Credit card fees are one of the most controversial topics in e-commerce today. On one side, credit card companies charge businesses exorbitant rates for accepting payments from their customers. Still, on the other side, businesses are often faced with the prospect of losing money if they don’t accept credit cards. This is especially true for small businesses that don’t have many cash flow options available to them. In this article, we’ll talk about whether or not it’s legal to charge customers for credit card fees in Canada and what you can do if your business is being charged higher fees than necessary!
Credit Card Fees Are A Necessary And Growing Part Of Doing Business For Merchants
Credit card fees are a necessary and growing part of doing business for merchants, who pay the fees when they accept credit cards as payment.
These charges are a growing part of running a business because, in order to stay competitive, merchants have to accept all forms of payment. This includes cash, cheques, and debit. In addition, more Canadians are using their credit cards than ever before—and it’s not just because they’re addicted to spending money on things like yoga classes or lattes (although that may also be true).
The banks have been improving their technology so people can use their plastic in more places: at vending machines in offices across Canada, at convenience stores, even at gas stations!
The Legality Of Credit Card Fees Is Tricky. Here’s What You Need To Know
If a business does charge you a fee for credit card payments, it is breaking the law, and you can sue them for violating the Competition Act.
Businesses can only charge customers the actual cost of accepting credit cards as a means of payment. For example, if the business pays 2% of each purchase made with their Visa card (a typical rate), they may choose to pass this cost on to customers by charging 2% more per transaction than they do when accepting cash or debit transactions — but they cannot collect more than 2% total per transaction on any form of payment other than cash or debit.
The most important thing to remember is that if you are going to charge your customers more than what they were charged at the time of purchase, you need to first inform them before the sale takes place. This is called “refunds and rebates” in merchant agreements and comes with certain requirements.
You also have to ensure that your fees are reasonable in relation to other businesses in your area who accept credit cards (for example, if everyone else is charging $0.50 per transaction, then yours should be around this mark too). Finally, you should make sure that it doesn’t exceed what’s charged by the customer’s bank or their bank network (Visa or MasterCard).
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you to understand the options available to merchants who wish to charge customers for credit card fees in Canada. While it may seem like a complicated issue, it’s actually quite simple. If you want your customers to be able to pay with a credit card, there are two main ways of doing so: you can either accept all cards or none at all. If you choose the former option and decide not to pass on the fee, then any customer will be charged that markup percentage fee automatically when they use their Visa or Mastercard at checkout.