Starbucks is smart, customers are dumb.
Dodd/Frank tried to force vendors like Starbucks to absorb the cost of processing credit card transactions. As with most government regulations, the law of unintended consequences kicked in. Unless the bought off members of Congress knew this would happen. Humm.
The problem is Square charges the customer 2.5 percent of the transaction costs as a processing fee. Buy $10 of coffee you get hit with a 25 cent processing fee. Buy $40 of coffee for the office gang, you get charged $1 by Square.
Which saves Starbucks a ton of money on transaction fees and more than triples the cost of a credit transaction to the customer compared to if the feds continued to let vendors like Starbucks pass the cost of a conventional transaction onto the customer as part of the cost of doing business.
Thanks big government.
The little guy gets screwed again while big corporations increase profits.
