Credit Card Swipe Fees

There was a thread about this a while back. Figured I’d share this:

Now, we’ve always had the impression that it is significantly more expensive for a business to run credit charges on a debit card than with a PIN, but we spoke to a credit/debit card provider about the differences and it turns out that it’s not that simple. In fact, nothing about debit cards and merchant transaction costs is simple. One rule of thumb applies generally, and that is a threshold around $50. For charges less than that, there is probably no savings in running the transaction with a PIN. For charges larger than that, it is beneficial for the merchant to run the transaction with a PIN. With that knowledge, it now makes sense for certain businesses to not have a PIN pad – like a convenience store where the transactions are small.

Banc Investment Daily – December 04, 2013