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Anatomy of a credit card rewards program

nkurz
152 replies
6h58m

An interesting article, but it doesn't sufficiently emphasize the lede: When you use a reward card, the merchant is charged a higher fee than if you used a "normal" card. Simply by putting a different branding on the plastic you pay with, the credit card issuer gets more money from each transaction.

The article goes on to ask the question "Why isn’t every card a rewards card?", meaning why doesn't every card pay cash back, but I think the more interesting question is why every card isn't branded in a way that makes the issuer more money. Why do they bother to issue cards where they get paid less? Why not brand every card as a "Signature Preferred" and then pocket the money instead of giving it to the less discerning customers?

And the most interesting question only gets a handwave: "The basic intuition underlying rewards cards as a product is that highly desirable customers have options in how they spend their money." But how far does this go in explaining why merchants "choose" to participate in this program. The obvious answer would seem to be that they get no benefit from the system as it exists but have no real choice, but maybe there is a better answer?

I liked the topic, but wished the author could have given more insight on what's happening behind the scenes to produce the outcome we see.

jasode
64 replies
6h38m

>But how far does this go in explaining why merchants "choose" to participate in this program. The obvious answer would seem to be that they get no benefit from the system as it exists but have no real choice,

Some merchants like Amazon, Target, Home Depot etc do want the ability to refuse the "rewards cards" with higher fees but can't because of the current contracts they have for credit-card acceptance. If a merchant signs a contract to accept VISA cards, they must accept all VISA cards and therefore can't selectively choose to reject some VISA cards because of higher swipe fees.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/retailers-want-to-reject-rewar...

https://www.google.com/search?q=merchants+want+to+refuse+rew...

illusive4080
25 replies
5h48m

If only Walmart would take contactless payments.

ghaff
14 replies
4h28m

I confess that I don't understand what the big deal is. It takes 5 seconds to slide the card into the machine. Personally, I find fumbling with my phone takes longer as does figuring out where the reader wants to tap the card if I'm not familiar with that particular store's system.

aembleton
3 replies
4h19m

It means you've got to take the card with you.

wincy
0 replies
3h0m

I use Walmart pay with their app. But then again we’ve totally given up buying off Amazon and do grocery pickup or delivery from Walmart. For 90% of items this is faster than we’d get it from Amazon.

ghaff
0 replies
4h5m

Some of it may be that if I'm in a store, I've almost certainly driven there so I probably have my (small) wallet with me.

brewdad
0 replies
57m

How often do you find yourself somewhere with your phone but not your wallet?

tcmart14
2 replies
3h22m

I like contactless just because for some reason, my cards always get beat up and the chips become problematic on my cards after about a year. They just sit in my wallet. But half the time I go to pay with my card, I have to dip twice because the first time, the chip reader always says it is unable to read the chip.

I've also had issues at Walmart where I know some lanes to flat out avoid because the chip readers will always reject my card for unable to read the chip. With my phone, this isn't an issue. Even if I get a new card, wait 8-12 months and its the same problem again.

lupire
1 replies
3h10m

You can do contactless on your card.

tcmart14
0 replies
2h49m

If your bank issues you a card with it. I got a new card about 6 months ago, doesn't support contactless.

But I am aware that the cards exist and I am not opposed to it. With contactless I am fine with it being on my phone or card. But I gotta have a card that has contactless to be able to use it.

sofixa
2 replies
4h15m

I don't understand what the big deal is. It takes 5 seconds to slide the card into the machine

For most people, there's the time to get their wallet or equivalent out of pockets or purses, fiddle to get the card, put it the correct way and swipe (but not too fast or too slow!). Vs a phone/watch tap which is usually much more convenient.

kingrazor
0 replies
1h17m

It would take me just as long to get my phone out of my pocket as it would to get my wallet out. Plus a lot of machines have tap pay now if your card supports it.

ghaff
0 replies
4h6m

I guess it's what you're used to. I have a small wallet I carry in a front pocket, haven't had to swipe a card in ages, and it takes 5 seconds to insert the card.

