"By screwing us on the kinds of transactions we make the most of you're hurting our profit margin and giving us less wiggle room to undercut the competition by offering lower price. Therefore screw you, we're not taking your cards. Oh and BTW we hold the moral high ground because we serve the poor"
-IIRC the vast majority of prepaid bank cards use the Visa network.
-The vast majority of bank cards are issued by employers who don't want to deal with the costs associated with paper checks (not a bad thing by itself).
-The vast majority of prepaid bank cards are issued to people without bank accounts (i.e. poor people) and have shit terms (which is a different issue).
-Poor people typically buy lower priced, lower margin goods and make transactions for smaller amounts.
-Walmart moves a ton of lower priced merchandise relative to the amount of higher priced merchandise they move.
-Even at a fixed profit margin per dollar, the more small transactions are made the lower the profit margin (because 100 people buying 1 $1 item takes more cashier time than 1 person buying 100 $1 items).
-IIRC payment networks usually have a fixed minimum cost of a few cents or have cost brackets based on transaction size.
Therefore Walmart's statement makes sense (or maybe their PR people are really good at their jobs and I analyzed that exactly how they wanted me to).
"By screwing us on the kinds of transactions we make the most of you're hurting our profit margin and giving us less wiggle room to undercut the competition by offering lower price. Therefore screw you, we're not taking your cards. Oh and BTW we hold the moral high ground because we serve the poor"
-IIRC the vast majority of prepaid bank cards use the Visa network.
-The vast majority of bank cards are issued by employers who don't want to deal with the costs associated with paper checks (not a bad thing by itself).
-The vast majority of prepaid bank cards are issued to people without bank accounts (i.e. poor people) and have shit terms (which is a different issue).
-Poor people typically buy lower priced, lower margin goods and make transactions for smaller amounts.
-Walmart moves a ton of lower priced merchandise relative to the amount of higher priced merchandise they move.
-Even at a fixed profit margin per dollar, the more small transactions are made the lower the profit margin (because 100 people buying 1 $1 item takes more cashier time than 1 person buying 100 $1 items).
-IIRC payment networks usually have a fixed minimum cost of a few cents or have cost brackets based on transaction size.
Therefore Walmart's statement makes sense (or maybe their PR people are really good at their jobs and I analyzed that exactly how they wanted me to).