Credit Card Fees

As of December 1, 2022 Tech Next Door will charge a 2.5% surcharge on Visa and MasterCard purchases. We do not accept any other form of credit card. We thought long and hard before implementing this policy. Here are our reasons for moving ahead with this new policy.

To offset expensive credit card fees
Since credit cards have been around, they charge a fee to the vendor to take a credit card payment. The rate for most small business is between 2 and 3 percent. We have been expected to bear this cost in past decades. What's worse is that the credit card companies would offer high reward cards (usually for a large annual fee) and when these cards were used the retailer was to pay a much higher rate, often in excess of 4%. The rules of the credit card companies has always been that retailers are NOT allowed to charge a fee for accepting credit cards. Things changed in 2022 when a class action law suit was won in Canada. See https://www.creditcardsettlements.ca/ for details.

To encourage other forms of payment
To be clear, we don't want to collect a surcharge. We would much rather you choose an alternate form of payment. We accept e-transfer, cheques and direct deposit. We have rebates to cover associated costs of these methods! *

To take a stand against heartless credit card company policies 
Let's face it, credit cards are very useful. They allow us to purchase items online, we can use them as a security on a rental item and we can buy an item that is above what we have available to spend (although we hope you don't do that!). However, credit card companies often have heartless finance policies, such as:

1. Extremely high interest rates (easy credit rip-offs!)
2. Over limit fees
3. A late payment resulting in interest hikes for a set number of months

These policies target the Canadians that are least able to afford them… our most vulnerable. We hope that further lawsuits and legislation will bring relief to some of these items. In the meantime we will discourage the use of credit cards by charging a surcharge. We encourage our fellow business owners to do the same... to promote alternate forms of payment and begin charging a surcharge on credit cards.

Our surcharge of 2.5% is slightly less that the 3% effective rate we get from our processor.

* e-transfer Rebate - Tech Next Door accepts e-transfer and has configured safe and secure 'auto-deposit'. Hence, the transfer is immediate and no password is required. It is a very easy way to pay! If your bank charges a fee for e-transfers, please let us know and we will credit your invoice for the amount (usually $1.50 per transfer).