Targeting card commissions
Gov’t will try to contain the fees that companies using a POS pay to service providers
Economy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis intends to raise the issue of fees for the use of credit or debit cards during his meeting next week with representatives of the two payment-technology corporations MasterCard and Visa, in an attempt to contain the costs of plastic money, especially for product categories with a small profit margin, such as tobacco, newspapers etc. The meeting is taking place amid reactions to the cost of accepting cards by professional categories such as kiosk owners, who stress that the amount of the commission eats into the small profit margin they have on these products, which is below 0.5%.
These reactions have been triggered by information that the two international payment-tech companies, which monopolize the settlement of transactions with plastic money in Greece, intend to increase the commissions they collect on some product categories, such as the digital use of cards in e-commerce or payments through digital wallets. It should be noted that in response to a question from Kathimerini, Visa clarified it does not intend to change its charges, but market data show fees in recent years have followed an increasing trend, burdening the use of plastic, despite the rapid increase observed in online card payments in recent years, pushing card turnover to 62 billion euros in 2023 from just €15 billion in 2016.
The commissions collected by the two payment companies, which differ according to the type of card, are part of the charges imposed on plastic money.
A commission for the use of the card is also collected by the payment providers – i.e. the companies that have bought the card acceptance system from the banks, such as Global Payments, Euronet, Nexi and Worldline, as well as the banks as issuers of the cards.
The fees added up by all involved in the system of issuing and accepting card payments are close to 1-1.30% depending on the retailer category, but this figure turns out to be exorbitant, especially for transactions in products where the retailer’s profit margin is too low.
