On: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Amex is frequently not taken by small businesses that don’t use one of the newer POS systems like Square or Clover.

[owenmarshall → fiddlerwoaroof]

IME, it’s less about POS systems and more about what the merchants are willing to give up in fees.

Amex charges significantly more than the others, to the point that multiple businesses I frequent offer a sliding scale - par for cash/check, +2-5% for Visa/Mastercard/Discover, +5%+ for Amex.

This is just one more input to an optimization problem for me, but for merchants makes a significant difference: my mechanic says he saves thousands of dollars a month by turning Amex customers into Mastercard customers, and Mastercard customers into cash customers.

[fiddlerwoaroof → owenmarshall]

Well, I’ve noticed businesses switch to accepting Amex when they got one of the newer POS systems. I wonder if Square/Clover/etc. have negotiated different rates for their customers.

[kalleboo → fiddlerwoaroof]

I think Square has a flat fee no matter what card. They probably just average out the fees between the cards.