The credit card companies do specify in their agreements that you are NOT allowed to pass this fee back to the consumer. Of course that is always done anyway, it just can’t be directly charged to the consumer. So it is baked into the prices, or recouped through some other, seemingly unrelated “convenience fee”, etc.
However, that’s been the case forever, so there is nothing new getting passed on all of a sudden that would account for inflation.
The credit card companies do specify in their agreements that you are NOT allowed to pass this fee back to the consumer. Of course that is always done anyway, it just can’t be directly charged to the consumer. So it is baked into the prices, or recouped through some other, seemingly unrelated “convenience fee”, etc.
......................................
I was going to pay my property tax with a credit card until the county clerk told me there was a 3% fee for that. I only get 1.5% cash back from using the card so I paid in cash.
“The credit card companies do specify in their agreements that you are NOT allowed to pass this fee back to the consumer. Of course that is always done anyway, it just can’t be directly charged to the consumer. So it is baked into the prices, or recouped through some other, seemingly unrelated “convenience fee”, etc.”
Under NY law, merchants can offer a cash discounts stated as a percentage, but not a credit card surcharge stated as a percentage. Merchants can, however, charge more for credit card purchases, provided they state both the cash price and credit card price in dollars. The rationale is that the consumer is too stupid to multiply the cash price by the surcharge percentage to determine the credit card price. In addition, NYS wants to discourage cash sales (more difficult to track for taxation purposes).