Peeters welcomes price cuts for Bancontact payments
Atos Worldline, which processes payments made by bank cards, is lowering its costs to retailers, which should encourage them to accept cards for smaller purchases
Win-win for retailers, consumers
The changes affect purchases under €10 made with Bancontact or other cards and follow the elimination of the rechargeable Proton card. For purchases worth less than €5, the charge decreases from 5 cents to 2 cents, a fall of 60%.
For sales of €5 to €10, the price comes down from 7.5 cents to 5 cents. And to mark the introduction of the new tariffs on 1 June, Worldline is waiving charges on sales of up to €5 for four months. The move could convince retailers who don’t allow purchases under €5 or €10 with Bancontact to change their policy.
“I am delighted with this initiative,” Peeters said. “Atos Worldline processes 90 million transactions of up to €5 annually. Now the number of transactions with the card for daily purchases will increase even further.”
Atos will also increase its data capacity in Belgium, in the hope of avoiding emergency situations such as occurred in the run-up to Christmas in 2013, when the system went down for hours under pressure from the number of sales transactions.
Customers were unable to pay with their cards, nor could they obtain cash, while retailers lost an estimated €51 million in sales. “This will be a boost for electronic payments, and an important response to technical incidents,” Peeters said.
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