Can a merchant charge you more in the US if you want to use a credit card?
"This isn't so much a legal issue, the prohibition on giving discounts was written into the merchant agreements that most of the major credit card companies enforced on businesses that accepted their credit cards. That is, until the recent Financial Reform Bill (2010) passed Congress. It changes everything. (The logic on this is a little convoluted, so read carefully) Credit card companies can no longer prohibit merchants from requiring a minimum purchase amount to use a credit card. Meaning: That if merchants want to, they can now stop taking credit cards for a $4 latte. Credit card companies can no longer prohibit merchants from giving discounts for cash. Here is an article with a lot more detail: Financial Reform Bill Good News for Credit Card Holders Here is a link to the actual bill details and content: HR 4173 - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Here is the relevant part: This subsection is supposed to take affect ""at the end of the 12-month period beginning on the date of the enactment of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010."" In other words, July 21st, 2011." I'm not sure about the laws in specific states. However it's part of their merchant agreement that they can not charge a fee for a customer paying with credit card. It's also against merchant agreements to require a minimum purchase to use a credit card, although this is less commonly enforced. Apparently (http://fso.cpasitesolutions.com/premium/le/06_le_ic/fg/fg-merchants.html) merchants can offer a cash discount. Offering payment by credit card, though practically a requirement in todays retail environment, is a privilege for the merchant. It's a way of making buying convenient for the customer. As a result, penalizing the customer in any way is not just against their agreement, but rather disingenuous as well. edit: here's a bit more information about what they can and can't do. Amex prohibits discrimination, so if a merchant can't do something to a Visa/MC customer they can't do it to an Amex customer either. http://fso.cpasitesolutions.com/premium/le/06_le_ic/fg/fg-merchants.html
The minimum amount is set by the merchant services provider based on the kind of business, its location and the history. It mostly has nothing to do with you personally. However, the minimum amount differs based on the kind of credit cards being used. For example, foreign credit cards will require signatures on much lower amounts than domestic.  In my local Safeway (NoCal analog of Ralph's) the limit for domestic credit cards is set at $50. If your credit limit is $5000, you might think that its a 1% of your limit. But if your limit is $50000 or $500 - it will still be $50. You cannot deduce anything about a specific person's credit situation based on whether or not they are required to sign the receipt. It has no affect on the decision. Those extra treat points have to come from somewhere, and they come from American Express charging merchants a higher percentage than Visa or Mastercard. So it's less attractive for those merchants to accept it. Chip and Pin cards are popular in Europe, however in the US we don't have them.  Visa/MC and Amex can issue chip and pin cards but no merchants or machines are set up here to take them.  Only certain countries in Europe use them and since you could possibly have a US visitor or a non-chip and pin person using your machine or eating at your restaurant they usually allow you to sign or just omit the pin if the card doesn't have a chip. It is definitely less secure, but the entire credit card industry in the US is running right now without it, so I don't think the major credit card companies care too much (they just pass the fraud on to the merchants anyway). "in theory, yes. in practice, no. largely because merchants pay a fee to process credit card transactions which normally exceeds the cash back you can get. i tried this with square, since their vendor fee was 2.75%, and i got 5% back on restaurants.  however, even though i registered with square as a restaurant, transactions were categorized as ""other services"" or something, so i only got 1% back and lost 1.75% net. moreover, if you did find a card/processor combination that left you with a net gain, they would eventually catch on and charge you with some sort of fraud.  i wasn't worried about it with the square experiment because it was only 1$, but if you tried to do this with large sums, a human would catch you. and if it was enough money to matter, there would be a lawsuit. if you were really unlucky, you might get charged with some terrorism crap like ""structuring"" deposits." Is my understanding okay ? If so, it seems to me that this system is   rather error prone. By that I mean I could easily forget to make a   wire some day and be charged interests while I actually have more than   enough money on the check account to pay the debt. Which is where the credit card company can add fees so you pay more and they make more money. Don't forget that in the credit case, you are borrowing money rather than using your own. Another thing that bothers me is that the credit card apparently has a   rather low credit limit. If I wanted to buy something that costs $2500   but only have a credit limit of $1500, can I make a preemptive wire   from my check account to the VISA account to avoid facing the limit ?   If so, what is the point for the customer of having two accounts (and   two cards for that matter...) ? If you were the credit card company, do you believe people should be given large limits first? There are prepaid credit cards where you could put a dollar amount on and it would reject if the balance gets low enough. Iridium Prepaid MasterCard would be an example here that I received one last year as I was involved in the floods in my area and needed access to government assistance which was given this way. Part of the point of building up a credit history is that this is part of how one can get the credit limits increased on cards so that one can have a higher limit after demonstrating that they will pay it back and otherwise the system could be abused. There may be a risk that if you prepay onto a credit card and then want to take back the money that there may be fees involved in the transaction. Generally, with credit cards the company makes money on the fees involved for transactions which may come from merchants or yourself as a cash advance on a credit card will be charged interest right away while if you buy merchandise in a store there may not be the interest charged right away. The location that you are purchasing from is not really relevant.  