I was wondering why so many places here still don't accept payments by card. Malta presents itself as a hub of new technologies, crypto currencies etc but I have never seen so many places refusing card payments in other comparable civilized countries.
I was thinking it must be because maltese banks are charging the merchants too high fees but then I found out that this is regulated by European commission since 2015 and the fees are set for 0.2% for debit card and 0.3% for credit card. I thought Malta could be just ignoring this but it is even officially on central bank of malta's website - https://www.centralbankmalta.org/ifr
So are the shop owners seriously refusing cards because they don't want to pay 1 cent fee for every 5E spent? Most of the shops have the eftops machines but accept cards only when customers spend something like 10-15E and more, what sense does it make when the fees are a percentage of the sum and not set.
Am I missing something? Anybody has an insight on this?
Thanks