Perhaps one of those places (like the Olympics) that have a sponsorship deal with Visa might not take Mastercard?
I knew I wasn’t crazy up there when I remembered a place that took Maatercard but not Visa. Here it is. I think that may have changed, though.
Here in the U.K., if you’re paying over the phone, it’s common to be charged extra for using a card that isn’t a debit card.
JCB is still one of the Payment Card Industry Members (along with Visa, MC, AMEX, and Discover). They have a vote on the PCI-Data Security Standards and all of that fun stuff.
Many years ago (about 1985, I think) I went on a ski trip north of Toronto, and the company said they took Visa and MasterCard but not Amex. I asked why not Amex, and they said it took forever to get their money out of them. Apparently it could take up to 3 months between charge and the time Amex deposited the money in their account.
Nowadays? I occasionally run across places that don’t take Amex, typically smaller businesses, but never ones that exclude either Visa or Master. In Canada, where thing have been chip for many years, a number of chip systems still cant handle Amex and make you swipe.
As for fees - I have heard/read news that the various cards have different rates depending on the type of bonus they provide - air miles? Cash back? Reward points? Your merchant pays a higher fee for that. (Also, depending on the size of the merchant).
Note that Wal-Mart has a fine tradition of putting the squeeze on their suppliers. (Something they learned from the Japanese management methods - the 500 pound gorilla principle) They make themselves a major part of the supplier’s business, then make them an offer they can’t refuse. Their current target is Visa. They have begun rolling out a program of not accepting Visa in Canadian Walmarts area by area, until Visa knuckles under and agrees to lower their fees. Last news I heard the other day, Wal-Mart said they had not seen a decline is business in areas not taking Visa.
We’re not only talking about the US here. I go to a pharmacy here in Bangkok that takes visa but not mastercard, no idea why but there you go. As for AMEX’s business model, they have a higher fee for the merchant but the merchant is not allowed to pass that onto the customer. Effectively all your free bonuses you get with an AMEX are paid for by the higher percentage taken from the merchant. No wonder a lot of merchants don’t want to accept it.
Outside the US it’s common for companies to charge 3 percent extra for Visa / Mastercard and 5 percent extra for AMEX. So you may as well just use Visa / Mastercard and buy yourself something nice with the money you save.
the only time I’ve used anything AmEx is the old travelers cheques about 20 years ago …grandpa swore by them when we went on vacation and man people would groan if they were behind us in a store …
But amex backed them up after our car was stolen right before xmas and we had the receipts they voided the old out and gave us new and that’s how we got home from Nashville tennesee for the worst xmas ever …
we were going to meet mom and family in texas and stopped for the night and in 20 minutes our car and about 2 grand in presents were gone … come to find out the shell station by the motel 6 had a spotter for a car theft ring working the counter giving them info and the thieves whod stay at the motel would steal the cars on the weekend …
Yes, I’ve dealt with merchant accounts and I remember Amex was a couple points higher, enough that the owner didn’t want to deal with them.
I used to have Diners Club as a client (I work in advertising). Discover bought Diners in 2008, with the intention to use Diners to expand their international footprint, since Discover is pretty much non-existent outside of North America.
While Diners Club was founded in the U.S., they’re not well-known here any more (their niche was too similar to Amex, I think, and they got squeezed out), and it’s outside of the U.S. where they still have any real presence.
I’d agree. Discover is my primary card. I’ve had it forever, and somehow fell into habit of using it. I have a Visa as a backup card, but rarely use it. It’s not often that I find a place that doesn’t take a Discover card that will take Visa/MC.
I mostly use Discover, and I very rarely have to go to a Mastercard or Visa backup. I’ve observed that small, fairly new restaurants tend not to take it. Also, acceptance of Discover has grown over time - it being refused is less common now than 15 years ago.
I work in a store. We take Visa, MasterCard and Discover. I recently found out that Visa and MasterCard charge the merchant less if they don’t take AmEx.
The theory behind not passing these charges onto customers is that by accepting these cards, a store’s business will increase more than enough to cover the fees. I’ve noticed it’s become less common these days for businesses to pass the surcharge onto customers, maybe the card companies have been cracking down on that. But I think to get around it, many business now offer a “cash discount.”
Really? Not my experience, every single time I use a credit card in Bangkok I have to pay 3 percent. Ok I think at very high end restaurants and five star hotels they don’t but I don’t frequent those places.
Cite, please.
I worked in retail for a long time and until comparatively recently. Of all the places I worked I can only recall maybe two stores (both prominent national retailers with stores all over the country) which accepted AmEx; for everyone else it was cash, EFTPOS, Visa or MasterCard only.
The reason for not accepting AmEx (or Diner’s Club) was the significantly higher fees; at least that was what I was always told.
Funnily enough, most of the places I worked would accept cheques (pretty much no one in Australia uses personal cheques to pay for things now, and the same was more or less true a decade ago too). I was frequently the only person in the store who knew how to work the TeleCheque machine (a device which read the details on the cheque and basically confirmed it was legit and wouldn’t bounce); wherever possible we encouraged people intending to pay by cheque to find some other way to pay because the whole thing was a gigantic nuisance to deal with.
Under our previous system, we had to fill out only one application to get Visa and MC but there was a separate application for Amex. I understand some businesses might not bother filling out the extra paperwork. But with our new system, Visa, MC, Amex, Disc. are all included with just one application form.
Yeah, that doesn’t sound right to me at all.
You’re going to the wrong places. We used credit cards in Bangkok for years, and I cannot remember the last time we got hit with that 3% surcharge. Passing the surcharge on stopped being common toward the end of the 1990s from what we could tell. The places that still do, they signed an agreement not to do that. But really, department stores, restaurants, none of them has charged us that for years.
And it was in the 1990s that one store in particular was foolish enough to itemize that surcharge on their cash-register receipts. I showed it to the credit-card company, and they struck that from my bill.
Lest you think all we did was hang out in five-star restaurants, I can tell you Pizza Hut and Pizza Company do not pass the surcharge along, nor do Scoozi or Limoncello Italian restaurants. Bei Otto German restaurant does not. The great brunch spot Crepes and Co does not. Not one major supermarket such as Tops does. No department stores do, not Central, not Robinson, not Tokyu, not Paragon. No cinema does such as Major. No hospital does. No coffee shops do, not Starbucks, not the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, not the local Coffee World chain.
Honestly, I can’t think of where you could be going to in Bangkok that passes the surcharge along anymore these days. Except maybe the bars in the red-light areas? The few that might take cards, it wouldn’t surprise me, but I always pay cash in those.