As such, almost every store in Denmark accepts Dankort. But - like every other place - they are not allowed to pass that charge onto consumers directly. So it mostly happens indirectly, i.e. the prices in the stores. It is important to note, that until a few years ago, there was no transaction fee on Dankort transactions. It was practically a public subsidised credit card system.

And it worked great.

Now the EU is requiring that bundled cards get a choice. You see, one disadvantage of the Dankort was that it only worked in Denmark. So they made a deal with Visa to make a bundled card, called 'Visa/Dankort'. In Denmark, it would use the Dankort part and abroad it would use the Visa part.

But now consumers are required to make a choice for each transaction whether they want to use the Visa or Dankort part. It might seem great that you get a choice, but there is really no reason to pick the Visa part in Denmark. But since stores aren't allowed to pass the costs directly onto the consumers who pick Visa, prices are likely to go up, even if just 1% of every transaction is suddenly a Visa transaction.

I assume these rules are part of the capping of fees in the rest of the EU, and many Danish observers also suggest that these rules probably work great in the rest of the EU, just not that beneficial in Denmark.

Anyway, the same regulation that introduced the application choice also stopped the schemes from prohibiting surcharges.

Ticketmaster charge 0.66kr, for example: http://www.ticketmaster.dk/help/gebyrer.html?language=en-us

So either the Danish implemented regulations they didn't actually need to implement or the Germans are not following the regulations.

Actually, CB (for "Carte Bleue") looks so close to the generic "carte bancaire" word for "bank card", that few people even know that it's just a national card thing.

I don't know if stores are allowed to charge customers differently for different payment means, but I guess not since I have never seen it. However some stores only take cards for a minimum amount. The largest chains though don't have any limit, and I've actually already paid amounts less than 1€ with my card.

But people actually still often say "carte bleue" to refer to any kind of payment card (even a Mastercard one). Apparently just because it was the name of the first payment card in France.

So yeah, you have to swap carte bleue and carte bancaire in my previous post, I guess.

Need to implement? There still is such a thing - albeit not much of it - as independent national legislation, even in these nightmarish sunsetting years of the EU.

In Finland our local national system was shutdown (due to sepa) and now all the cards issued are either visa or mastercard (debit / credit cards).

Interestingly it also seems that credit card theft has risen to a whole new level.

In the same timeframe, VISA and Mastercard have seen a surge in merchants participating in the system, like grocery stores that used to accept BankAxept cards only. This might have something to do with people changing their preference to credit cards with benefits like airline miles, but also to allow travelers access to what's more and more becoming like a cashless society.

i.e. You and non-participating parties were paying for it through taxes. So the transaction fee was hidden by layers of bureaucracy but was still existent.

The German banks are just too greedy and invested in their own shitty Girocard scheme which doesn't even support tokenization which would be required for Apple Pay.

For Maestro/MasterCard Debit/VPay/Visa Debit that's 0.2% in the whole EU (UK & DE included).

The girocard scheme negotiates the fees with the merchants and it's around 0.15% - 0.2%.

At least for the banks, it's not a big difference.

> Compared to that the 2-3% fees in the USA really seem to be very high as well.

Keep in mind that US credit cards offer 2% cash back, so the system isn't actually handing a bunch of money to middlemen.

Not exactly--there are companies taking a bite out of the fees all the way down.

I run two retail stores, and after initially using Square (which charges a 2.75% flat fee), we switched to a merchant processor that uses what's called "interchange plus"--where they just charge us the interchange rate plus a small additional fee.

Chase Visa debit cards are the #1 card we process, and our fee went from 2.75% with Square to 0.05%. Yes, you read that right! That is on a signature process, not a PIN.

We do have to pay a monthly fee now, but the savings is ridiculous--some $500+/month over Square's rates.

That $500/mo was Square's profit margin, basically. Our numbers showed that at about $5K-$8K/month in transactions, interchange plus processors will start to beat Square, and by the time you're doing $10K-$15K/mo in sales, it really starts to add up.

I've used credit cards for almost all purchases for many years, and the only other place a surcharge is likely is a tiny, struggling business, like a convenience store or a rural pub.