No Credit card surcharges...

Some of you may be wondering if Goose Creek will be among those adding a surcharge to credit card transacctions.   We will not be adding any new credit card surcharges,  but the thing that has been lost in the coverage of the new surcharge policy is that YOU ALREADY PAY THEM at every retailer who accepts credit cards. 

The fees that merchants pay are so widely variable between different cards that there is no way to keep them straight.  I usually just assume that it will cost me about 3% to make it easy,  but each card has a different "exchange rate" which is a percentage of total trannsaction that is retained by the issuer of the card.  (when i say "each card" I really mean it,   a Visa issued by your PNC bank will have a different rate than one issued by your Rebublic banks,  will be different than a Visa Gold, or Visa Platinum they are all different)   On top of that a merchant service comany will apply their own fee for being your link to the exchange.  This will usually look like a per transaction fee plus a percentage, plus batch, and monthly fees.

If we forget about batch and monthly fees,   an individual transaction for a particular card may be $0.10 plus 2.2%.     So if a customer buys a $500 bike in Kentucky the money trail looks like this.

Cost of bike $500
tax $30
Total Purchase Price $530
Credit card fees charged to merchant $11.76
amount received by merchan for sale $518.24
Tax given to government $30
Net amount retained by merchant $488.24

Because the merchant has to make sure he is paying for the product, paying his employees and making money based on teh $488.24 number it is safe to say that you are already paying a $11.76 surcharge on this sale already.    Until recently the merchant could not itemize this surcharge, you paid for it even if you were a cash customer.    

To combat this,  Goose Creek instituted a 2% discount for cash and Dwolla sales over $60 some time ago.   We will not be changing this policy.  As always we appreciate your business,  and remind you that when you pay with cash your money is going to the people providing the service rather than the credit card companies.