Only accepting card payments, no cash

MountainAshIRL

A few stores now saying they do not accept cash and you MUST pay by card.

Is this legal? Can a shop refuse to let you pay by cash? Doesnt seem like it would be

weldoninhio

MountainAshIRL wrote: »

A few stores now saying they do not accept cash and you MUST pay by card.

Is this legal? Can a shop refuse to let you pay by cash? Doesnt seem like it would be

Yes they can. No shop has to sell you anything they don't want to.

GBX

Yes its legal. If there is a debt, cash must be accepted. As there is no debt, they are not legally obliged to accept cash as payment.

coylemj

Done to the death (almost, 271 posts and counting) in this thread in Consumer Issues ...

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058083854

hullaballoo

coylemj wrote: »

Done to the death (almost, 271 posts and counting) in this thread in Consumer Issues ...

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058083854

Maybe the OP was posting here to get an informed view. Who knows.

OP, the thing about cash is its limited purpose. It is essentially a bearer bond and does not have the magical powers that some people seem to think it does. It is just about as acceptable a payment method as literally anything else you know about and then some.

The fact that casb is legal tender does not grant it special status for the purposes of forming a contract. A seller can insist on any form of payment at all. They can be paid in cash with a representative value of €25 euro if they so wish.

Or they can be paid in 75 ducks. Or 35 chairs. Or 1 million hairs. Doesn't matter which they choose to sell their goods for, if you want the goods, you have to stump up the payment demands.

Cash is just a shortcut around the difficulty of not readily having 75 ducks to hand when you want to buy a new kitchen table but in the same way as the seller doesn't have to accept 75 ducks, they don't have to accept the equivalent value in cash.

Potential-Monke

To be honest, I won't be shopping anywhere that doesn't accept card. I don't want to be carrying cash around. I know the WHO came out and clarified that cash will not definitely spread Covid (some UK paper said they did say it, they clarified) but they still didn't say it wouldn't. We've all seen the dirty bitches who pull cash out of their bras and men who keep it in their socks (saw one in a shop the other day doing this, I left the queue as I would have said something otherwise). We've all got manky, soft crumpled notes back in change at some stage. Covid has made me more aware of this, and I'm avoiding it going forward.

There's 3 chippers that I'm aware of in Limerick that don't take card (for 1, the machine has been "broken" going on about 6 months at least now). I won't go there now, which is a shame because 2 of them are really nice. But that's the way the world should be heading anyway. Now if only PTSB would get the finger out and support Google Pay...

Hairy Japanese BASTARDS!

hullaballoo wrote: »

Maybe the OP was posting here to get an informed view. Who knows.

OP, the thing about cash is its limited purpose. It is essentially a bearer bond and does not have the magical powers that some people seem to think it does. It is just about as acceptable a payment method as literally anything else you know about and then some.

The fact that casb is legal tender does not grant it special status for the purposes of forming a contract. A seller can insist on any form of payment at all. They can be paid in cash with a representative value of €25 euro if they so wish.

Or they can be paid in 75 ducks. Or 35 chairs. Or 1 million hairs. Doesn't matter which they choose to sell their goods for, if you want the goods, you have to stump up the payment demands.

Cash is just a shortcut around the difficulty of not readily having 75 ducks to hand when you want to buy a new kitchen table but in the same way as the seller doesn't have to accept 75 ducks, they don't have to accept the equivalent value in cash.

That's interesting.
If a shop decided to accept barter as a form of payment, ie, my local Penneys accepted my watch in exchange for a shirt and jumper, how would that work taxation-wise?

PCX

Hairy Japanese BASTARDS! wrote: »

That's interesting.
If a shop decided to accept barter as a form of payment, ie, my local Penneys accepted my watch in exchange for a shirt and jumper, how would that work taxation-wise?

Tax would still have to be paid. It would work out difficult to operate for the shop as they would have to record a realistic monetary value for all goods they exchange and apply taxes as if cash was exchanged. It would be time consuming and expensive for a shop with many transactions to operate.

Revenue could audit them at any time and if they decide an artificially low value was placed on goods they could also hit them with a big tax bill with interest and penalties added. This would be a big risk for a business trying to operate legitimately.

hullaballoo

Yes, for that reason and many others, it would be better if everything was bought and paid for with ducks.

donegal_man

hullaballoo wrote: »

Yes, for that reason and many others, it would be better if everything was bought and paid for with ducks.

That's a fowl idea, you're quacking up.

