Latest / Best of Business / Jessica Walker: Consumer NZ Acting Head of Research and Advocacy on the growing calls to ban credit card surcharges

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Jessica Walker: Consumer NZ Acting Head of Research and Advocacy on the growing calls to ban credit card surcharges · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed Be
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  Speaker 2: MasterCard has released a survey that it says shows kiwis
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  Speaker 2: want surcharges band. Apparently sixty one percent of US would
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  Speaker 2: support a ban, Seventy five percent of US do not
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  Speaker 2: believe that surcharging is fair. Forty four percent of US
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  Speaker 2: think that retailers should absorb into change fees without surcharging
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  Speaker 2: or without increasing the price. And Jessica Walker is Consumers
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  Speaker 2: Acting Head of Research and Advocacy. Hey Jessica, Hi, Hada,
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  Speaker 2: how are you doing. I'm very well. I need you
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  Speaker 2: to I need you to explain something to me, Jessica.
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  Speaker 2: I look at this coming from MasterCard, who I believe
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  Speaker 2: are ultimately responsible for the fact that we get surcharged,
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  Speaker 2: and I think they have got a bloody brass neck
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  Speaker 2: putting something like this out. Am I wrong?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's really complicated, and I feel like I'm always
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  Speaker 3: staying complicating. It sounds like a cop up. But payment
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  Speaker 3: systems are really complicated, and businesses are charged a fee
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  Speaker 3: for using these these payment networks, and so of course
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  Speaker 3: Visa and MasterCard are going to benefit from surcharges being
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  Speaker 3: banned because it means that more people will use Visa
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  Speaker 3: and MasterCards because it will be free for them to
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  Speaker 3: do so. But we think we've gone on the record
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  Speaker 3: and said that surcharges are a national embarrassment, and we
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  Speaker 3: stand by that. There is a huge problem.
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  Speaker 2: You blame for them? Who do you blame for them?
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  Speaker 2: Do you blame Do you blame MasterCard and Visa who
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  Speaker 2: have who introduced the fees? Do you blame the retail
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  Speaker 2: banks who also have fees? Or do you blame the
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  Speaker 2: little retailer who I bought my coffee from today, who
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  Speaker 2: is going to have to absorb what is in some
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  Speaker 2: cases like thousands of dollars? It's a lot. Who do
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  Speaker 2: you blame?
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  Speaker 3: And we don't blame one person, and again it sounds
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  Speaker 3: like a cup out or one organization, But we are
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  Speaker 3: saying that there needs to be regulations, so right now
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  Speaker 3: is guidelines, and so we think that's what's contributing to
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  Speaker 3: the mess there was the consumer is the horrible experience,
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  Speaker 3: But also I get your point that for small businesses
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  Speaker 3: it's also a mess because they're they're incurring fees that
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  Speaker 3: they shouldn't be and they've got no choice but to
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  Speaker 3: pass them on, or if they're not passing them on,
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  Speaker 3: then it means it's costing them more. So what we
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  Speaker 3: think is a band should absolutely be on the table.
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  Speaker 3: But in the meantime, we really support this further interchange regulation,
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  Speaker 3: which is what the Commerce Commission has just been consulting on.
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  Speaker 3: And what that should mean is that costs for businesses
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  Speaker 3: come down, so which should cost them much less to
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  Speaker 3: expect bad payments, and that's what we an interim measure.
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  Speaker 2: Am I wrong to blame Visa and master Card for this?
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  Speaker 2: Am I wrong to actually see them as the lead
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  Speaker 2: culprits because when I read about what happened last year
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  Speaker 2: around about this time in the US, they reached a
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  Speaker 2: thirty billion dollar settlement over these credit card fees, which
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  Speaker 2: was basically accepting that they were too high. So am
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  Speaker 2: I wrong blaming them for us?
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  Speaker 3: I think blame needs to be a portioned across lots
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  Speaker 3: of different players because right now, tell me who they are,
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  Speaker 3: so who What we don't understand is where the extra
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  Speaker 3: money is going. So we think that's one question that
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  Speaker 3: needs to be asked. And the credit card companies, Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: well yeah, and then are there some retailers that are
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  Speaker 3: taking some cream off the top as well? Is it
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  Speaker 3: payment service providers? So there's so many questions, but at
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  Speaker 3: the end of the day, is that it's the consumer
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  Speaker 3: that's paying the cost for this. It does need to
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  Speaker 3: be addressed.
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  Speaker 2: But okay, to get back to my point, though, master
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  Speaker 2: card does have a bloody brass neck, don't they.
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  Speaker 3: We'll taking a benefit.
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  Speaker 1: It's secon.
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  Speaker 2: They're charging them. I mean, how can they think about this, Jessica,
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  Speaker 2: How can they actually say that these charges, these surcharges
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  Speaker 2: need to be banned, Like the little retailer who's selling
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  Speaker 2: you the tiny little pot part you're buying has to
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  Speaker 2: stop the surcharge because they want to fill their pockets
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  Speaker 2: the old cretit card companies. Anyway, never mind, I'm not
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  Speaker 2: going to force you to take my side on this. However,
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  Speaker 2: it seems to me that what the Commerce Commission is
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  Speaker 2: proposing is actually a solution to this, right because not
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  Speaker 2: only are they going to regulate what these fat cats
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  Speaker 2: can charge, but they then do actually regulate also what
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  Speaker 2: the retailers can charge you.
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  Speaker 3: And I yeah, that's right. So at the moment, the
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  Speaker 3: section that's that's regulated is what the business is paying,
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  Speaker 3: but what you, as the contumer pay is what's it's
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  Speaker 3: There are only guidelines, and we think that they're being
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  Speaker 3: ignored because surcharges are supposed to be not excessive. They're
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  Speaker 3: supposed to be visible, and you're supposed to know in
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  Speaker 3: advance what you're going to pay, and a lot of
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  Speaker 3: the time what consumers are telling us, and we know
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  Speaker 3: we're all consumers ourselves that that's not the case. So
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  Speaker 3: we absolutely support the Commerce Commission bringing those charges down,
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  Speaker 3: which should mean that if there is an all outbound
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  Speaker 3: which we think should be on the table, then businesses
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  Speaker 3: fees are going to be lower. So if those costs
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  Speaker 3: are passed on in higher costs of service and goods,
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  Speaker 3: it should be less than one percent overall, and we
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  Speaker 3: think that's a much better position than what we're in now.
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  Speaker 3: You know, for example, the most egregious surcharges we've heard
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  Speaker 3: about in the last few months was twenty five percent. Who
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  Speaker 3: behavior's just gone to stop it with a nail still
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  Speaker 3: on somewhere twenty five percent. It's just absolutely shocking to.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Hey, thank you very much, Jessica. Always appreciate it.
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  Speaker 2: Jessica Walker, Consumers Acting Head of Research and Advocacy.
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