Fees for transactions in Australian dollars when a merchant's bank or payment processor is located or registered overseas? What on earth! How is that allowed?!
If I ever move back to Australia I'm keeping my UK cards, most have barely any fees for anything!
This happened in the UK too - before I boycotted Amazon, I bought something from them in the UK, priced in GBP, using a UK card , and got stung 3% because the transaction was processed in Luxembourg. That was nearly 20 years ago, but I think it may still happen today on cards from various obscure banks.
This year, HSBC Hong Kong actually introduced a 1% fee for HKD transactions processed outside Hong Kong, having never previously charged such a fee.
If this RBA proposal comes to pass, I think UK (and other foreign) cards may mysteriously start failing to be accepted for more and more transactions in Australia. My UK cards already don't work at a handful of merchants, even where they don't add a surcharge. Presumably because they get charged more for international cards and have coded their system to only accept domestic cards.
Exactly. Whilst I am loyal to Hilton, I can't believe their 2% surcharge is the cost of card acceptance if other hotels are charging less.
I'm not sure how the Hilton Australia surcharge is actually legal as when I've asked them, they said there was no way to pay without the surcharge, especially for prepaid rates.
At other hotel chains in Australia I have stayed at, they have sometimes said there is no surcharge if I pay using the card machine (rather than online through their reservation system), or they accept cash.
NZ Hiltons haven't added any surcharge when I booked prepaid rates with them, and the ones I have stayed at accepted cash to avoid the surcharge on pay-at-hotel rates.
Strictly speaking, Australian Hiltons are breaking the law in the UK / EU by not advertising their full rates to consumers in the UK / EU, but nobody is enforcing this.
Yep it's a bit sad that all these large businesses aren't able to negotiate better deals on their merchant fees. I guess there's no incentive for them to try, no need ask for a better deal from the bank and no need to lower those costs if you can just directly pass them on to your customers in full.
But is this really the case? Assuming that Hilton is really getting charged 2% on their merchant fees - if they want $500 from a stay, the guest knows they will get charged $510.
If they negotiate their merchant fee down to 0.5% they can charge $507.46 and the guest will still be expecting to pay $510. Or they could do the "Honorable" thing and just advertise a rate of $510 with no surcharge.
