Can a business refuse to take credit cards?
Businesses are free to decide what payment methods they accept for their goods and services. Businesses sometimes advertise what credit cards they accept by posting some stickers at their door. When your credit card isn't among them and you don't have enough cash with you, ask about your card before you order. If a business doesn't accept your credit card, your best recourse is to take your business elsewhere. When you already ate there and got into an awkward situation because you assumed that they would accept your card, you might also want to write an online review of the place and warn others to bring cash for their visit (but please be fair in the review. When the food and service are decent, a restaurant doesn't deserve a one star rating just because they don't take credit cards). Note that businesses have good reasons to not accept credit cards. It often means additional cost for them in form of: But there is also a more shady reason. Taking payment in cash means that there is no electronic trail of the transaction. That makes it far easier for an establishment to misreport their income. They might under-report it to evade taxes or over-report it to launder money (both are illegal, of course).
Some businesses verify the shipping address with the credit card company, and refuse to ship to an alternate address without additional, offline verification.  Of course, this is only useful for physical goods. "MD-Tech answered: The answer is in your question: derivatives are contracts so are enforced in the same way as any other contract.  If the counterparty refuses to pay immediately they will, in the first instance be billed by any intermediary (Prime Broker etc.) that facilitated the contract. If they still refuse to pay the contract may stipulate that a broker can ""net off"" any outstanding payments against it or pay out using deposited cash or posted margins. The contract will usually include the broker as an interested party and so they can, but don't need to, report a default (such that this is) to credit agencies (in some jurisdictions they are required to by law). Any parties to the trade and the courts may use a debt collection agency to collect payments or seize assets to cover payment. If there is no broker or the counterparty still has not paid the bill then the parties involved (the party to the trade and any intermediaries) can sue for breach of contract. If they win (which would be expected) the counterparty will be made to pay by the legal system including, but not limited to, seizure of assets, enforced bankruptcy, and prison terms for any contempts of court rulings. All of this holds for governments who refuse to pay derivatives losses (as Argentina did in the early 20th century) but in that case it may escalate as far as war. It has never done so for derivatives contracts as far as I know but other breaches of contract between countries have resulted in armed conflict. As well as the ""hard"" results of failing to pay there are soft implications including a guaranteed fall in credit ratings that will result in parties refusing to do business with the counterparty and a separate loss of reputation that will reduce business even further. Potential employees and funders will be unwilling to become involved with such a party and suppliers will be unwilling to supply on credit. The end result in almost every way would be bankruptcy and prison sentences for the party or their senior employees. Most jurisdictions allow for board members at companies in material breach of contract to be banned from running any company for a set period as well. edit: netting off cash flows netting off is a process whereby all of a party's cash flows, positive and negative, are used to pay each other off so that only the net change is reflected in account balances, for example: company 1 cash flows netting off the total outgoings are 3M + 500k = 3.5M and total incomings are 1.2M + 1.1M + 1.2M = 3.5M so the incoming cash flows can be used to pay the outgoing cash flows leaving a net payment into company1's account of 0." Credit card fees on a credit card used for personal expenses are not tax deductible. Credit card fees on a business credit card are deductible on schedule C (or whatever form you're using to report business income and expenses). If you are using the same card for both business and personal ... well, for starters, this is a very bad idea, because it creates exactly the question you're asking. If that's what you're doing, stop, and get separate business and personal cards. If you have separate business and personal cards -- and use the business card only for legitimate business expenses -- then the answer is easy: You can claim a schedule C deduction for any service charges on the business card, and you cannot claim any deduction for any charges on the personal card. In general, though, if you have an expense that is partly business and partly personal, you are supposed to figure out what percentage is business, and that is deductible. In an admittedly brief search, I couldn't find anything specifically about credit cards, but I did find this