Maybe if I wore my Apple Watch more, I'd get used to using it but the card just seems more straightforward in general. Maybe I'll insert and maybe I'll tap. I'm pretty indifferent.

seanw444
0 replies
3h28m

Even then, I can tap with the card, which tends to register faster than inserting too. No garbage proprietary software required to be installed on my phone, and I still get contactless.

mdaniel
0 replies
1h42m

It takes 5 seconds to slide the card into the machine.

It sure does, and then 45 seconds while the machine ... thinks about life, and then 15 seconds for it to say "chip read error, reinsert card" and then another 45 seconds for it to reconsider the nature of reality, and then listening to a fire alarm sound that they chose for the success alarm. Excellent UX, no notes

lolinder
0 replies
4h15m

Personally, I find fumbling with my phone takes longer as does figuring out where the reader wants to tap the card if I'm not familiar with that particular store's system.

Aren't both of these just symptoms of unfamiliarity with the tech?

I resisted phone payments for a while, until one day I forgot my wallet and quickly added a few cards to my phone. Now I'm severely tempted to use it more often—my phone has a wallet button on the lock screen that jumps me straight there ready to pay with my default card. I've definitely experienced some friction the two times I've used it, but it seems pretty clear that that friction is temporary while I'm still becoming familiar with it.

illusive4080
0 replies
1h47m

I use it on my watch. Double click the side button even when my watch is under a jacket and just hold it in the vicinity of the reader. It’s very easy once you get used to it.

jen20
8 replies
5h36m

Presumably they do not because they want to track you via your credit card number, and permitting Apple Pay (maybe others too) would hinder that.

bombcar
4 replies
4h56m

Apple Pay is just as traceable if they want it to be.

They’re just stubborn and want people to use their option (and card, if possible).

As it is you can load any credit card into the Walmart app and pay by pointing the “check price” barcode camera at the screen.

jen20
3 replies
3h30m

Apple Pay is just as traceable if they want it to be.

[Citation Needed].

On the other hand, stores like that probably already do facial recognition on customers, so it really is just intransigence to not allow contactless payments.

supertrope
0 replies
50m

The device account number does not rotate with every transaction. You have to unlink your device from your credit account and re-enroll to do that.

andrewaylett
0 replies
2h5m

Apple Pay and Google Pay have their own virtual numbers, rather than using your regular card number, but the number doesn't rotate.

For example, our local bus company can quite happily offer capped daily and weekly fares when folk use the same device to pay.

illusive4080
1 replies
5h26m

I presume the same.

c0wb0yc0d3r
0 replies
5h13m

I always rate my experience 1 star when checking out at Walmart because of this. Probably won't change anything, but I feel I can't just stop going to Walmart because then Amazon is the only place left. Which is also fucked up but let's stay on topic.

vel0city
0 replies
5h15m

It's more that they want to try and convince people to pay with Walmart's own lower-cost (to them) app if you want to do contactless payments from your phone. If they made it easier to use Apple Pay, why would anyone ever use their app?

yoshamano
0 replies
5h16m

It has more to do with making Walmart Pay the only contactless option to drive adoption of their mobile app.

JKCalhoun
13 replies
5h29m

Are they bound by contract not to offer a discount for casher buyers?

I ask because when I was in Germany (and, granted, this was a few decades ago) you got some percent off the price if you paid cash. Merchants there seemed pretty credit-card averse.

red-iron-pine
5 replies
5h22m

That's still a thing in Canada and the US in various places, generally "mom and pop" run business.

Credit card fees for small orgs are like 1-2% so for a small biz that could pinch. Cash also lets you, uh, "fudge" your numbers for tax purposes.

i80and
4 replies
3h54m

There's a good sushi place near me that gives a 10% discount for cash. I'm fascinated by this.

(I still use a card because life is short)

lupire
1 replies
3h12m

It's tax evasion.

725686
0 replies
1h16m

First comment I see that addresses this. This is a big part of accepting and paying cash. Tax evation. From both sides.

photonbeam
0 replies
3h6m

Unrecorded cash payment makes it much easier to pay undocumented staff

Tijdreiziger
0 replies
3h14m

That may just be good old-fashioned tax evasion.

