Jessica Walker: Consumer NZ Acting Head of Research and Advocacy on the growing calls to ban card payment surcharges

There's renewed calls for an outright ban on card payment surcharges. 

Consumer NZ says the Commerce Commission's considering lowering interchange fees, but there's no guarantee it'll reduce what consumers pay.

It says a proper ban would be more consistent and fairer for buyers and merchants.

Research Acting Head Jessica Walker says there's been adjustments to interchange fees in the past - and there's doubt this latest change will be different.

"What we're calling for is for the Commerce Commission to make this a priority - and at least consider putting surcharge bans on the table."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Frame bridge after four. Consumer in Z nineteen ninety two
is numbed text. By the way, Consumer in Z wants
the Commerce Commission to stop messing around and just ban
card payment surcharges. They must annoy you when you go shopping.
Card payment surch charges are those annoying extra payments that
you have to make at the counter when you're paying
for something with your phone or with a contactless card. Now,

(00:23):
the Commerce Commission is considering making changes in this space,
but they haven't said anything yet about that, right band.
Jessica Walker is with Consumer and Z edges with me
this afternoon. Hi Jessica, Hi there. You mentioned that you
guys have got hundreds of complaints. What are people saying?
What's wrong?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
So most of the complaints we're getting are about just
the percentage of the surcharge. Our advice is anything above
two percent is excessive. And some of the complaints we're
getting are kind of in the twenty percent mark. So
there are some absolute homdingers out there.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Twenty percent. How many people have been charged twenty percent?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
So these tend to be you know, when you go
to park your car and you have to pay at
the meter, and you've got no choice but to pay
by card, and it's a flat fee that can be
up to twenty percent. We also get a lot of
complaints ab our airline charges, so they tend to be
flat fees. Also, taxis have got a bit of a
reputation here as well, so some of these, they're definitely
groups of them where you can be really stung with

(01:18):
these excessively high sur charges.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
At the moment, the rules, well, they're just guidelines, aren't they,
So you can pretty much do whatever you want. It's
the wild wizt.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So the guidelines say that they should not be excessive,
that they should be transparent, and that there should be
a way to avoid them, but we are hearing that
that's not always the case, and so yeah, that's the problem.
But you're absolutely right, because there's guidelines, there's really nothing
to stop stop businesses retailers from behaving like this.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
So the Commerce Commission wants to lower the interchange fees,
but you want them just banned outright, isn't it going
to be on fear? I mean, if you're a dairy
owner and you're getting charged a fee from a visa
or from a bank or whatever you want to pass,
then on right.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
So the interchange fees and the surcharges are quite separate.
So the interchange fees is what's being consulted on right now.
So that's the payments that their retailers are incurring, So
this is their payment providing fee, and then the surcharges
is what they're able to pass on. So yes, you're right.
So what the consulting on now is lowering these interchange fees,
which should in theory then mean lower fees to consumers.

(02:23):
But what we're saying is we don't think that is
necessarily going to happen. In the past, we haven't seen
that happen, so we're wondering why this would be any different.
So what we're calling for is for the Commerce Commission
to make this a priority and at least consider putting
surcharge bands on the table.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
So you want so how would this work? So the
banks or the cards charge the fee to the dairy
owners the retailers, and they charge us the surcharge and
you're wanting the surcharge band. But would that not then
also leave the etailer picking up the tib.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yees. So what's happening now, So the consultation on the
interchange fee, so they're looking to lower that and we
support that. And what that would mean is the fees
to retailers would.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Be lower.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Lower, but no, nothing exactly. So yes, it would mean
that they would be incurring more costs, and yeah, we
could see then that it is costing consumers more. But
in the minute, we're saying that, you know, people paying
on debit cards are subsidizing some credit card payments because
they're more expensive, and generally there's just one flat fee,
So we don't think it would make things worse. In fact,
we think it would make things better because it would

(03:35):
just be clearer.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Interesting, Jessica, thank if they're just got Walker, Who's with
the consumer? And z For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive.
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