aleksl - 11:40 pm on Jan 18, 2012 (gmt 0)

jwolthuis: the 2% fee moves the burden of accounts receivable to the banks

The what? :)
No, the burden is still with the merchant. Which way you are looking at it, merchants' or customers'? From standpoint of a customer, you can chargeback or say "this is not my order", merchant will pay for it, not the bank. From standpoint of a merchant, a fraudulent order is money AND the product lost, and in case of a refund, transaction fees both ways.

sun818: Its not something you can really avoid since the infrastructure is in place.

Well I don't care about the infrastructure. Banks get way to much in this. The most powerful players in the world are banks, yet the economies of the world right now are collapsing under a burden of DEBT. It is clear that the banking industry commercial PER-TRANSACTION TAX is something we can look at and eventually oppose. Even if it is 2% , compounded across all major economies it IS A LOT OF MONEY LOST for banker's priviledge of transferring bytes between 2 computers.


If you think 2% is pretty good, consider the fact that a major B&M store's profit margin can be only 2%.