I really would have thought it would be the more rural places which charge card fee’s for small transactions but apparently not from the experience you’ve all had
Couple of pubs in Coventry which have a £5 minimum… Which wasn’t fun as I rarely, if ever, carry cash - On this instance I did have just about enough change! 
I’m really surprised to see so many people who never encounter this. I can think of 5 places off the top of my head.
In my experience this is still extremely common among pubs and small businesses.
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With regards to minimum spend, it’s easy not to notice when spending over the minimum. At the grocer’s shop I often spent over £5 and it wasn’t until I just wanted a loaf of bread that I found out about the £5 minimum.
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Tons of places in Birmingham still do this, including my local corner shop, which annoys me a great deal. They charge 50p for every card transaction, even if it’s over £5.
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Really irritates me this. I hate minimum spend amounts even more. Either shops/bars are getting a really bad deal on their card transactions or they are just gouging customers.
I can see why there may have been this in the past. The card transactions at the company I work for used to be charged at a fixed fee plus a percentage. It all seems to have changed to percentage based now. It might be that some places aren’t even aware that it has changed.
Interestingly I’ve just double checked our fees…
The only cards that are a fixed fee are Mastercard Debit (which Monzo will be) and Maestro - both of which are 27p.
All other cards are charged at a percentage.
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Strange that they charge so much more for “Smartphone” (I assume this is where the merchant runs an app on their phone, connected to the Barclays-supplied chip+PIN machine, as with iZettle). Surely it’s all the same from a risk profile perspective?
Goodness they are expensive!
It still amazes me that min card charges exist. I’m from New Zealand and when I was little we used to use our debit cards to buy sweets for $1 (50p) and 20 odd years later in the UK min charges still exist!!
Kids with debit cards? 20 years ago? The advanced life form that is Kiwi 
When I was young a 1/4 lb of aniseed balls was only 8p 
@BobT Yeah, when I was young you could get a bag of chips from across the market for 3d.
You young 'uns with your fancy decimal money!
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Pretty much all the little independent off-licenses/shops here do it, under 5 pounds they add like 50p extra. Fortunately the one I go to every day knows me and lets me pay every month so by then the amount is far above the card threshold and I don’t have to pay extra.
It’s still quite frustrating that accepting cards (which is an automated process) is so expensive for merchants.
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Pub in Baker Street, London last night charged 30p for chip and pin over £10, but contactless was free any amount. Drinks came to £9.80 so I asked barmaid to charge me £10, before she pointed out I hadn’t read the sign correctly.
The Robin Hood pub in Edwinstowe has a minimum spend of £5 for card transactions and the fish and chip shop in Clipstone charges 50p for cards.
I much prefer paying by card if possible. It helps me keeps track of my spending (particularly with Monzo) and I don’t need to carry a bunch of change around. It is great now with contactless you can quickly pay for items less than £1 using your card.
However many companies seem to discourage card payments:
- A local pub charges a 20p flat fee for card payments
- A local shop charges 50p for card payments
- A local shop charges 30p for contactless payments under £3
- Ryanair and co charge 2-3% for card charges for flights.
- Many shops and cafes refuse to accept card for purchases less than £5-10
- Some companies still seem to refuse to accept cards and only accept cash
Does any one know if these charges are reasonable given the costs of card transactions to the business. Some of the examples above can be 10-20% for small purchases. Do Mastercard/ Visa really charge that much?
Does anyone know if card processing charges are less for contactless payments? Should businesses encourage more contactless.
Is there anything Monzo can do to make it cost effective for small businesses to allow card/ contactless payments however small the transaction is.
Would be interesting to get the communities thoughts on this.
My local shop say their card fees average out at 40p but it depends on value of transaction and if card MasterCard/Visa/Discover/JCB/UnionPay/Diners/AmEx etc
Pretty sure surcharging for card transactions will be banned early next year. From a retailer viewpoint, not much that Monzo can do to reduce card handling costs - these are set by people like Barclays or Worldpay (the merchant acquirers) via the Merchant Service Charge with the schemes (Visa / Mastercard) setting the interchange costs. Monzo could try and build their own 3-party scheme like Amex, directly signing up merchants, but I don’t see that happening any time soon! 
and the reason for your assumption?