Comments on: Which payments should be surcharged and, more importantly, why http://tomorrowstransactions.com/2012/07/which-payments-should-be-surcharged-and-more-importantly-why/ Thought leadership from Consult Hyperion Thu, 27 Feb 2014 22:21:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1 By: Poor Punterhttp://tomorrowstransactions.com/2012/07/which-payments-should-be-surcharged-and-more-importantly-why/#comment-348 Thu, 12 Jul 2012 11:00:41 +0000 http://ec2-54-201-142-57.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/2012/07/which-payments-should-be-surcharged-and-more-importantly-why/#comment-348 “Debit cards, and pre-paid cards, deliver the minimum social costs.”

Most pre-paid cards impose significant costs on the cardholder. Or are cardholders not part of society or their costs not included in this equation?

]]> By: Consult Hyperionhttp://tomorrowstransactions.com/2012/07/which-payments-should-be-surcharged-and-more-importantly-why/#comment-349 Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:17:53 +0000 http://ec2-54-201-142-57.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/2012/07/which-payments-should-be-surcharged-and-more-importantly-why/#comment-349 I’ve written before that the potential for pre-paid instruments is great, partly because the costs of pre-paid cards that run on the existing rails is too high.

But this is a separate point. Again the goal of national policy should not be to minimise the costs to, for example, consumers if that loads unacceptable costs on to others. I think multiple zero-interchange three-party pre-paid schemes are a likely outcome.

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