(If you pay cash, the business owner can just pocket the money without ever recording the transaction. For digital payments, this is much harder to do undetected.)

gtirloni
1 replies
5h24m

Where I live it'd used to be possible to get a discount if you paid cash but it was deemed discriminatory against card holders and so it was banned. It's the same price regardless of payment method.

posix86
0 replies
5h13m

It removes the incentive for clients to use cash if a card option is available, makes them more used to paying by card, and hence decreases the competitiveness of merchants that don't offer card at all - until cards become so wide spread that many merchants don't even accept cash at all, like where I live.

A bit hostile towards merchants, but very nice for consumers imo.

consp
0 replies
5h21m

Which is the reason the cut is now capped and card acceptance is higher, even for credit cards (0.3% for cc, 0.2% for dc). Though low-margin businesses like grocery store still don't accept them (credit cards) due to the marginally higher fees in some countries.

brk
0 replies
4h24m

All the CC contracts I have ever seen only prevented you from discriminating against a particular card/brand if you took credit cards. You could offer a cash discount as a policy, but you couldn't charge AMEX holders an extra 1%, as an example.

bombcar
0 replies
4h59m

They used to be but the law was changed to make it illegal for the card companies to demand that they don’t offer a cash discount (or charge more for credit). Smaller businesses are doing that more and more since the pandemic to try to hold to their prices as long as they can.

Big companies do a similar thing by offering you a store card. Costco likely makes more money from you when you pay with your Costco card than if you pay cash, because they get the interchange fee very very low and have to pay to handle cash. Rumor was AMEX was eating the interchange fee AND paying them … because they more than made it up by the customers who made the card Top Card.

Spooky23
0 replies
4h44m

They can do it now. In the past you had to offer same prices, although you could negotiate.

It’s usually motivated more by mom and pops skimming taxes than 3% credit card fees. If you do any kind of volume, there isn’t a ton of savings as cash management ain’t free.

The electronic equivalent is people who take personal Venmo at retail.

ensignavenger
12 replies
4h8m

What I want to do is pass on the exact processing fee to my customers, then they can choose their payment method based on how much it is going to cost them. I might then choose to cover a portion of the fee for electronic transactions, because they mean I save money vs processing cash. But the customer would pay the excess.

I would need a system that can display to the customer what fee they would be charged with their selected payment method, and be given an option to switch to a less expensive payment method.

lupire
4 replies
3h7m

They eliminates your ability to advertise prices honestly, without overwhelming your customers with detail that will distract them.

ensignavenger
2 replies
1h25m

I will clearly state which payment methods are free and which ones the customer will pay a conveniance fee or recieve a discount if they use. I will clearly show the customer at checkout what their total is with their chosen payment and shipping (if applicable) options would be, and give them the opportunity to change their selection. It is about customer choice and convenience. You are welcome to shop somewhere else that bundles these expenses into the price of the item and givea you no choice in avoiding them.

briandear
0 replies
10m

Or just make your prices have the credit card fees built in just like normal businesses. Your system is a ton of work for very little benefit to anyone and it’s probably lowering your revenue and it’s as annoying as places that charge for takeout containers — missing the point that takeout containers encourage people to buy more food.

It’s an unsophisticated approach to business. That’s why it’s common in mom and pop places — mom didn’t go to business school and pop is tripping over dollars to save a nickle — they see the “expense” but they can’t see the revenue that aren’t getting.

There is a reason most small restaurants fail — they don’t know how to be more profitable. So they start to add on these little fees when they begin to struggle and don’t realize that they’re making the problem worse. In other words, most people that start restaurants don’t know what they’re doing in the back office even if they’re great in the kitchen. Restaurants fail for many reasons, but not controlling costs is the biggest — however, they’re naïvely choosing to control the wrong costs.

One of my good friends owns a chain of 30 Tex-Mex restaurants in Texas. After several burglaries of the safe at several locations, they went cashless at some locations. The cashless locations, without exception, saw sales increase by over 12%. He quickly made all of his stores cashless and sales increased among all stores. My anecdote isn’t data — but there is plenty of data out there.

The credit card surcharge scheme is endemic among small business owners who actually haven’t done the math. Or, more accurately, they’re doing the wrong math.

