Latest / Best of Business / Scott Simpson: Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister on the Government scrapping card surcharges at the till

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Scott Simpson: Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister on the Government scrapping card surcharges at the till · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks be follow
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  Speaker 2: Afternoon, you can wave goodbye to the payWave surcharge and
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  Speaker 2: basically every other surcharge as well. They've just been banned,
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  Speaker 2: effective from March. Retailers or May next year. Other retailers
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  Speaker 2: will no longer be able to pass on the huge
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  Speaker 2: merchant fees that banks, credit card companies and f poss
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  Speaker 2: providers charge them. Scott Simpson is the Consumer Affairs Minister Afternoon,
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  Speaker 2: Scott Hi, Heather Scott, Why are you banning the retailers
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  Speaker 2: from being able to pass on this cost but not
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  Speaker 2: dealing with the actual cost itself.
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  Speaker 3: Well, we are dealing with the actual cost itself. The
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  Speaker 3: Commerce Commission made a decision a week or so ago
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  Speaker 3: to significantly lower what's referred to as the interchange fees.
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  Speaker 3: These are the fees that the credit card companies are
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  Speaker 3: permitted to charge. It's a regulated fee. They're dropping that
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  Speaker 3: fee very significantly from December this year. What we're planning
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  Speaker 3: to do is.
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  Speaker 2: Make sure before you move on. Okay, let's just deal
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  Speaker 2: with that. How much is the Commerce Commission taking out
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  Speaker 2: of that fee?
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  Speaker 3: That retailers pay about ninety million dollars a.
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  Speaker 2: Year out of a fee.
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  Speaker 3: That's out of one hundred and fifty.
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  Speaker 2: Out of one hundred and fifty. It's the total cost
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  Speaker 2: is about a billion dollars a year and they're taking ninety.
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  Speaker 3: Out well the surcharge. The Communis Commission estimates that New
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  Speaker 3: Zealanders pay around one hundred and fifty annually in seer charges,
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  Speaker 3: so about one hundred and fifty million. So are they're
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  Speaker 3: going to drop out ninety million of that?
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  Speaker 2: That's not a fair equation. What the retailers are paying
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  Speaker 2: in merch just an interchange fees, right, which is only
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  Speaker 2: a portion of the merchant fees, just an interchange fees
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  Speaker 2: is one billion dollars a year and they're taking ninety
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  Speaker 2: million dollars. And how on earth a retailer is supposed
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  Speaker 2: to cope with it when they now cannot afford to
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  Speaker 2: they can't even afford to recoup it through a surcharge.
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  Speaker 3: Well, what we want is to have transparency of pricing,
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  Speaker 3: and I don't think it's consumer.
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  Speaker 2: You're going to get the opposite, because when you've got
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  Speaker 2: a billion dollars almost in costs, you can now not
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  Speaker 2: coop through a surcharge. You're just going to build it
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  Speaker 2: into your prices, aren't you if you're a smart retailer.
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  Speaker 3: Well, that hasn't been the experience in the UK or
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  Speaker 3: the EU, where surcharges have been banned for some time.
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  Speaker 3: In a competitive world, businesses understand the price competitive nature
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  Speaker 3: of the businesses that they operate and the goods and
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  Speaker 3: services they provide. So surchargers are annoying their pesky and
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  Speaker 3: most customers don't actually know whether they're paying the full
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  Speaker 3: price or not. When you charge to sercharge that says
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  Speaker 3: one and a half, two and a half, three percent
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  Speaker 3: or sometimes more, you don't know whether that is actually
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  Speaker 3: a fair recouping of the surcharge or whether it's actually
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  Speaker 3: retailer taking an extra marge. Thing.
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  Speaker 2: You can choose not to pay it, so you can
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  Speaker 2: say no, I'm going to put my credit card away,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not going to pay it now. What you're doing
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  Speaker 2: to us is we're all going to pay it because
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  Speaker 2: it's going to be built into the cost, So I
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  Speaker 2: can't put my credit card away now. Doesn't matter what
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  Speaker 2: I use, I'm going to pay it.
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  Speaker 3: Well, if a retailer doesn't want to take a payWave.
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  Speaker 3: They don't have to. There are other ways of paying.
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  Speaker 3: What I'm saying merchant fees.
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  Speaker 2: It's not just the payWave though, Scott, and you know this.
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  Speaker 2: Merchant fees themselves are extremely expensive. So what you're doing is,
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  Speaker 2: in order to pretend to help us with the cost
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  Speaker 2: of living crisis, you're building more into our prices that
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  Speaker 2: we're paying. You're making it worse.
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  Speaker 3: No, I don't accept that for one minute. I think
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  Speaker 3: that New Zealanders want to have transparency of the price
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  Speaker 3: they see on the shelf being the same price they
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  Speaker 3: pay at the till.
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  Speaker 2: Why did you not deal with the likes of a
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand and ticket Master and all those guys who
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  Speaker 2: are actually charging us egregious amounts who still get to
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  Speaker 2: be able to do it because they're not affected by
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  Speaker 2: the ban.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the ban at the moment includes personal payments, so
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  Speaker 3: point of sale payments. We wanted to leave some room
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  Speaker 3: for the new fintech companies to find a space to
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  Speaker 3: live and thrive. There's a whole range of new technology.
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  Speaker 2: Not to be pulling my leg. You wanted to leave
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  Speaker 2: Ticketmaster to charge us eight dollars every single time so
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  Speaker 2: somebody could set up a business.
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  Speaker 3: We looking at that. The initial ban is for in
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  Speaker 3: person payments and what we will do is do some
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  Speaker 3: create some legislation before May of next year and keep
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  Speaker 3: those options open. So the initial ban is on in
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  Speaker 3: person payments only, and we'll look to extend that further
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  Speaker 3: beyond that as and when as necessary.
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  Speaker 2: Scott, thank you, I appreciate your time. That's Scott Simson,
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  Speaker 2: the Consumer Affairs Minister. Elect Heather dup To.
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