26th September 2011
Ryanair Plan Further Credit Card Charges

Ryanair are, once again, planning further credit charges which are already a lot higher than it costs the airline to process card transactions. In furture passengers may find it even harder to beat the charges when booking flights with Ryanair.

Ryanair passengers must sign up for a new branded pre-paid card available from 4th October in order to avoid an administration fee of £6 per journey. Passengers using Mastercard pre-paid cards, which currently exempt them from the fee, will be charged from November. The airline will instead only waive the charge for those who sign up to the new Ryanair Cash Passport.

The new Ryanair Cash Passport Card will not be free to get, it'll cost £6 for the card, however the airline have said everyone who buys one will get a £6 Ryanair Flight Voucher to use towards a flight so you could technically say the card is free. However, although using it to book Ryanair flights is free, it will have fee's for other things. A £4 charge for withdrawing cash from the card over the counter at a bank. A £2 fee for using the card at an ATM, A 50p charge for all transactions, other than Ryanair bookings, from April 2012 and A rolling fee of £2.50 if a card is not used for six months.

The industry & consumer groups such as 'Which?' have heavilly criticised the airline who want to charge for all credit & debit card transactions through its website which are not paid for using their new Cash Passport Card.

As an example, if a family of 4 were to book return fares with the airline, the card charges could be £48 that could even cost more than the seats themselves, and 'Which?' has criticised this stating if passengers pay using the Cash Passport Card from Ryanair they may not have the same protection rights under the Consumer Credit Act that they get with a traditional card.

Executive director of Consumer Group 'Which?' Richard Lloyd said: "With this change Ryanair has made it even more difficult for customers to avoid a surcharge when they pay for their flights. With most airlines yet to drop card surcharges and some introducing new fees, it's time for the government to put a stop to this."

And TravelNorthEast.co.uk totally agree, for a company to process a debit card transaction it costs around 20p per transaction and for credit cards approximately 2% so is this a way to bump up ancillary revenue or not? Many airlines charge fee's and that we do agree with, but some are more extrodinary than others.

The Office For Trading has recently held an inquiry into card surcharges for passengers booking travel online. Ryanair said that its charge was for administration purposes, such as the cost of running a website, rather than a surcharge for using a credit or debit card.

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