Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Charges for Credit Cards

It is rather ironic that MSCC have announced that there will be a charge of £1.50 for membership renewals paid by credit card in the same month that the EU have announced that from December the charges levied on retailers are to be capped at 0.3% of transaction value.

MSCC is charged by its provider...
So unti the new regulation is in UK law it stays.

After that I'm sure it will be removed, hardly worth collecting 12p.

For those interested the full article in The Grimsby Telegraph can be found here http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/Credit...ail/story.html. It is also interesting to note that they say that currently the average charge on retailers is only 0.85%.

DDR or debit card ? No charges ?

There isn't any mention of fees on DDR but debit card charges levied on retailers by service providers (i.e. banks) are to be capped at 0.2% which is reported to be close to the average value currently charged.

Are the MSCC ACTUALLY being charged £1.50 each transaction or are they adding their own administration charge? If it's the former they should change their bankers perhaps?

Of course HMG could set a cap at a lower value than the EU limit. The main issue is that once a cap has been set and some transparency achieved then we should press for action to stop retailers from unfairly inflating the mark-up. The sector that infuriates me most is the travel industry where their volume of business probably allows their providers to use a charge well below the 0.85% average yet the customers are frequently charged as much as 2.5 or even 3.0 percent for using a credit card.

Those of us who pay by debit card shouldnt have to pay the higher cc fee in making it included as part of the overall membership charge.
The club is doing the fair thing by directly charging those who cause the most cost risk and inconvenience.

Charles, my reading of Peter Chapman's note is that the additional £1.50 will only be charged to those members who pay by credit card, those who pay by debit card will not be charged any extra

The lowest cost way for the Club to collect the annual subscription is by Direct Debit from the members account. This costs MSCC NOTHING and the money is immediately in the bank.

The £1.50 was set as a way of "incentivising" people to change to a DD. Using a card, debit or credit, has an additional admin time for our Membership Secretary. The actual cost to the Merchant Service provider is less.

When we ran our Company, which was about the same turnover as MSCC, we paid 1.2% on Master Card and Visa, Debit cards were 30p. That was a rate through the Federation of Small Businesses, far, fat lower than we could have negotiated with a bank or card merchant.

Some have asked why don't we take payment through PayPal. Compared with most card services Pay Pall is simply unacceptable, 3.4% +20p. So on £40.00 it would be £1.56.