How to get around merchant fees?

Posted by Agunderman10 on Thursday March 30, 2023 @07:42PM
from the self-post dept.

Merchant fees are so ridiculously high and I don't understand why. This is mostly for credit card fees which are often 2-3% per transaction. It's insane. Has anyone tried building an alternative payments solution? Why didn't it work?

( 4 comments | on HN )

Re:How to get around merchant fees? by bell-cot on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:24PM (#35380722)

"Cash or Check"

Decades ago, for large companies, another traditional way to dodge merchant fees was to have your own $Company_Name credit card. (Which was not a "branded" Visa or MasterCard, but their own exclusive payment networks & systems.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How to get around merchant fees? by wmf on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:15PM (#35380661)

ACH is cheaper but the onboarding UX is worse. Maybe FedNow will solve this but probably not.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How to get around merchant fees? by outdig on Thursday March 30, 2023 @07:55PM (#35380515)

because they can. because of a monopoly.

you can accept alternative payments like cryptocurrency or venmo or something, but let's face it, most customers prefer to pay with a credit card. that's how monopolies work.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How to get around merchant fees? by anonym29 on Friday March 31, 2023 @09:08AM (#35386575)

Cryptocurrency has fees higher than cash/check, lower than credit cards, but on-chain transactions (e.g., BTC, not LN) tend to have a clearing time longer than both cash and card.

[ Parent | on HN ]