Credit Card minimum PURCHASE amounts

[cultcross]

Got it...Churchill was right. The US and UK really ARE divided by a common language!

Chip and PIN is the standard payment method using cards these days in the UK - it replaced signatures about 4-5 years ago, and it's been pretty successful. It works around 'smart cards' which hold account info on a chip - the checkout will have a machine where you insert your card and enter your PIN on a keypad. The point of the whole exercise is twofold: a signature is a subjective thing, and how many checkout workers actually ever tell anyone their signatures don't match? A PIN is right or wrong. Secondly, its a pain to 'change' your signature - you can change your PIN in about 30 seconds at any ATM.

Well, when you charge a bank account-linked card in debit mode, you need to use a PIN. That doesn't apply when you hit the credit button, though.

Ah, I see. They both work the same way here. A card is a card is a card, it doesn't really matter in terms of using it what type of card it is.

 

[knine]

About 3 years ago the university I was attending stopped accepting credit cards (online and in person) as payment for anything that would go with tuition. I guess they were getting hit hard with fees. While I was under a stipend for tuition, I still had to pay for student health insurance through this "department" or whatever you want to call it. I would always save during the previous semester for the bill, then charge it online, then just pay it off with a simple transfer with my credit union online. This change in policy forced me to have to take an hour each semester to go give them cash or a check at the window in the administration building. It was annoying, but I can see why they starting doing it with how much they were losing in fees.

Which is odd, since banks have been quietly pressuring people away from paper checks for some time now. They don't like messing with them and they're more expensive to process than credit transactions.

I imagine that the university would not pay anything to cash a check, just like I don't when I do.

I have almost stopped using checks altogether anyway since I found out that they can now just "cash the check" electronically without ever giving the check to my credit union. My understanding is if they have my account number, they can say to my credit union "knine gave me a check for 5..... hundred dollars." I don't let any of the people I have to pay bills to now (Comcast, power company, etc) anywhere near my checking account and use a bill pay service via my credit union which doesn't give them my account info.