Aussie living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Coding since 1998.
.NET Foundation member. C# fan
https://d.sb/
Mastodon: @dan@d.sb

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • We had AOL in Australia for some reason, but my family could never use the trials because they required a credit or debit card. In the 90s and early 2000s, a lot of Aussie families had “bank cards” which worked at ATMs and in shops but not online. They used an Australian payment network (EFTPOS) rather than Visa or Mastercard.

    In Australia today, debit cards are dual network - EFTPOS for local usage, and Visa or Mastercard for online and international usage.








  • A lot of restaurants add on an extra fee if you pay by card

    In the US, this is pretty recent… It’s only been allowed since last year. Previously, MasterCard and Visa’s merchant agreements both said that merchants must not charge a fee for paying by card, and the store could have their MC/Visa agreement terminated if they were caught charging fees. Some stores got around this by offering a cash discount rather than charging a fee for cards. There was a big lawsuit and the rules got changed as a result.

    In Australia, there’s a lot of rules around card fees/surcharges. I linked to an article in my previous comment. The business can’t charge more than it costs them to process card payments, and they’re only allowed to list it as a separate fee if they have a fee-free way of paying (like with cash). If they only take card, they need to include the card fee in the advertised prices.