There has been considerable media coverage on the Aldi court case against ePAL over the last 24 hours. Here is just some: Inside retailing; The Australian; Smartoffice; ABC, AM on ABC radio and ABC news last night.
Also good to see the story in The Australian with news that the Commonwealth Bank will not be passing on fee increases at the moment.
Kudos to Aldi for their court action and in getting this topic onto the news desk.
Today, the world changed for Eftpos fees. ePAL’s new pricing regime is in place and this means retailers like us could pay more. Already some banks have made moves. While we don’t know where it ends up, banks being banks I think that we have a fair idea what will happen.
I and some other newsagents are continuing to lobby politicians on this. They have the ability to control ePAL through the Reserve Bank. Unfortunately, all politicians appear to be prepared to do at the moment is to regurgitate ePAL spin on the Eftpos fee changes. So much for their support for small business.
This is issue has been an excellent opportunity for politicians to put their words of support for small business into action. We have been profoundly let down.
Hopefully more banks will take the same position as the CBA. We’re with CBA at the moment and will stay with them while the fees are reasonable.
The banks don’t actually incur any additional costs. For every 5 cents they need to pay another bank, they receive 5 cents that they never received before. It was -5 cents in and -5 cents out under the old rules and now it is 5 cents in and 5 cents out (N:B no change once added together) The discussion shouldn’t be on new EFTPOS charges but on the fact that the banks DON’T have any additional costs but are charging as if they do!!