This is an issue that particularly enrages me when buying, say, an airline ticket online. There's realistically no other way of paying than by card and you get stiffed maybe £20 for the pleasure.
Now, in my business I take about € 500 000 per year in card payments, mostly for small amounts. My bank charges me 0,6% in commission with no minimum fee (my old bank used to charge 0.85% with a minimum fee of € 0.15. Since moving banks I no longer set a minimum for card transactions, as I'm paying a straight percentage, whereas before, if a customer wanted to pay with a card for a coffee, the card fee at € 0.15 would have represented about 8% of the sale price.
So, to get back to the likes of Bryan Air (name changed for legal reasons), the way I see it is that if a small business such as mine pays 0.6% in commission, I'd be astounded if a business of that size gets charged more than € 0.1%, so the "Credit card fee" is a straight rip off.
Another example of the useful kind of stuff that the EU gets up to in the interests of consumers....
