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thranx on 10 July 2013
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theprof00 said:

1 Yeah, so nothing has changed. You do know that users still had to pay with their cc to buy points through LIVE
2 Yeah, and there won't be a difference here, either. The cards will say 20$, the retailers will pay 18$, the distributors 17$.
3 Right, so nothing has changed.
4 *shakes head* You do know that the whole reasoning behind it was that MS would rather have you pay 20$ one time, than 5$ four times.
It saves them roughly 50 cents or so...and yet, they'll still be selling the dollar value cards, and will likely have you purchase in quantities on LIVE.

They still pay the same percentage, it's just now they'll be skipping the smaller charge, which is usually about 10-15 cents for a big retailer.
So even if you spent that 20$ buying 20 1$ items, the most they'll lose out on is about 5%, meanwhile, your cost went up 35%.
And trust me, there are still ways to push sales around, like not expensing until the end of the month, and other tactics like simply holding your cc info, so they can collect all at one time.

It's not rocket science.


Usually for credit card transactions there is a per swipe fee(or a fee everytime you have to verify a credit card and make a purchase with it), and an overall fee on the amount. By reducing the per swipes (the number of times a CC had to be processed) they would save money. With MS points you could buy multiple games with one CC swipe buy buying points in bulk. Now every single purchase will be a different swipe. So there will be an additional fees for every purchase. They add up. That is why some bars and restaurants make you do a tab with a Credit card instead of using it a bunch of times.

 

Here is some info on it http://www.retailmeansjobs.com/swipefees

its a massive drains on business to have 3-7 % of your revenue taken right from you