Depending upon your throughput of monies the rate can vary that the
creditcard companies charge

Large organizations probably do get charged a very small amount as they are
putting through millions =


However when I looked at it as a small business it would have been around
the same costs as paypal (although incidentally slightly safer than paypal
due to paypals dictorial methods of removing money from your account) and
that was around 3-4%

A friend of mine who used to own a video game shop had a 5% margin on games
machines which almost completely was swallowed up when people paid via card.
So although he had no choice but to buy these units and sell them on to
enhance his games business - it wasn't a loss leader but bloody close to it.

But I would suspect - with all the costs of the computers / comms / possible
fraud and charges to boot - the lidl et al have just made the assumption
that if you want cheap goods you are going to get the cash out of the cash
machine and buy their stuff and they wont have to stump up for it !

Lets be honest, when I was in the UK - Lidl and Aldi only put their
supermarkets in locations that were less affluent and where people would go
them as opposed to an expensive one like tescos or sainsburys simply because
of their extraordinary cost savings over brand purchasing. Theoretically
then - a less affluent neighborhood is more likely to suffer from higher
fraud activity (without predjudice) simply because of the nature of the
demographic. So it makes perfect sense to eliminate that problem by not
accepting cards.

Cheers

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of
Peter Loron
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:47 PM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [OT] Big shops not taking "credit cards"

Yes, the fees charged by the credit card companies are significant.  =

Businesses accept them because they feel customers will shop elsewhere  =

if they don't accept charge cards for payment.

Personally, I find it highly annoying when I shop somewhere that  =

doesn't take "plastic". I almost never carry any significant cash on  =

me unless I know I'm going somewhere that I'll need it.

-Pete

On Aug 27, 2008, at 4:07 PM, Tom=E1s =D3 h=C9ilidhe wrote:

>
>
> There's two very big supermarket stores here in Ireland, they're  =

> called
> Lidl and Aldi, and they have rock-bottom prices. They have stores all
> over the country.
>
> Neither of these stores accept Mastercard or VISA... and my only guess
> is that they're not willing to put up with the transaction costs. Is  =

> it
> really that expensive to accept Mastercard or VISA? I had thought that
> the cost was very low, something like half a percentage. Strangely
> enough, it's very hard to find info about this on the net; I've tried
> googling it but haven't found a definitive figure.
>
> I myself got a VISA card recently and I find it great for buying stuff
> online and over the phone. It's not a credit card however; it takes  =

> the
> money straight from my bank account, but the transaction goes through
> the VISA card system so every merchant thinks it's a credit card.  =

> (VISA
> actually has nothing to do with credit cards, it's merely a way of
> paying for something, so the funds can come from anywhere).
>
> When I'm buying stuff online, I usually say to the seller that I'll  =

> pay
> directly with "credit card" if they want me to, reason being that  =

> PayPal
> takes a ridiculously large cut (it costs 517 Euro to send 500 Euro). I
> hadn't considered that the fee for "credit cards" would be high also  =

> (I
> figured it might cost 501 Euro to send 500 Euro).
>
>
>
> -- =

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