Cash Discount Vs Credit Card Surcharges

Source: Google

The use of credit cards has become quite common these days. In fact, we ourselves must have swiped a credit card many times for purchasing any of our favorite products. They have become an easy mode of finance for buying consumer electronics and other items through e-commerce these days, all the top E-commerce websites like Flipkart, Amazon etc have an easy option of EMI for several products through credit cards. It is more common with the people working in the new age corporates and other reputable MNC's as they are providing the credit card facility complimentary to their employees. As we are getting a credit which means a kind of loan and a loan is incomplete without an interest rate charged by the bank, here the surcharge fee acts as the interest rate which is charged by the bank from the user on every transaction they make through credit cards. Simply explaining it is the extra amount which a user pays on every transaction he makes through a credit card. These charges can go up to 4 %, changing depending upon the different states and their laws.

On the other hand, merchants also follow the practice of cash discount. In this practice, the merchants add an extra service fee to all their items and if a consumer is paying in cash the merchants waive off the service charge and provide it as a discount to the customer. There are several guidelines which the merchants have to follow while using this practice; they have to make the customers aware of this policy through proper informative boards in shops. Also, the receipt that the customer gets must have the service charge mentioned and also be shown in the discount given section. It can also be called a kind invoice discounting for the customers.

Source: Google

Both the practices have their own advantages and disadvantages. CASH DISCOUNT or BILL DISCOUNTING might allure the customers because of the fact that they have to pay less for a product as a benefit of early payment to the merchant. On the other hand some people might get attracted towards the credit card purchase because they might be paying extra but not paying at that point of time, they are buying the product on a kind of short-term loan, they can buy their desired products even when they don't have the cash by paying for it in the near future. It all depends on individuals and prevailing situation some might have the availability of cash and would prefer paying less and some might not have that much cash and would love to pay the extra amount on a credit purchase.