There is, it's called debit cards, but Stripe et al. "simplified" pricing by charging a percentage regardless of card type instead of the traditional interchange-plus pricing. Merchant banks "used to" make money by tacking on fixed fees, i.e. a set-up fee, terminal fee, monthly fee, etc, but then Stripe came along and provided (1) a better dev experience, (2) better onboarding, and (3) simplified pricing.

It boggles my mind that the government has privatized currency to these people.

Crazy-person-but-actually-really practical-idea:

Nationalize one if these networks. Maybe Discover.

The US government should provide us digital currency. The simplest way is to force the current systems to do that. All that rent they collect in terms of transactions fees shouldn't be profit for a private business but fees of the government.

That's what systems like Pix fixes. It's managed by the state, it's low cost and it's universal... which is why the US is against it so hard.

If we look at this in a non US-centric view, then many other areas have solved this, partially since decades.

For example, in Germany we used to have a bank card, "EC Karte", it is now called "Girocard".

So, if you are a shop and accept Girocard, you pay 0.2% of the transaction plus a fix 0.05 - 0.10 €.

And in Germany virtually everyone has a Girocard, it's part of getting a bank account. The cards are free to the customers.

So assume you're a small Café with 8000€ per months, 70% via Girocard and 30% via credit cards. Then you'd pay ~ 17€ per month for Girocard, but 95€ if you use "blended sum" - a contract with a payment provider to accept all cards. But you don't have bureaucracy. With you do an extra contract with a credit card only provider it's still 41€ for just the 30% of your monthly business.

That creates the effect that in Germany lots of shops don't accept credit cards. The market speaks.

I know that other countries also have payment methods, e.g. Netherland or China. It's just the US banking system that is decades behind what is possible.

The real shittiness begins when having to deal with them as a business. If you’re classified as high risk, which could be whatever the fuck, you’re deplatformed or need to deal with Byzantine merchants.

I used to think "I should be nice to merchants" and pay everything in cash.

That was 15 years ago. Now, living costs have gone up, I'm getting taxed to death by not just governments but increasingly more by businesses themselves ("benefits fees", "installation fee", "convenience fee", guilt-tip screens, sneaky price increases, etc.) so now I feel no guilt in playing the system to get at least some of my money back. Now I just churn 1-2 credit cards a year to pay my taxes and get some of it back in the massive sign up bonuses, which more than cover the transaction costs, fees, and then get me another few thousand back.

If merchants across the world make a deal with me to charge exactly the listed/advertised number exactly, no more, no less, then I'll pay in cash again.

Deal? No? Okay, you continue paying your merchant fees and I'll continue reaping the credit card bonuses to the maximum possible.

In my case, it's literally free money. I travel a lot for work. I pay for everything with my card, and I'm reimbursed by the company. I rack up points, and whenever I travel for pleasure or as an independent contractor, hotels are free. I'd get free airfare like my coworkers do if I didn't avoid flying and drive everywhere.

The system is broken. No one with the power to fix it has any incentive to do so. Might as well get what you can.

There’s a startup in Switzerland (https://www.pimpay.ch/) trying to offer no per-transaction payments (at the Swiss-level). I wish them good luck but it’s not going to be easy to disrupt the existing players in this field.

This is something governments could fix by running the payments rails.

Another thing to consider is your credit card rewards cash back etc are really trading your privacy for a little rounding error worth of discount in comparison to using cash.

You may also save far more money going cash only. E.g. some local restaurants near me give you like 5% off paying in cash. Gas is generally cheaper cash price vs card price or debit fee. You have a big job with a contractor, tell them you might be interested in paying cash and they might offer you a substantial discount.

Agreed.

I will admit that sometimes I do have fun playing the game (certainly a lot more when I was younger), but not often anymore. I feel like I "have" to do it, because there's no such thing as a free lunch, and as such stores price in the fees and so I might as well get it back in the form of traveling, but it is very weird that we just expect credit cards to do that.

Agreed. The pool hall nearby has a game of pool for $2. But if you use a credit card the minimum purchase is $6 (three games) due to fees. It works, but I thought it was a gimmick to trap people into playing more pool until I saw your comment here and realized it was from fees.

What's really fun is when you're reselling something like Microsoft 365 and both the credit card companies and the state (through sales tax) make more than you do on each sale.

In india we use UPI. But people still use cards enough to be in decent enough terms with them for when you want to make a risky purchase and chargeback. In a sense, it's simply insurance. You pay extra 2% everywhere so you can dispute a txn at any point later.

Personally I make very few risky + expensive purchases, so my CC usage is non existent. I am comfortable enough to not really care if a random shady hobby electronics website fleeces me 500rs.

Another use is that sometimes you get CC offers on Amazon: "use $BANK $TIER CC to get extra 7k off" which are useful enough to justify paying extra everywhere else if you do your big shopping though Amazon festival deals. E.g you can get a 55k iphone for 45k.

I don't get this. Use cash like me and a bunch of us if you don't want to play the game. Or a debit card. Otherwise it's just an extra game. Extra games are choice. Choice is good.

> but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation.

Some people are dumb and think tax refunds are free money when in reality they’re an interest-free loan to the IRS.

Money is fungible and instantly redeeming rewards for a statement credit is almost always the optimal way to use credit card rewards.

A person who wants to fund a vacation with rewards can simply redeem the rewards for a statement credit while simultaneously transferring that amount of cash to a HYSA or similar.

>I wish there was a low fee credit card network that merchants didn't charge a fee for, so I could continue the simplicity of digital payments but opt out of this crazy Visa Infinite rewards accounting boondoggle.

This is called "Regulate the max fees" like Europe did, where they still have functioning credit card networks, including good fraud coverage, but you aren't expected to dance for the credit card company for peanuts of kickback.

Why do you play the points game?

I felt like if I didnt spend $1 on something that was the equivalent of me spending $50 to get those same credit card points