Consumer Blog

You may have seen signs in a store that say you have to spend at least a certain amount of money (say $10 or $15) to use your credit card. There's no law against that, but it does violate Visa and Mastercard rules. They forbid stores from doing that.

Visa and Mastercard also forbid stores from charging a higher price to customers who use credit cards instead of cash. So how can gas stations get away with charging more for credit than cash? It's a technicality: Visa and Mastercard both allow a discount for cash. (See the Mastercard link above.) In other words, you can lower your price for cash transactions, you just can't raise it for credit transactions. Clever, eh?

Another interesting tidbit: Despite the prevalence of identity theft, these credit card companies also forbid stores from requiring a customer to show photo I.D. (see page 29 of this link for Visa, section 5-7 of this link for Mastercard)

So for those of you who write "ask for ID" on the back of your card, this technically should not protect you. If a thief gets your card and uses it, that "ask for ID" won't do any good because the store can't insist on it. Also, as we've written before, Visa and Mastercard both say a card is not valid if the back is not signed.

If you're wondering about American Express, it basically says merchants need to treat it the same way as other cards. So if a store accepts Visa and Mastercard, they can't require minimum purchases or fees for using AMEX, because that would discourage customers from using that card.