{"id":85,"date":"2010-03-07T18:12:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T16:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2010-03-07T18:12:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T16:12:46","slug":"mastercard-discriminates-european-cardholders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2010\/03\/07\/mastercard-discriminates-european-cardholders\/","title":{"rendered":"MasterCard discriminates European cardholders"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago, I booked a journey to Kuala Lumpur and Bali for my wife and me. When it came to paying the travel agent advised me that there would be a surcharge of 0.3% imposed by the tour operator<\/em> when you pay with credit card — independent of which brand your credit card is.<\/p>\n

I was pretty outraged because of the surcharge, because until then I was pretty sure that this kind of charges were expressly forbidden by card acquirers (an “acquirer” is the party which acquires the transacations of the merchant).<\/p>\n

Therefore I visited MasterCard’s website in order to investigate their acceptance procedures. I found something very interesting in the MasterCard rules dated 2009-11-06.<\/p>\n

In article 5.9.2. it says about “Charges to cardholders:”<\/p>\n

A Merchant must not directly or indirectly require any Cardholder to pay a surcharge or any part of any Merchant discount or any contemporaneous finance charge in connection with a Transaction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Duh!<\/p>\n

When I continued to read I found a section “10 Europe Region Rules” where it said the following in “10A.3 Charges to Cardholders:”<\/p>\n

Rule 5.9.2 does not apply in the European Economic Area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, why is this? Why does MasterCard reserve the right to discriminate their European cardholders compared to their US cardholders? “What have we done to deserve this?”<\/p>\n

To Meier’s Weltreisen, the tour operator: Instead of adding surcharges to customers who pay using a credit card (and that will be the absolute majority of all customers), you should recalculate your prices and refrain from playing such dirty tricks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago, I booked a journey to Kuala Lumpur and Bali for my wife and me. When it came to paying the travel agent advised me that there would be a surcharge of 0.3% imposed by the tour operator when you pay with credit card — independent of which brand your credit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[279],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vacation","tag-vacation"],"yoast_head":"\nMasterCard discriminates European cardholders - Ralf's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2010\/03\/07\/mastercard-discriminates-european-cardholders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MasterCard discriminates European cardholders - Ralf's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A couple of days ago, I booked a journey to Kuala Lumpur and Bali for my wife and me. 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