Vim Vithaldas, group commercial and finance director, urged delegates at the consortium’s 2017 overseas conference in Monaco to put their support behind the action, warning that the repercussions of the impending Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) “cannot be right for our members or the end consumer”.
As part of PSD2 – which comes into force in January – businesses will no longer be able to charge clients to cover the costs of the banks’ credit card fees through surcharges, despite no legal change to merchant services fees.
“You will still be levied a fee, but you cannot have the ability of passing that on to your customers - effectively your overheads have just gone up and that’s it,” said Vithaldas.
“As far as consumers are concerned it’s not particularly good news either. Today the consumer has a choice [of how they want to pay].
“The reality is going forward that the tour operators will typically pass that overhead on. They will raise the cost of holidays because they have the ability to do so.”
Vithaldas explained that the petition to stop PSD2’s surcharging ban had been lodged and once it had received 100,000 signatures Parliament will be obliged to debate it.
He told delegates that due to TTNG’s membership size and customer reach it should be able to gain enough signatures to force the debate in parliament.
“100,000 signatures in an industry like ours, when you have such a major issue should not be that difficult. I would hope we have 500 signatures in the room and when you go back home, I urge you to talk to colleagues, to family members and to customers, your friends and and get them to sign this petition,” he said.
Besides the petition Vithaldas said TTNG had been talking to suppliers about raising commission levels to offset the impact on agents with during every meeting about renewing business relationships.
He said that despite some partners “who have absolutely come to the party”, the consortium had seen “mixed feedback” with the vast majority “sitting on the fence and seeing what their competitors are doing”.
Vithaldas said he would “absolutely urge” members to negotiate merchant services deals with their banks, citing one agent with turnover of £250,000 who was able to reduce fees for credit cards to 1% from 1.8%.
“Rates are very much negotiable…so pick up the phone and negotiate hard…if they say no we have other providers we can recommend,” he said.
