They already force retailers to not give discounts for using cash. If they've figured out how to make that legal, why do you think BTC would be any different?
What we really need is for the justice department* to explicitly include the goal of making markets competitive in its short list of (un)official objectives.
* Or any branch of government. I mention the judicial because I think it is the branch least susceptible to bribery. Since competitive markets are bad for business, that makes it the most likely candidate to promote this kind of change.
> They already force retailers to not give discounts for using cash.
It's been illegal to prohibit stores from offering cash discounts since 2010; those contract terms are no longer enforceable. That was part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
> They already force retailers to not give discounts for using cash.
The contracts actually say that merchants cannot add a surcharge for paying with a credit card. It's still okay to give a 3% discount off the final sale price for paying cash, or a 10% discount, or whatever they feel like. As far as I know these contracts are intended to mirror the laws about cash: you can't ask for 3% more because somebody wants to pay with cash, since cash is legal tender.
Not true since January. Part of a class-action settlement with Visa and MasterCard allows merchants to add a surcharge of up to 4% for paying with credit cards. The Dodd-Frank bill in 2010 banned prohibitions on the other terminology for the same thing -- cash discount. Cash discounts, credit surcharges, and minimums to pay with credit as low as $10 are all currently legal, and old merchant account agreement terms that prohibited them are void or unenforceable.
I suspect that's more or a contractual thing than a legal thing. I know gas stations around South Florida are now advertising cash and credit prices (so my thought is---the gas companies have enough pull to get favorable terms from the credit card companies).
To date it has been contractual. However, as a result of an antitrust lawsuit, Visa and Mastercard changed the provisions that ban merchants from charging a credit card surcharge. But states are now trying to bad adding those surcharges: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100485094.
Of course. I'm implicitly claiming that this kind of contractual requirement should be illegal since it's blatantly anticompetitive (my opinion, not the court's, naturally).
What we really need is for the justice department* to explicitly include the goal of making markets competitive in its short list of (un)official objectives.
* Or any branch of government. I mention the judicial because I think it is the branch least susceptible to bribery. Since competitive markets are bad for business, that makes it the most likely candidate to promote this kind of change.