Oh I meant fees to the recipient, There's a law in the US that requires CC merchants to charge the same price as they would with cash payment (for most goods; some, like gas, have special exemptions), so when you pay X dollars by credit card the merchant receives less than X dollars.
Could you verify that it is indeed a law? I keep on hearing different reports about this: some say that it is a law, some say that it is not a law, just a clause in the contract that the merchant and the CC network agree to.
In the US, there was never such a law. It was a term of credit cards' merchant agreement that merchants couldn't charge extra for credit card use.
However, the recent Dodd-Frank Act limits that - merchants can give a discount for using cash and allows them to set a minimum amount for credit cards up to $10.
>The agreement, which provides for a temporary reduction in rates for merchants and allows them to impose surcharges on customer purchases, follows a seven-year legal battle with U.S. retailers that accused the two largest payment networks of conspiring with banks to fix swipe fees, or interchange.
Oh yes, you're right on that part. Denmark have a "Dankort" a national debit card, you can't charge a fee on that, but you could on other cards, but most stores don't.
That fee is usually somewhere between 1.5% and 3% so it is quite steep. Bank transfers though in Sweden are and most of Europe are either free or cheap.
