From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi.com@nanog.org Sun Jun 10 13:34:06 2012 Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 14:33:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> To: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: OT: Credit card policies (was Re: Dear Linkedin,)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Thomas" <mike@mtcc.com>
On 06/10/2012 11:22 AM, John T. Yocum wrote:
A merchant can offer a cash discount.
I believe that the law just recently changed on that account. I believe that what Barry says was the old reality.
Perhaps, but Cash/Credit for gas dates back to before I moved to Florida in 1981. Even Further Off-Topic, isn't "debit" supposed to be "cash"? Why do I pay the Credit price for it?
It is, and *ISN'T*, 'cash'. Unlike cash (and like a credit card), it is simply an instruction to a third party to pay the retailer a specified amount. And as such, is subject to the terms of the contract between -those- parties as to how payment is made an what charges are imposed. Unlike a credit card, the money _is_ immediately dedecuted from your bank account. Like a credit card, it is the third-party clearinghouse that gets the mone from you, and passes it on to the retailer. AFTER extracting their charges for the service they provide. You pay the 'credit' price, because the card issuer, and the clearinghouse operations _charge_ the merchant the same amount for those transactions as for 'credit' ones. Thus the merchant does not receive any of the benefits of a 'cash' transaction, so there is no 'discount' to pass on to the buyer. At one point, VISA, charged -more- for debit transactions than credit ones. Despite the fact that there was -zero- risk to them on the debit transaction. VISA got sued over the matter, since (at that time) it was impossible to tell whether the card number presented was debit or credit. Thus the merchant could not determine, in advance, what their 'cost' for the transaction was. As a result of the lawsuit, the cost differential between credit and debit transactions was eliminated.