Fann Linn

hullaballoo wrote: »

Yes, for that reason and many others, it would be better if everything was bought and paid for with ducks.

and lemons for cars.

MountainAshIRL

hullaballoo wrote: »

Maybe the OP was posting here to get an informed view. Who knows..

Thanks for the reply and providing info without being condescending.

I only asked the question because I was picking up medicine and I didn't have enough money on my card to pay for it but I had enough cash. I wasnt allowed pay with cash and had to leave without my medicine which I just thought was crazy

Darc19

It's ridiculous that a store won't accept cash. Same with stores that have minimum spend for cards.

The simple solution is to take your custom elsewhere.

But in terms of legality, yes it is up to the store to make their own commercial decisions

They can insist you do jumping jacks if they want. They also are not legally obligated to give you change, though would be closed fairly quickly if that happened.

weldoninhio

Darc19 wrote: »

It's ridiculous that a store won't accept cash. Same with stores that have minimum spend for cards.

The simple solution is to take your custom elsewhere.

But in terms of legality, yes it is up to the store to make their own commercial decisions

They can insist you do jumping jacks if they want. They also are not legally obligated to give you change, though would be closed fairly quickly if that happened.

Shops with minimum spend for cards can be reported. The terms and conditions of getting a merchant machine state that there is no minimum spend.

Darc19

weldoninhio wrote: »

Shops with minimum spend for cards can be reported. The terms and conditions of getting a merchant machine state that there is no minimum spend.

You think a company will turn away a customer for a minor breach of terms and conditions?

Not a chance in hell of it happening.

Eduard Khil

Are the shops in question legally obligated to accept card payments and I mean legally binded?

Darc19

Eduard Khil wrote: »

Are the shops in question legally obligated to accept card payments and I mean legally binded?

Not in the EU.

1.5.5.1 Prohibition of Minimum or Maximum Transaction Amount
A Merchant must not establish a minimum or maximum Transaction amount as a condition for
honoring a Card.
This does not apply to a European Economic Area Transaction.

Peregrinus

Darc19 wrote: »

Not in the EU.

1.5.5.1 Prohibition of Minimum or Maximum Transaction Amount
A Merchant must not establish a minimum or maximum Transaction amount as a condition for
honoring a Card.
This does not apply to a European Economic Area Transaction.

What are you quoting from here?

If that's a legal provision - i.e. a regulation made by the State - they, yeah, it may be enforceable by the customer against the merchant.

But if that's a term of the contract between the merchant and the card issuer, the customer can't enforce it - he's not a party to the contract and has no rights under it. The card issuer can enforce it but may choose not to.

SlowMotion321

Had this problem with power city, spoke to the manager about it and he was very unhappy about not taking cash, this particular store took more cash payments than any of the others and it was seriously hurting his bottom line,

Darc19

Peregrinus wrote: »

What are you quoting from here?

If that's a legal provision - i.e. a regulation made by the State - they, yeah, it may be enforceable by the customer against the merchant.

But if that's a term of the contract between the merchant and the card issuer, the customer can't enforce it - he's not a party to the contract and has no rights under it. The card issuer can enforce it but may choose not to.

It's from the Worldwide terms and conditions of Visa.


So basically, with the line "excluding EEA" any store within the EU can set minimum spend limit

Peregrinus

Darc19 wrote: »

It's from the Worldwide terms and conditions of Visa.

So basically, with the line "excluding EEA" any store within the EU can set minimum spend limit

Plus, either inside or outside the EEA, this does not confer any rights on the customer. If, in breach of the T&Cs, a merchant has imposed a minimum spend, the customer cannot enforce the T&Cs.

weldoninhio

Darc19 wrote: »

You think a company will turn away a customer for a minor breach of terms and conditions?

Not a chance in hell of it happening.

Card companies get paid per transaction. If a shop is stopping the card company from making money there are penalties.

Peregrinus

weldoninhio wrote: »

Card companies get paid per transaction. If a shop is stopping the card company from making money there are penalties.

Yes, but the card company may choose not to enforce them rather than risk alienating merchants who do a lot of low-value transactions, or simply to maintaing goodwill with merchants.

The point is, the consumer has no control here. You don't get to decide whether the card company will stop merchants imposing a minimum spend. And if a merchant is imposing a minimum spend, the fact that the card company could stop it give you as the customer no rights at all.

Darc19

weldoninhio wrote: »

Card companies get paid per transaction. If a shop is stopping the card company from making money there are penalties.

