KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Satta) urged Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to consider reviewing the prohibition to impose surcharges for credit card payments for travel agents.
Satta president Datuk Seri Winston Liaw said the profit margin that travel agents could earn from selling flight tickets had dropped from five per cent in the past to less than one per cent.
He said customers could easily check the cost of AirAsia tickets and thus agents could only charge a service fee of between RM20 to RM30 for the purchase of flight tickets.
If customers swiped their credit cards for flight tickets to Europe or the United States that cost about RM8,000, Liaw said travel agents would be making a loss on the sale because the two per cent transaction fee charged by banks was higher than the service fee paid by clients.
“Two per cent of the RM8,000 flight ticket is RM160, yet the service fee we charge is only RM50. That is a loss of RM110.
“If our profit is around 10 to 30 per cent, we can absorb the percentage,” he said.
He said BNM did not understand the challenges faced by the travel industry.
Liaw said banks had required merchants to sign an agreement not to impose surcharge on credit card transactions when issuing the card machines but that was 20 years ago.
“The requirement has become obsolete by now and should be amended.”
He said the prohibition on imposing surcharge should not be applied to all businesses across the board as it would be unfair to travel agents.
Hence, Liaw urged BNM to have a dialogue with industry players to solve the problem.
BNM in a statement said retailers would not be permitted to impose surcharges for payments using debit cards and a similar prohibition was being applied for credit card payments under the rules of international card schemes such as Visa and Mastercard under the Payment Card Reform Framework.