Welcome EU proposal to cap credit card charges - Tue 24th September 2013

How much I welcome the recent European Commission's EU credit card cap  proposal to cap in particular credit card fees forced upon retailers that tend to get passed onto the consumer.

I recently purchased 2 flight tickets from BA to South Africa and paid a 3% surcharge for using my MasterCard, and yes, I do sometimes go somewhere else other than Spain from time to time.  Not only does the airline profit from the sale of the ticket, and yes I paid an extra £140 return for the privilege of choosing  seat numbers, but they make at least a 100% mark-up on the card from the credit card issuers, since they would be paying about 1.5% in interchange fees to their bank . The new regulation will cap charges to 0.3% and discussions are currently underway. No doubt the banks will want to make up such a huge shortfall in income, but where I wonder? With just a 0.3% interchange rate then really no surcharges should apply on any transaction and retailers will have reduced their overhead.

If you know you're being surcharged unfairly or excessively then do take action and complain after reading this out-law.

If you use your credit card aboard you'll find that nowadays there's an annoying extra 2.5 to 2.75% charge against every transaction you make, so better to get a Euro card and charge up. Check out pre-paid currency cards from fairfx.com or caxtonfx.com

Posted by Bruce Gibson

Back to Blog List


Blog Archive

BOOKING
VILLA HOLIDAYS
HAVE HOLIDAYS IN
ABOUT US
THIS SITE
BEING GREEN
Free Carbon Offset on Travel

For every new sign-up we will plant a tree to offset your carbon footprint on any flight, which also serves to helps others.

16560 Trees Planted
Newsletter

Only useful information sent
& entry into free prize draw

Newsletter Signup
Follow us on
Facebook Twitter VillaSpain Blog
© 2000-2024 VillaSpain® Tel: +44 (0)1273 623723