As above, imposing such conditions are not permitted by the EU.

Peregrinus

Darc19 wrote: »

As above, imposing such conditions are not permitted by the EU.

Nobody has so far offered a cite showing that the EU has any rules about this. While Visa's own rules do make special exceptions for "European Economic Area Transactions", I've seen nothing to suggest that this is anything other than the freely-made choice of Visa itself.

Darc19

Peregrinus wrote: »

Nobody has so far offered a cite showing that the EU has any rules about this. While Visa's own rules do make special exceptions for "European Economic Area Transactions", I've seen nothing to suggest that this is anything other than the freely-made choice of Visa itself.

If there was no eu regulation, visa would not put in such an exclusion just for the EU.

In any case, visas own terms and conditions state clearly that imposing a minimum spend is not against the terms and conditions of their agreement.

Which is the argument people were making and saying that it should be reported.

Funny thing is, it is now cheaper to accept debit cards than the cost of lodging cash in a bank

Peregrinus

Darc19 wrote: »

If there was no eu regulation, visa would not put in such an exclusion just for the EU.

The might well. Think about it for a minute.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is, what do the Visa rules mean by "European Economic Area Transaction"? There will be a definitions section in the Visa rules which defines what they mean by this term. You might assume that it means "any transaction in the EEA". But you might be wrong.

Here's a wild thought. I'm pretty sure that EU law does require that a card issued by any bank, etc, in any EEA state must be accepted by merchants in any other EEA member state.

But, it may cost the merchant more to process a payment on a card belonging to a "foreign" clearing system. Or he may have to wait longer for settlement. Or both.

If there is also a Visa-imposed rule forbidding merchants from imposing a minimum spend, Under EU law they must accept the card issue by e.g. a Romanian bank. Under Visa rules they must not reject it for small transactions. But it is unecomic for them, or actually costs them money, to accept the exotic card for the small transaction.

In response to this concern, Visa might then modify its rules so that merchants can impose a minimum spend for "European Economic Area Transactions" - meaning, not "any transaction that happens in the EEA" but "any transaction that happens in one EEA member state but is charged to a card issued in another EEA member state".

I don't know if that's the explanation for the Visa rule, but it certainly could be. It makes more sense than the idea that the EU has specifically banned a consumer-friendly measure throughout the EEA; that' not the kind of thing the EU normally does.

And if that is the explanation (a) it does not depend on the EU having made any law at all about minimum spends, and (b) the exception does not apply to someone using an Irish-issued card to make a payment to an Irish-merchant.

The J Stands for Jay

Peregrinus wrote: »

The might well. Think about it for a minute.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is, what do the Visa rules mean by "European Economic Area Transaction"? There will be a definitions section in the Visa rules which defines what they mean by this term. You might assume that it means "any transaction in the EEA". But you might be wrong.

Here's a wild thought. I'm pretty sure that EU law does require that a card issued by any bank, etc, in any EEA state must be accepted by merchants in any other EEA member state.

But, it may cost the merchant more to process a payment on a card belonging to a "foreign" clearing system. Or he may have to wait longer for settlement. Or both.

If there is also a Visa-imposed rule forbidding merchants from imposing a minimum spend, Under EU law they must accept the card issue by e.g. a Romanian bank. Under Visa rules they must not reject it for small transactions. But it is unecomic for them, or actually costs them money, to accept the exotic card for the small transaction.

In response to this concern, Visa might then modify its rules so that merchants can impose a minimum spend for "European Economic Area Transactions" - meaning, not "any transaction that happens in the EEA" but "any transaction that happens in one EEA member state but is charged to a card issued in another EEA member state".

I don't know if that's the explanation for the Visa rule, but it certainly could be. It makes more sense than the idea that the EU has specifically banned a consumer-friendly measure throughout the EEA; that' not the kind of thing the EU normally does.

And if that is the explanation (a) it does not depend on the EU having made any law at all about minimum spends, and (b) the exception does not apply to someone using an Irish-issued card to make a payment to an Irish-merchant.

The visa regulation likely does not apply in the EEA as it's likely superceded by an EEA regulation.

Peregrinus

McGaggs wrote: »

The visa regulation likely does not apply in the EEA as it's likely superceded by an EEA regulation.

That's similar to what DARC19 thinks. But neither he nor anyone else has been able to point to the supposed regulation. I am sceptical that it exists or that it is the reason for the Visa rules exception.