Minimum card purchase amount?

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Musiclover08

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Does anyone know if a retailer is allowed to post a minimum card transaction balance?
Say I buy a bottle of water for R10, are they allowed to say that they can only swipe from a certain amount due to fees? Or for any reason whatsoever?
 
If its for a Visa card, then no they aren't allowed to set a minimum transaction amount.
 
ToxicBunny said:
If its for a Visa card, then no they aren't allowed to set a minimum transaction amount.
Click to expand...

But the reality is if the shop owner doesn't want to sell that a bottle of water he ain't gonna.
 
Musiclover08 said:
Does anyone know if a retailer is allowed to post a minimum card transaction balance?
Say I buy a bottle of water for R10, are they allowed to say that they can only swipe from a certain amount due to fees? Or for any reason whatsoever?
Click to expand...

For Visa and Mastercard the merchant is allowed to set a minimum amount as long as it doesn't exceed $10
 
Musiclover08 said:
Does anyone know if a retailer is allowed to post a minimum card transaction balance?
Say I buy a bottle of water for R10, are they allowed to say that they can only swipe from a certain amount due to fees? Or for any reason whatsoever?
Click to expand...

In theory/law regarding cards specifically, I'm not sure of the rules, but in law and practice any shop owner has the right of admission/service and can choose whether or not he would like to sell/do business with you, just like any other business relationship.. so either way it's probably not worth fighting.
 
ToxicBunny said:
If its for a Visa card, then no they aren't allowed to set a minimum transaction amount.
Click to expand...

Would this apply to debit as well or just credit?


joelus said:
For Visa and Mastercard the merchant is allowed to set a minimum amount as long as it doesn't exceed $10
Click to expand...

So in effect R100 max. Interesting because I was at a shop and their policy was a minimum amount. Not sure if it was for debit or credit cards
 
Dean said:
In theory/law regarding cards specifically, I'm not sure of the rules, but in law and practice any shop owner has the right of admission/service and can choose whether or not he would like to sell/do business with you, just like any other business relationship.. so either way it's probably not worth fighting.
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This makes the most sense to me. Another guy was arguing with the cashier about it.
 
Extract from the VISA merchant manual

"Always honor valid Visa cards in your acceptance category, regardless of the
dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase
amounts in order to accept a Visa card transaction is a violation of the Visa rules."
 
Musiclover08 said:
Does anyone know if a retailer is allowed to post a minimum card transaction balance?
Say I buy a bottle of water for R10, are they allowed to say that they can only swipe from a certain amount due to fees? Or for any reason whatsoever?
Click to expand...

They do this at pubs often, no card swipes under R50, for example. Larger chain stores like Checkers, etc, have a set agreement with the bank, so you can swipe any amount you want to there.
 
They pay overheads to use the facility, so I can understand why they don't want to accept small amounts. But as far as compliance to VISA and Mastercard, they may not impose a minimum purchase amount and may not deny you from using the facility.

As per section 5.11.3 of the MasterCard merchant rules:
A merchant must not require, or indicate that it requires, a minimum or maximum Transaction amount to accept a valid and properly presented card.
Click to expand...

Note that this rule is exempt or amended in certain countries (e.g. in North America they may request a minimum of USD10), but AFAIK, no exemption for SA.

See: http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/pdf/BM-Entire_Manual_public.pdf

If reported to MasterCard, the merchant may lose their Merchant account.
 
Musiclover08 said:
Does anyone know if a retailer is allowed to post a minimum card transaction balance?
Say I buy a bottle of water for R10, are they allowed to say that they can only swipe from a certain amount due to fees? Or for any reason whatsoever?
Click to expand...

"transaction fee": if it is too low for a retailer to make the profit more than the transaction fee, then it is not worth to do that transaction. ;)
 
Allowed or not the local issuing bank has to enforce it. If you approach Visa or Mastercard directly they'll just tell you to take it up with the local issuing bank, and the local bank will just tell you it is up to the shop.
 
My Capitec debit card does not charge a fee for swipe purchases, but the merchant will have to pay a discount, so I suppose its up to him. It also may vary from cashier to cashier
 
Most places I've been to have a R10 min amount. I think that's fair though
 
My understanding is you can have a minimum sale amount of say R50 which is waived for cash sales. The hidden costs is what necessitates this with the terminal "phoning" in for authorisation this costs money and time.
 
Yeah, technically its not allowed..

In practice, its the norm and perfectly understandable really.
 
Slootvreter said:
They do this at pubs often, no card swipes under R50, for example. Larger chain stores like Checkers, etc, have a set agreement with the bank, so you can swipe any amount you want to there.
Click to expand...

The pub thing is to overcome the traditional floor limit loophole that allowed guys to purchase with bad / stolen cards as the transaction was reserved for batch processing and not real time.

About a year ago Standard Bank stopped the floor limit and set it R0.00 so all transactions had to be real time.

When I was in retail we always had to lookout for clients who asked what was the floor limit, was a dead giveaway that there was trouble and then we would always phone for authorisation.
 
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