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SOME mom-and-pop stores in the heartlands are passing on an increase in Nets fees to consumers, despite being barred from doing so.
A Straits Times check with 80 retailers - ranging from provision shops to second-hand handphone stores - found that one in three either charge customers to use Nets or place a minimum on their purchases.
The majority were in neighbourhood shopping strips, though some were in major malls like Vivo City.
The stores' contracts with the Nets, Singapore's dominant playerin the cashless transaction game, forbid those practises.
Store owners, however, said they are having trouble affording the system and have little choice but to pass the fees onto consumers.
In September 2007, the Network for Electronic Transfer (Nets)roughly quadrupled its fees. Store owners now pay the company up to 1.9 per cent of an item's purchase price.
This is on top of the cost to rent the Nets machine, which is between $40 and $80 per month, depending on the individual agreements.
Read the full story in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times
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