Council to charge for credit card payments (From Bucks Free Press)

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Wycombe District Council to introduce charges for credit card transactions

1:49pm Friday 26th February 2010 in News By Neil Phillips

Council to charge for credit card payments

A COUNCIL is to introduce extra charges to people paying by credit card in the future.

Wycombe District Council says this will take effect from March 4, when it will “reluctantly” join many other councils countrywide to add handling fees for credit card transactions.

Up to then the banks handling fee had been paid by the council.

Councillor Roger Wilson said: “Credit cards payments represent the minority of card transactions for the council, however the charges for processing them can be five times more than debit card charges.

“The fee will be no more than the banks charge the council. It would be wrong for us to, in effect, penalise those who pay by debit card with these hefty charges.”

In the tax year 2008-09 the council processed more than 55,000 transactions which cost more than £53,000, the majority of which it said was credit card handling fees.

Under the new changes the payer will be asked to confirm they accept the handling fee prior to the transaction being completed.

Transactions by debit card will remain free.

Comments(7)

wayneo says...
2:25pm Fri 26 Feb 10

hope they don't charge a credit card surchage for parking penalties, that would be illegal.