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Comment by c0nducktr | Hacker News Reader

In the US today, it's been my experience that if a business accepts credit cards, Visa, MC, Amex and Discover are all accepted. Costco would be the exception that proves the rule. This has been the case since I started using credit cards, maybe 10 years ago.

Does anyone know when this changed? I don't think I've just been lucky this entire time.

Edit: When traveling overseas, I've always just used VISA though, but that's just because I have a card without foreign transaction fees with them.

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Amex is frequently not taken by small businesses that don’t use one of the newer POS systems like Square or Clover.

IME, it’s less about POS systems and more about what the merchants are willing to give up in fees.

Amex charges significantly more than the others, to the point that multiple businesses I frequent offer a sliding scale - par for cash/check, +2-5% for Visa/Mastercard/Discover, +5%+ for Amex.

This is just one more input to an optimization problem for me, but for merchants makes a significant difference: my mechanic says he saves thousands of dollars a month by turning Amex customers into Mastercard customers, and Mastercard customers into cash customers.

Well, I’ve noticed businesses switch to accepting Amex when they got one of the newer POS systems. I wonder if Square/Clover/etc. have negotiated different rates for their customers.

I think Square has a flat fee no matter what card. They probably just average out the fees between the cards.

I stopped noticing several years ago, it seems every place has all 4 on the "We proudly accept" window decal. But I do remember checking 10-15 years ago to make sure places took my Amex, because not all of them did.

I have seen a few places not take Discover, or Amex, or only take Visa/MC here in the US.

Costco was unique because they used to only take Amex credit cards and then Citi/Visa won that business.

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