We have the same thing with debit cards where I live. What a lot of stores are doing now, especially fast-food and convenience stores, is refusing to accept debit cards unless a minimum purchase of $2 or $5 or some similar amount is made. Other stores are charging a fee to use debit, like 25c or 50c or so, depending on the store. Some stores do both.

My local variety store has a sign at the till that says you need to make at least a $10.00 purchase to use a debit card.
I'll ask them the reason for the policy tomorrow, I bet the reason is what you just stated.

I'll drop a post in this thread after I find out.

This is the cost of having convenience. That is why you will find places that have never accepted debit or credit cards (eg. small convenience stores).
This is not shocking. Being able to pay with a card helps with a business sales. Stores make more money having these machines, the customer wants this convenience. In the end the customer pays for this convenience, one way or another.
I don't think it is the debit and credit cards to blame here, it is the consumer.

I never had to use my credit card anywhere before except for the "big things" and now find I HAVE to use it for gas sometimes because I just don't have the $100 it is now costing me for a full tank. And why the hell are we paying so much in Australia? It is now standard to pay up to $1.30 for a LITRE (liter) in most areas.

But yeah this is standard and is really costing both the consumer and business owners at the end of the day hence why i dont like to use cards.


*sigh* in a perfect world I'd move closer to work and start rollerskating/cycling to work

[edit on 4-10-2005 by ImJaded]

I blame the gas stations for the price increase. I used to always pay cash inside but noticed I pay the exact same price with a credit card with no wait. If the gas station is raising their prices to pay for credit and debit card sales, they certainly are not passing any savings along to cash paying customers. I would go inside and pay cash if I saved 5% or more by paying cash. I am not given a choice though. If gas stations acted like pizza delivery companies, we would save a few bucks by going inside the store to pay for the order instead of paying for convenience.

This is a surprise to some people????


The retailers have to pay to charge your card, why else would they only accept a few cards if they were all free?

Using a credit card raises your gas bill, and every other bill, becuase no business just eats the cost of having to pay the credit card companies.

Anyone living in europe, or even canada or australia, pays far far more because of their government's taxing the price of gas than because of a credit card.

Heck even in america that's probably true.

Originally posted by Nygdan
This is a surprise to some people????


The retailers have to pay to charge your card, why else would they only accept a few cards if they were all free?

Using a credit card raises your gas bill, and every other bill, becuase no business just eats the cost of having to pay the credit card companies.

Anyone living in europe, or even canada or australia, pays far far more because of their government's taxing the price of gas than because of a credit card.

Heck even in america that's probably true.

I figured the credit card companies ate the cost. I think they should or the people using them. Cash paying customers shouldn't subsidize anothers luxury.

Originally posted by IXRAZORXI321
I figured the credit card companies ate the cost.

Creditors are the most evil groups in the world. They will suck you and the businesses dry .

If someone uses a stolen credit card the losses are payed for by everyone elce.

Even the people that pay with cash.

The big company chain stores never lose money but small mom and pop stores always lose.

This is the reason i no longer do business on e-bay or with paypal.
I got ripped off one to many times by them when i did legitimate business.

How to make more money than you ever dreamed possible.
(By a bunch of psychopathic crooks who know the right kind of questions to ask when they go to get their suits tailored).

1. Discourage savings psychologically by amping materialism in society. This is done through relentless media brainwashing that equates frugality with misery and material goods, however useless, with happiness.

2. Eliminate , bit by bit, ways of earning a living and feeding a family that don't involve at least some form of debt.

3. Continue with points #1 and #2 above for some time. No hurry, no hurry, just let that frog boil it up nice and slow.

4. Jack interest rates so low that the only choice for the few curmugeoney savers out there is paying into the rigged stock market (AKA "the cash funnel") that will do an even more efficient job of sucking out their cash. Point nukes and carrier fleets at any creditors who complain that maybe they should be compensated a bit more for having all these damn useless low-interest-rate loans jammed down their throats.

5. Make it increasingly hard to operate in society without a credit or debt card.

6. Make it increasingly hard to operate without being in some form of debt on the card, by making debit cards prohibitively expensive to use.

7. Once everyone is debt, big party in Zurich or Dubai or the Caymens or wherever the great exodus has taken the psychopaths to, once the citizens wake up enough to no longer make the USA a safe haven for the New Aristocrooks.