RIVERSIDE, Mo. — It might be harder for some people to play the lottery beginning Monday. That’s when QuikTrip says it will no longer accept debit or credit cards as payment for lottery tickets.
The Tulsa-based convenience store chain sells a lot of lottery tickets, but a company spokesman tells FOX 4 News this was a simple financial decision. Quick Trip says fees charged by banks and credit card companies have become too expensive and the company is losing money on lottery transactions.
And Quik Trip is not alone. At another big lottery ticket seller, the Riverside Red X, a director tells FOX 4 News the store has always limited lottery sales to cash only because of fees charged by banks and credit companies. A retailer only makes about 5 percent on each lottery sale, and when banks and credit card companies charge 4 percent or more, there’s little incentive to be in the lottery sales business.
“A couple of times, I go to buy and want to use my card and they say, ‘No we don’t take cards, you have to use cash for that,'” said Elihu Tatum, a lottery player.
Others we talked with say cash only sales won’t stop them from playing. They call credit or debit cards a convenience than anything else.
“I always figured that the would not take a credit card because someone might come with an illegal card or something,” said Forest Wilson, a lottery player.
A Quik Trip spokesman says only a small percentage of the chain’s lottery sales come from customers paying with a debit or credit card. Some states require that lottery tickets be purchased only with cash, including Quik Trip’s home state of Oklahoma. Neither Missouri nor Kansas has such a law.
Consumers say card fees don’t only impact lottery sales. People we’ve talked with say they increasingly are finding retailers who won’t accept a card unless they spend more money.
