The EU has now banned roaming charges within the member states.

Next on the hit list in the UK is credit card fees. I wonder if we will see that?

"Fees for using credit and debit cards will be banned in a move that could save shoppers £500 million a year.

New Treasury rules will stop retailers from adding hidden charges at the checkout, a practice that particularly drives up the cost of goods and services online. Airlines, travel agents, ticket booking websites, universities and councils were among those exposed by The Times last year for levying fees of up to 3.5 per cent.

Convenience stores and pubs will also be banned from imposing the fees, which can vastly inflate the cost of low-value purchases.

The blanket ban on such “rip-off” charges will come into force from January next year, covering card fees as well as levies for digital payments made via services such as PayPal and ApplePay.

The moves follows an investigation by this newspaper that exposed widespread abuse of laws designed to stop companies using card charges to pad out profits. A law introduced in 2013 said that businesses could pass on only the cost of handling a payment, estimated by consumer groups to be 0.6 per cent on average. It proved difficult to police, however.

The Treasury said that although many industries had acted to absorb the costs and not pass them on to consumers, the rules would end the practice. It cited research from 2010 estimating the saving for shoppers at £473 million. A ban on credit card charges is relatively rare even among large economies. Australia and the state of New York have them in place but Japan, Canada and New Zealand do not."

(The Times)