If you use either a Visa or MasterCard to make a payment in a foreign currency of any kind then your payment will automatically use Visa/MasterCard's FX platform. Whilst fees can vary between issuers, the fee is generally fixed at 2.5%. There are occasionally credit card issuers who have special deals to remove these fees, but they tend to come and go and availability will depend on your country of residence. The only real way to avoid the fee is to get access to a debit or credit card denominated in the currency you wish to use for your purchase.  This is often achievable for USD or EUR, but much harder for smaller currencies.  You would have to try contacting a bank in that country to see if they would open an account for you or attempting to purchase a pre-paid credit card online. "Yes and No.  There's always a ""fee"".  The difference in credit vs debit usually determines how much that fee is and how it's paid.  Each vendor who accepts the major credit card is under contract to pay for equipment and meet certain standards.  The same is true for debt card transactions.  How much the ""fee"" is can vary based on the contract the vendor has with MasterCard/Visa/AMEX.  But in general most debt transactions go back to the bank who distributed the card." Probably not. I say probably because your credit card's terms of service may treat certain purchases (I'm thinking buying traveler's checks off-hand) as cash advances. See also this question. "This might not be the answer you are looking for, but the alternative to ""don't patronize these merchants"" is this: DO patronize these merchants, and pay cash.   Credit cards are convenient.  (I use a credit card often.)  However, there is no denying that they cost the merchants an incredible amount in fees, and that our entire economy is paying for these fees.  The price of everything is more than it needs to be because of these fees.  Yes, you get some money back with your rewards card, but the money you get back comes directly from the store you made the purchase with, and the reward is paid for by increasing the price of everything you buy.  In addition, those among us that do not have the credit score necessary to obtain a rewards card are paying the same higher price for goods as the rest of us, but don't get the cash back reward. Honestly, it seems quite fair to me that only the people charging purchases to a credit card should have to pay the extra fee that goes along with that payment processing.  If a store chooses to do that, I pay cash instead, and I am grateful for the discount." No. You will need to call your credit card issuer and ask for a credit limit increase.  If you plan to pay off your card then I see no problem in this. You could also ask the seller if they will put $1000 on your card, and $500 in cash.  (Ask for a cash discount too.) Found some anecdotes! http://ask.metafilter.com/143018/Can-I-prepay-my-credit-card-and-use-it-like-a-debit-card-to-help-me-spend-more-responsibly#2047093 http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Can-I-prepay-to-increase-limit/m-p/670376#M214222 Yes, they're referring to the credit card dispute (chargeback) process. In the case of dispute, credit card company will refund/freeze your charge so you don't have to pay until the dispute is resolved (or at all, if resolved in your favor). If the dispute is resolved in your favor, your credit card company will charge back the merchant's service provider which in turn will charge back (if it can) the merchant itself. So the one taking the most risk in this scenario is the merchant provider, this is why merchants that are high risk pay significantly higher fees or get dropped. The funny thing is that mom &amp; pop type establishments usually prefer cash due to the merchant charges they have to pay to the credit card companies. Some of these are percentage-based &amp; others are fixed like a per-transaction charge. In the long run, accepting 10k USD wouldn't be enough. They would lose more than that in people who don't have a card on them vs accepting both cash and cards. "I don't know, but I can guess. You'll notice the Elite card has higher rewards. A card might want to convince merchants that they represent high end buyers, and use that to negotiate higher merchant discounts. Issuing bank: ""Our 10 million card holders are sophisticated and have lots of discretionary income. If you don't agree to this rate, we'll terminate the contract and they will take their business elsewhere.""  Merchant: ""But it's twice the rate of everyone else! I'm sure these customers have other means of payment, and besides, how many of those card holders are actually using it?"" Issuing bank: ""Our cardholders signal their interest in the benefits of cardholding by paying us an annual fee. If they didn't want one, they'd stop paying right? They clearly know they have one and our records indicate they use them regularly. We're pretty sure if you don't wise up they'll shop at your biggest competitor, another client of ours. pause Frankly, they already do.""" ACH, Paypal, Amazon Pay are all other options that can be used.  ACH is cheapest for the merchant but it is a bit of a pain for the customer to setup (aka adds friction to our sales process, which is *very* bad).  Paypal and Amazon Pay both cost a bit more than regular credit cards for the merchant.  Google Wallet is free but not available unless you are a sole proprietor or an individual, which is is useless for businesses.  So yeah, other options are either difficult or more expensive. An advantage of using a major credit card is that they act as a buffer and source of recourse between you and the merchant. Cheated and the store won’t answer you letters? Call Visa (or more accuratly, call the number on the back of the card). (That is, #2 on this answer, which you can also reference for a whole list of benefits.)