similar idea on the IRS web site: Generally, you cannot deduct personal, living, or family expenses. However, if you have an expense for something that is used partly for business and partly for personal purposes, divide the total cost between the business and personal parts. You can deduct the business part. For example, if you borrow money and use 70% of it for business and the other 30% for a family vacation, you can deduct 70% of the interest as a business expense. The remaining 30% is personal interest and is not deductible. Refer to chapter 4 of Publication 535, Business Expenses, for information on deducting interest and the allocation rules. (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/deducting-business-expenses) So, PROBABLY, you could add up all the charges you made on the card, figure out how much was for business and how much for personal, calculate the business percentage, and then deduct this percentage of the service fees. If the amount involved is not trivial, you might want to talk to an accountant or a lawyer. "I strongly suggest you look at CreditKarma and see how each aspect of what you are doing impacts your score. Here's my take - There's an anti-credit approach that many have which, to me, is over the top. ""Zero cards, zero credit"" feels to me like one step shy of ""off the grid."" It's so far to the right that it actually is more of an effort than just playing the game a bit. You are depositing to the card frequently to do what you are doing. That takes time and effort. Why not just pay the bill in full each month, and just track purchases so you move the cash to the account in advance, whether that's physical or on paper?  In your case, it's the same as charging one item every few months to keep the card active. If that's what you'd like to do, that's fine. I'd just avoid having the card take up too much of your time and thought.  (Disclaimer - I've used and written about Credit Karma. I have no business relationship with them, my articles are to help readers, and not paid placement.) mhoran's response is in line with my thinking. His advice to use the card to build your score is what the zero-credit folk criticize as ""a great debt score."" Nonsense. If you use debt wisely, you'll never pay interest (except for a mortgage, perhaps) and you may gain rewards with no cost to you." The U.S. Treasury said the same thing on the lawfulness of retailers refusing legal tender at point of sale - retailers are allowed to refuse any denomination of U.S. currency: [...]all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. [...] As a general premise: In most of the online transactions in case of dispute the benefit of doubt is given to the customer. IE if the customer refuses to pay and claims that its not his transaction, the card company reverses the charges and does not pay the merchant (or recovers if its already paid).   There are many types of online vendors who use a variety of methods to ensure that they are not at loss. Some of these are: I'm not sure if someone else answered already in the same manner I will. I can't guarantee for sure if it's the same in the U.S.A. (it might since major credit cards companies like Visa/MC/AMEX are American companies) but in Canada having/keeping unused CC is a disadvantage because of the following: Banks and financing companies look more at the total amount of credit available to you than at how much purchases you have on your cards. Ex: Let's say that you have the following: - Visa cc with $10,000 limit and $2000 worth of purchases (made more than 30 days ago) on it. - Mastercard cc with $10,000 limit as well and $1000 worth of purchases (less than 30 days old) - A major retail store cc with $2000 limit and $0 balance. Hypothetical situation: You want a bank loan to do some expensive house repairs and are looking for a lower interest rate than what your cc can offer. The bank will not care about the amount on the cards. They will add-up all the limits of your cc and treat your loan request as if ALL your cards were filled to their respective limit.  So in this case: they will consider you as being right now in debt of $10K+$10K+$2K = $22,000 instead of only $3000 and they might:  1. refuse you the loan 2. grant it only if you transfer all purchases on a single card and cancel all the others. 3. Once the $3000 is transferred on one of the cards (and the others cancelled), they can require that you reduce the limit of that card. Hope this helps! Your chief problem seems to be that you're mixing Visa (credit cards) and Step2 (a European Automated Clearing House). Credit cards are primarily an American concept, but do work worldwide especially in travel&tourism industry. The Credit Card companies are financial institutions themselves and operate similar to international banks They're typically acting as intermediaries between the customer's bank and the retailer's bank, so this works even if those two banks have no existing agreements.  This is expensive, though. Step2 is a cheaper European system which eliminates the middle man. It allows the consumer's bank to directly pay the retailer's bank. VISA is not a member of Step2.