Someone big is finally doing it

Kroger is banning Visa due to the astronomical fees.

https://www.ccn.com/kroger-ditches-visa-discusses-accepting-bitcoin

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IMO Bitcoin would just be a waste of time…

When Wal-mart in Canada cut off Visa for a short period of time, they knew that 70% of Walmart customers had another brand of charge card…And if they did not, they were pretty much given a Walmart Mastercard on the spot…

Loblaws which is the largest grocery chain only takes Mastercard…No Visa, Amex, etc…Been that way for years and it does not look to me that it causes them any grief…they also issue their own Mastercards…

Costco here in Canada gave AmEx the boot a few years ago and are strictly MasterCard now. As royster13 mentioned there are many places here that no longer take VISA.

That headline is misleading. Kroger isn’t banning VISA. Kroger, as a parent company, is banning visa at 123 regional subsidiary branded stores. Kroger stores as a brand still accept Visa.

In the meantime, Visa DGAF as they increase fees in April.

The only way for any real push back would basically be if a large portion ie over 50% of small businesses stopped accepting all plastic for a period. The big guys like amazon, wallmart, costco already have some negotiating power to get their own sweetheart deals so they won’t do much. Kroger doing a few stores isn’t going to accomplish anything. I doubt anything ever gets done. The banks and government hate cash as it is a lot easier to avoid taxes. So the banks get the fees and the IRS get’s it’s taxes. Small businesses get to support all the levels of government and the banks while having no leverage or time to push back on anything. I’m all for paying my share of taxes but when I see visa basically make a franchise fee off of every small business in US every month it annoys me.

What about taking debit cards?

I wonder if so many in America HAVE to use credit cards because they don’t have the money in their bank accounts? Or they just LIKE to use them because they like getting sky miles and such?

I’d say most in this industry take debit cards as well, we just process them as credit like many other quick serve places. No time to wait for someone to put their pin in

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In Canada there is a trend for the banks to brand their Debit cards to VISA or MasterCard. This little trick has introduced a new fee from the merchant services providers called Branded Debit Fee.