Cash Shoppers Subsidize Card Users!

Before you get too excited - or happy - about the news that merchants will no longer be able to "surcharge" purchases made using cards, spare a thought for those who use cash, who will now effectively be subsidizing those who live in a plastic-dominated bubble.

Here are the costs retailers currently incur per transaction, by payment method. These are figures for 2016, produced by the British Retail Consortium, which represents 80% of the major retailers in the UK. The costs are in pence per transaction.

Cash :           1.46

Debit Card:   5.55

Credit Card: 16.00

Non-Card:    18.89

So cash is decisively the cheapest payment method for major retailers to accept and process.

Unless retailers recover the extra costs they face for card and non-card payments by imposing special charges - what some call "surcharges" -  on individual customers, all such costs end up making up a component of the final retail price charged to everyone.

Quite simply, this means that those shoppers using cash are subsidizing the costs of those using cards.

Smaller purchases - those typically made using cash - are particularly badly impacted by the extra costs associated with card costs, which is, of course, why some retailers limit card use to higher value transactions.

So cash users are being penalized - as usual - which is a TOTAL DISGRACE.

Time to have two shop prices, one for cash, the other for A.N.Other?

I SHALL CERTAINLY BE WRITING TO THE GOVERNMENT ASKING WHAT THEY PLAN TO DO ABOUT THE UNFAIR SUBSIDIES CASH USERS ARE BEING FORCED TO PAY.

 

 

Wednesday, 19th July 2017

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