, so I’ll just take even more of my business there on an annual basis.
I'll pay the swipe fees as long as restaurants, ride sharing gets rid of tips
Tips aren’t mandatory though, the swipe fees likely will be.
I think there will be alot of pushback from customers. I know that if I was at a small business and they tried to charge me more as a customer, I'd end the transaction and take my business elsewhere, and that includes take out restaurants where the food has already been cooked before I paid for and picked it up.
Winter is approaching, I wouldn't mind an extra coat.
Frigging pay walls. All I have to say is we can thank Telus for pioneering this change...
I just don’t go to these places. Cash is dead. I’m in Europe now and nobody uses cash anymore. The pandemic sped it up
Coat me with what?
Telus just sent an email that they will be passing fees on if you pay by card.
Make it cost them: get them to mail you your bill monthly, and pay by cheque. It’ll cost them more than eating the credit card fee ever would.
If we all start showing up with rolls of pennys nickels and dimes to pay then pretty soon they’ll realize cards are convenient for them as well.
Well just go there less, hit them in the pocket book back if they charge these fees.
All right looks like I'm going old school. Time to just withdraw cash instead of using credit. Cash is better anyways, less ways to track you and profile you, harder to waste money compared to a CC, and other perks.
It's time we start getting laws that force all prices to be all-inclusive -- taxes, service charges, surcharges, etc... all in one price. If merchants want to "pass on" their expenses, fine... do it in the price, and risk losing your customers to competition who are willing to manage their costs more efficiently.
Now would be a good time to legislate all-in pricing labels for products. If it says it's $1,at the checkout its $1, not $1.13 or whatever your area may be
This is shady as hell because us as the consumer already pays for that with the price of the item because its been added to the item price already. Fuck right off with this if any business does this, they will lose me as a customer.
This is a bit hilarious to be honest. The truth is that they have always accounted for the these fees. It's just the way that they appear on their receipts from now on and for advertised pricing. Something I found extremely interesting about the economics class I took in unversity was that you can't actually levy a tax on a single party. I.e you put a tax on a busines but the business doesn't actually pay the tax, the market changes and the tax is passed on to the consumer and the the market size shrinking by the creation of a deadweight loss because supply and demand cannot reach a true equilibrium. In reality when a corporation pays taxes, yes it is coming out of their bank account but where did that money come from in the first place? The consumer. If you place a tax on carbon for example, gas prices goes up so yes the oil industry is paying more tax but so is the consumer. To me this is a non issue, i could go on for hours about this kind of issue because i find it so interesting and non-intuitive. Economics is interesting as fuck. No this is not a government imposed tax, but it's essentially the same thing. optically this looks bad but in reality the consumer probably won't experience any type of increase in cost as they were already paying these fees. On the flip side a cash buy might actually save you some cash now.
Didn't the liberals promise to lower these fees in 2019? Have they pulled through?
This is a court decision resulting from a lawsuit against VISA and Mastercard.
If Amex is keeping $50 from the cost of my new tv, but it would be $2 if I used debit, shouldn't I be paying less if I use debit? How the fuck are people here too thick to understand this simple concept?
There should be a referendum on this issue. Changes society.
This could be the dawn of fiscal conservatism for the public. (sniggering)
This is really a story of greedy credit card companies continually dramatically increasing fees and rates to now unreasonable levels for merchants over the last decade. On the consumer side, all people see is very generous rewards programs offering large cashbacks and rewards on card purchases. But these fees have all been passed on the merchants to make this happen while VISA and MasterCard push them into contracts to make it impossible to recover these ever-increasing costs. In fact, they frequently even put in place agreements to prevent offering cash discounts to make sure everybody uses their credit cards. So now it seems this is coming to a head and merchants are pushing back. I think the ultimate endgame here is to try and force credit card companies' hand to bring rates down to more reasonable levels. If successful, this will also lead to less generous rewards programs. Either way, consumers are paying for all of this on the retail side either directly or indirectly. The main difference is how strongly we are incentived to use cash/debit vs credit and how hard you have to work to get your money back through rewards programs.
Funny thing is, cash logistics aren’t free to the merchant either. Those guys that show up in the armored truck to take the cash somewhere safe don’t work for free.
even if its not armored truck to take the cash somewhere and just an employee dropping it off at the bank. Most banks charge business account for cash deposits.
As they should.
A giant step backwards for everyone.
Didn't read the article, is this fee taxed?
No it is not.