Visa and Mastercard are planning to boost the fees that many retailers pay when accepting customers’ credit and debit cards. The additional Visa charges will be for online transactions and commercial credit, debit and prepaid cards. For Mastercard, there’s a new pre-authorization fee for credit-card purchases. With the increases, merchants could pay more than $500 million in additional fees each year.
Last month in Michigan our gas and electric company starting Oct 1, will charge 3% for every credit card or debit card transaction used to pay your bill. You have to use checking account for them to debit, or mail a check or go to Walmart. I have a spare no fee checking account that I have used for a few years to gift or to have rebates put in. I am on the budget plan with my utility company and pay the same amount each month. I have arranged to transfer automatically on the first of Oct and every month the same amount until I think June and then if you have money left over or are short they will make your next year payment more or less depending on what the result was from the previous year.
I have had Hudsons, Aldis, Blue Cross Blue Shield and my pensions servers hacked as information was being transferred. My name, address and SS number was information that could have been obtained on each of them and was notified. So for several years I have had my credit frozen.
I will not give my checking account number out, a third party is not responsible as I understand the law if information was obtained and money taken. I just read this in one of the money columns I read this week. But as I rule I read it and delete everything every night. I liked having everything on one statement each month and have that information available in the file as I needed it. Life will go on but change is on the way as companies decide how they will deal with the higher fees.
The charge will occur if payment is made with a gift card also.