Have you ever tried to use a credit card to make a purchase, only to find that the merchant requires a minumum purchase amount, or will charge a transaction fee for purchases under a certain amount? It turns out that this isn’t only annoying, but that the store owner is in violation (possibly unknowingly) of their agreement with the credit card companies (visa, mastercard).
The Visa Rules for Merchants (top of page 10) clearly states that merchants may not require a minimum purchase or charge a transaction fee, but that they may raise all of their prices and give a discount for cash.
The problem for the merchants is that the credit card companies charge them a transaction fee, which when weighed against a small purchase, cuts into their profit (or perhaps even negates it). This fee, however, should not be transferred to the customer. Most people may just decide to pay cash instead, and/or take their business elsewhere the next time. If you’d really like to able to make credit purchases at the store (note that they may raise their prices to compensate), or if the merchant just really pissed you off, here’s the process you can take to report the store:
- Call the credit card service center (not the bank which issued the card)(for Visa, it is 800-VISA911)
- Get a representative (press 0 rapidly), and state that you would like to “report a merchant for violation of visa terms”.
- You will need to provide them the merchants information, as well as personal information (for visa, this includes: store address & name, your name/address/phone, and possibly your credit card number)
- Maybe also mention that you’d like to continue using your visa card, but you are afraid that isn’t going to remain possible if the processing fees for smaller purchases aren’t lowered. Knowing that this issue could hurt business may cause the merchant and/or visa to reconsider their policies.
