Head's Up- debit processing fees substantially increasing October 1st

Heads up Guys, especially you $3 expresses and Self Serves.............

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-22/visa-mastercard-to-raise-fees-on-small-purchases-analyst-says.html

"Visa Inc. (V) and MasterCard Inc. (MA), the world’s largest consumer-payment networks, will raise debit-card fees charged for small-ticket purchases to the full amount allowed under new rules, according to an analyst.Visa, the world’s largest network, and No. 2 MasterCard may increase fees from 8 cents on a $2 purchase to 23 cents, Thomas McCrohan, an analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, wrote in a note. They will eliminate the so-called interchange portion of the fee, charging the highest amount allowed by rules announced in June, McCrohan said yesterday in an interview.
The change “will kill the economics for small-ticket debit purchases and influence a shift back to credit cards,” McCrohan wrote. “It will almost certainly lead to a merchant revolt against the card networks.”

Already USA technologies (eport) sent out an email:

"Last week VISA and MasterCard took the unprecedented step of announcing that their bank debit card interchange rates would increase by roughly 250% for a typical small-ticket debit card transaction and making them effective October 1, 2011, leaving us little or no time to respond. This decision by Visa and MasterCard has forced USA Technologies to make the difficult decision to temporarily stop the acceptance of Visa and MasterCard bank debit cards until further notice.

Consequently, effective October 1, 2011 and until further notice, the USA Technologies' card processing network will not accept any bank debit/check or prepaid cards with a Visa or MasterCard logo."

My beach location hit a record in Sept of 60% cc usage.
Got to have'm for that and the extra revenue they produce.
thanks for the post,
Jimmy

Maybe this change won’t hurt express and self-service.

Recently, my bank began charging a monthly fee for some services it used to provide for free. I moved my money to another bank that doesn’t.

My local gas station started offering a five cent discount if you pay with cash versus plastic. I now go inside and pay with cash, saving about $0.50 a fill up.

Growing sick with credit card company fees, practices and policies, I have revolted against the networks.

Last week I bought a new TV and computer. I paid cash. When I go to a car wash, I stuff the POS with cash.

Today, I keep only one credit card to pay for stuff that is almost impossible to pay for with cash like renting a car or buying a plane ticket.

Until the card networks come to sense, I’m going to keep paying with cash.

Maybe more people should do so.

Well, it won't immediately hurt the purchaser of wash services, but operators with slim margins will take a hit. I know this is a game of averages, but it is also a game of pennies. Some operators go to a lot of trouble to shave .15 cost off a wash. Well, in one fell swoop the banks will take that back out of your margin. This could potentially cost operators several hundred dollars of profit a month.

My friend who just purchases some eport readers for his SS bays just lost the ability to process debit cards. As you can imagine he is pretty pissed.I don't know about his site, but the statement for my site shows debit cards account for over half of plastic transactions.

I installed card swipes in my SS bays almost two years ago. So far it appears that there has been no increase in gross revenue in the bays. It just looks like the customers have swapped to plastic. But now, the merchant processor gets a nice chunk of change from me. The options I see are to eat it, go up on ALL customers for the service, or discontinue use of the system.