Comment by Qworg
3 years ago
Even when offered a more competitive option, consumers love credit cards - the merchant gets soaked, while they get cash back. Given how the networks are, you'd have to have an unprecedented collusion of merchants to break the credit networks open.
> consumers love credit cards - the merchant gets soaked, while they get cash back
It's never the merchant that gets hosed. It's the people not using credit cards.
Because, of course, the merchant just takes his banking expenses and forwards them right back to all customers by increasing prices across the board.
And it's not only the people not using credit cards that get hosed. Even the people with credit cards lose out - because the cash back is practically always smaller than the fee the merchant payed and forwarded to the customer.
As always, the real winner is only the bank. There's a reason for the market cap of MasterCard and Visa...
Credit cards also have really good consumer protection laws around them. I have 30 days to report any fraudulent transactions and on my card and the bank MUST give me my money back.
Every single study shows that people spend more when using credit cards than when using cash.