Have you ever been to a store where you tried to pay by card but they refuse to let you unless you spend over a certain limit? Or maybe a shop that avoids accepting cards entirely? That’s because these shops want to avoid transaction fees associated with using cards, but the good news is that this practice is going away in the UK.
In a report from the Bristol Post (via 9to5Mac), the UK will start to ban shops from charging a fee for using credit/debit cards, and this will also apply to other payment services such as American Express, PayPal, and Apple Pay. This will be applied to both in-store and online purchases, although the only caveat is that these purchases need to be made in the UK and from UK businesses.
This means that using your credit card or Apple Pay or PayPal to pay for something from another country, you can still expect those fees to be charged. The goal of this new law is to ensure that businesses do not profit from debit or credit charge transactions, meaning that businesses should only profit from the things that they sell, whether it be a product or service.
Of course the only downside here is that there is a possibility that to make up for the loss in transaction fees associated with credit/debit cards, businesses might try to hike up the prices as a way of sneaking those fees back in.