Bruce Mansfield, CEO of Eftpos Payments Australia Limited has been sending out the same letter to anyone who writes to him about the EFTPOS fee hike which will flow from recent EPAL decisions. He has nothing new to say in this letter. It is more spin designed to deflect attention from the role being played by his board which is controlled by the major banks, Coles and Woolworths.
The facts which Mansfield ignores are:
- The 12 million Visa and MasterCard debit cards are dual cards i.e. also EFTPOS cards. They can be used in both networks depending on the cardholder pushing credit or check/savings.
- The EFTPOS network has become more expensive i.e. 1.2B Transaction by 11 cents, 800M by 6 cents. I am flabbergasted by the claim of “net impact zero”.
- The retailers can negotiate with acquirers challenging the acquiring margin, but how are they negotiating with issuers challenging the interchange fee? That is the one that was raised.
- The acquirer and retailers have to carry the bulk of the investment to save EFTPOS from the Bankcard demise. Why do they get charged?
The conclusion remains that Bruce Mansfield serves the issuing banks sitting on his board to levy an ”EFTPOS tax”. It is a fee that banks now get to continue to issue EFTPOS functionality on their debit card. Unjustifiable and untimely. His best position, if he had the survival of EFTPOS at heart and if he could decide, would be to maintain the cost advantage of EFTPOS versus scheme debit cards.
I am grateful to Jost Stollmann of Tyro for helping develop this response.
Newsagents – this is a big issue. You need to contact your local member of parliament to fight not only for your nut for all small businesses. The mroe who raise their voice the greater the opportunity for action on this issue.
Any other banks offering their business customers lower rates for their EFTPOS transactions and credit card purchases?
Ours offered us a 25% reduction per transaction.
Maybe they’ve lost too many customers to ignore this, regardless of the outcome of this situation.
It would be good if customers are voting with their feet, prompting at least some thought about implications for these banks. Nah, too much wishful thinking there..
Oh, and our local member is useless.
Why only one response – do Newsagents not realize that in five months this will have a huge effect on the bottom line.
No-one seems to care!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would suggest newsagents have a look at Tyro. I did.
Only one response Lance because like everything else that effects us, no matter how hard individuals push they get nowhere. Coles and Woolies push and they get a free ride but because we are not united under one body nothing is going to stop it happening, no letters to MP, no complaining. We have used our pos system to add a eftpos fee equal to what it costs us to process, pass it on to the customer like everyone else does ( banks, service industries, cafes etc).