If you're anything like me, you probably rarely carry cash anymore.

Well, you might not realize that with each swipe of that debit or credit card, you're paying additional fees for your purchase.

Those fees passed on by the businesses that they themselves have been paying fees charged by the credit card companies.

Governor Murphy recently signed a bill to address this issue.

I'm joined now by budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer who will explain what the bill now requires.

John, great to have you here on set, as always.

Tell us what this new law will require when it comes to businesses passing along these credit card fees to consumers.

Sure.

It's great to be here with you.

The fees themselves are not illegal.

And New Jersey is not one of the states that has banned merchants from passing along these types of fees.

But what the state law now requires under this newly enacted change in transparency standards is there has to be disclosure that you will be charged an extra fee if you're going to pay with credit instead of cash.

And so that disclosure has to happen for a business at the point of entry and at the point of sale.

And for a restaurant, it has to happen both on the menu and in what they're calling the customer service waiting area.

So if you're waiting to be seated, Let's say you're going shopping in a store.

Where are you looking for this alert?

You know, when you come into the store now, it's supposed to be, quote, clear and conspicuous notice.

And then when you're going to make that purchase at the cash register as well for for an in-person store, there's another wrinkle that relates to the self-checkout or what they're calling electronic kiosks.

And so on that page, before you finalize your payment or your transaction, it should also notify you if there's a increased charge for using credit instead of paying with cash.

What are the limitations now placed on businesses as it relates to what they can charge?

That's another important component and if you think a lot of people are paying with credit coming out of the pandemic, they prefer to swipe or tap or even use a mobile payment.

And so there is a processing fee that businesses face and it eats into their profits, especially with inflation and supply chain issues.

And so now businesses are allowed again to pass that fee along to you, the consumer, if there's notification But they're not allowed to profit off of it.

So they're not allowed to charge the consumer anything more than they're being charged to process a credit card payment instead of to use cash and so what's been prohibited is any sort of profiteering off of these types of fees.

They can only charge us what they're facing in terms of the charge themselves.

We know the Biden administration has taken on this issue really looking at junk fees and exorbitant late fees.

Just tell us what's happening on the federal level.

Yeah, this has been a big area of emphasis for President Biden, and I think it resonates with a lot of people.

I mean, if you think about just over the summer with the different concerts that people were trying to buy tickets for all of the up charges, when you're buying a concert ticket, you see what that price is maybe on your app.

And then when you get the bill, you see just how much gets heaped on in terms of fees But some of the areas that have been looked at just within the last few months have been fees that are heaped onto to rental agreements or rental services and then excessive late fees that some credit card companies are charging.

So on top of what can be really predatory interest rates.

Then there's a really excessive fee and they typically tend to target lower income or be punitive for lower income consumers.

And so that's been a real big area of interest.

Just a few seconds left.

How does a person monitor?

Who's monitoring this?

You have to be vigilant, but if you do find a business that's not complying report it to the state division of Consumer Affairs, they have a whole area of emphasis just for this specific thing.

So check those bills before you you pay, right.

And maybe even check them afterwards.

Absolutely.

John Reitmeyer, good information, as always.

Thank you.

You're welcome.