As one who has worked for an evil bank that also owned a large portion of a CC processing company, I can tell you that I don't fault small businesses for begging for cash purchases. Prior to everyone living on credit cards, and credit basically being needed to survive in this country, these fees weren't that bad. Of course once people got hooked, the merchant processing companies decided to squeeze every nickle, dime, quarter, and dollar bill from the merchants that they can. From my understanding, they don't care if you bring in a billion dollars in transactions, or a million....it is all about their cut.
On the flip side, I think the smaller merchants should realize that if they want to get those folks willing to pay over five years just so they can have a Glock _now_, they shouldn't be screwing those people with adding 3% to the bill. However, I totally understand where the merchants are coming from at least asking minimum purchase amounts.
If this were really a free country, I wouldn't be so bothered by this, but it isn't. Behind every industry is massive government regulation. If any of us tried to get into the business, we would be attacked relentlessly. Only a handful of companies even offer the service. Not only that, even if you had the capital to fund this sort of company, I am not so sure that a few players couldn't block your access to the various networks. I like it how the financial companies want to take our tax money for their bad lending, yet I haven't heard any of them offering to reduce fees w/o the government mandating it.
On the flip side, I think the smaller merchants should realize that if they want to get those folks willing to pay over five years just so they can have a Glock _now_, they shouldn't be screwing those people with adding 3% to the bill. However, I totally understand where the merchants are coming from at least asking minimum purchase amounts.
If this were really a free country, I wouldn't be so bothered by this, but it isn't. Behind every industry is massive government regulation. If any of us tried to get into the business, we would be attacked relentlessly. Only a handful of companies even offer the service. Not only that, even if you had the capital to fund this sort of company, I am not so sure that a few players couldn't block your access to the various networks. I like it how the financial companies want to take our tax money for their bad lending, yet I haven't heard any of them offering to reduce fees w/o the government mandating it.