China says rejecting physical cash is illegal amid e-payments popularity

Re:China says rejecting physical cash is illegal amid e-paym... by detritus on Monday December 10, 2018 @07:03AM (#18647260)

Since the beginning of this year it's been technically illegal here in the EU to charge more for payments by debit/credit card over those by other means.

This is a strange decision I feel, very much to the benefit of larger companies who pay a significantly lower processing cost per transaction.

It means that little people like myself have three options: raise all prices by whatever percentage it is that the processing fee is; charge as normal and take the hit if a client decides to pay by card; wing it and try to charge people as i may suspect they'd best prefer, which is illegal.

I'm really not sure how the customer benefits, as I assume most businesses will simply raise all their prices.

The likes of Visa and Mastercard will be happy though, which is good?

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Re:China says rejecting physical cash is illegal amid e-paym... by Wowfunhappy on Monday December 10, 2018 @11:03AM (#18648813)

> Since the beginning of this year it's been technically illegal here in the EU to charge more for payments by debit/credit card over those by other means.

Wow. What is the stated rationale behind this?

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Re:China says rejecting physical cash is illegal amid e-paym... by detritus on Monday December 10, 2018 @11:20AM (#18648937)

I'm not too sure. I think it was to prevent consumers being hit with hidden charges, which makes sense, but I can't help but feel the legislation is a 'sledgehammer to crack a nut' sort of solution. I think it would be fairer to simply force companies to state up front what their charges are and then the consumer can make her decision based upon that.

- ed

Curious, I had a quick Google, and lo — from a few months after the legislation was introduced... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jun/17/credit-debit-c...

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