Chipped cards, Credit/Debit

I charge everything and pay it off every month. Haven't been bit yet. Why not? Because it's up to me. Doesn't cost me anything since the transaction costs are rolled into the prices from the vendor, the points are a nice little treat for spending money I would have spent anyhow. I'm not going to get rich off them, but I'm also coming out ahead when compared to a card that doesn't have points.

BTW, if you're wondering why some vendors don't take AMEX, it's because it's a lot more expensive for them than other cards. Haven't seen any sign from our end of the different rates for different flavors of Visa, though. I do know that we get a better rate if we collect all the info such as the CID instead of just the card number and date.

And yes, Tuna, that shiny coppery square on one half of your new card is the chip. Next time you go to Walmart (and an increasing number of other vendors), expect to be asked to insert that into a reader instead of swiping the card.

I like credit. Don't even mind customers using the expensive cards. I made some calls this morning and an hour later my bank account was topped up again. Never left my desk.

I used to be one of the Amex haters. It costs me roughly 2% on Visa and MasterCard and 3.9% on Amex...kinda. Every month, I have an added fee on my Visa/MC statement for "noncompliant" cards. After quite some time, someone finally admitted to me that fee was to cover corporate and points collecting cards. It brings the actual processing cost up to approximately...3.9%. I never see that fee with Amex.

Debit I love. 12 cents per transaction, whether its $1 or $3,000.