If you’re annoyed at how much longer it takes you to check out at the grocery store now that you have a chip-and-pin credit card, you’re not alone — retailers hate the technology too.
It turns out that the new cards are leading to unexpected debit card fees, reports Bloomberg. That is the issue at the crux of the latest suit between retailing giant WalMart (WMT) and credit card company Visa.
Essentially, the fee comes because consumers don’t always know which debit card network to choose when they’re making a purchase, writes Bloomberg:
For example, when customers insert a chip-based debit card into a new terminal, they may be offered only Visa’s network as the choice. Or they may see two options: “Visa debit” or “U.S. Debit.” Since most consumers don’t know what “U.S. Debit” is — it’s actually is a link to smaller networks like NYCE — they usually pick Visa.
Instead of being prompted to enter their PINs, shoppers are asked for a signature, and the merchant is charged from 1 percent to 2 percent per transaction when a card is issued by a smaller bank. About a third of all debit cards come from financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, whose fees aren’t capped under an amendment to the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act.
One small retailer told Bloomberg that the fees added up to around $7,000 per year, no small amount for a small business.