Credit card users spend more than cash users. So you make up for the “savings” with lower sales volume. And credit card users that have to pay higher prices will go elsewhere. Or, if they pull out cash, they’ll spend less of it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83488-3

brewdad
0 replies
1h11m

I can only speak for me, but if I have to do that much mental math to figure out the best options to pay or see a bunch of random (to me) fees and adjustments at checkout, I'm leaving and going somewhere else. It feels scammy even if your goals are noble.

quasse
0 replies
2h1m

... So just like US sales tax already does? I'm not saying it's a good system, but I'm already paying some random amount on top of the sticker price for everything I buy, depending on what state, county, and city I'm in at the time.

ryandrake
2 replies
3h31m

It's already impossible in the USA to know what you're going to pay for something until you get to the checkout line. This just makes it worse.

Why not go even further? Itemize the marginal cost of maintaining your property's parking lot for those customers who visit your business by car? Charge customers a "store heating fee" in the winter? Customer support fee if they talk to anyone? Just as ridiculous. Processing credit cards is just one of many costs of doing business that you need to account for when you price your products.

miki123211
0 replies
2h56m

Itemize the marginal cost of maintaining your property's parking lot for those customers who visit your business by car

This isn't that uncommon, quite a few places in Europe do this actually.

Usually there's a barrier at the parking lot entrance. You get a ticket when entering, which you then have to put in a machine when leaving. The machine calculates your fee based on how long your car was parked. Modern systems are far more automated and use license plate readers instead.

ensignavenger
0 replies
3h25m

I can give discounts to customers however I want to, thank you. As long as the customer knows what card they are going to use, they know exactly what the cost will be. I am all for posting sales tax rates as well as any transaction processing fees at the door, too, though.

i80and
2 replies
3h55m

Some donation platforms do this! They show and add on the processing fee for VISA/MC and Amex separately, and Amex is a little higher.

ensignavenger
0 replies
3h23m

Do they account for the different interchange rates on different classes of cards within a processing network? Not every merchant will want to be that granular, but I think it is worth it for big ticket items.

briandear
0 replies
3m

They should A/B test this. My theory is that this creates some amount of friction. I was all set to donate $100, but now I have to go find my debit card or figure out some bank transfer nonsense and by the time I get back (if I get back) my motivation to donate has diminished.

Donation platforms ought to do some analytics on this. If I’m giving money, I want it to be simple without requiring me to second guess.

If a donation platform takes Apple Pay, the friction is even less. I don’t want to fill out your stupid long form, create a password, share my address or whatever.

But, I’m one person — this might be an interesting Masters thesis topic to study the behavioral economics of donation platforms.

carlosjobim
0 replies
25m

Do you actually want to do that? When a customer wants to make a purchase, I think it is best to get the hell out of their way and not go stand between their wallet and your wallet, blocking their money and yapping about fees or some other completely unimportant stuff.

TimPC
5 replies
5h39m

This is actually the reason lower fee cards exist. If every card had a 5% transaction cost no merchant would sign up for that card brand. If the merchant is convinced their average transaction cost will be lower because some of the cards will be cheaper you can get away with some expensive cards.

ajdude
4 replies
4h56m

And this is why many small businesses in my area don't accept American Express cards full stop. Some don't even accept Discover.

i80and
1 replies
3h7m

This is interestingly regional: in the part of NJ where I live, every small business has an Amex "shop local" sticker on their front window

brewdad
0 replies
1h18m

AmEx has worked hard to keep their home turf around New York City friendly to their cards.

Iulioh
1 replies
4h34m

Here in Europe I see AE accepted only for digital goods, high margin stuff or international (read American)chains

sofixa
0 replies
4h17m

American Express has really targeted the French market, there are all sorts of small stores (like bakeries, pharmacies (not American pharmacies - only medicine and very closely related stuff like creams and diapers) and similar size) with proud "Amex accepted here" signs. There was even an Amex program a few years back giving 5euros back on transactions of more than 20 euros in small shops like that.

kasey_junk
3 replies
6h9m

Large merchants also pay much less for interchange generally.

bombcar
2 replies
4h55m

Small merchants negotiate with Stripe for a flat fee to accept all cards. Big merchants negotiate with the networks and pay varying prices for varying rewards amounts (or however they get the deal structured).

scarby2
1 replies
4h25m

Interestingly my flat fee with stripe is less than my reward rate on my credit card for some categories. It obviously is against the contract terms and probably considered fraud but I could theoretically make about 1.4-3 cents on the dollar (depending how you value points) by charging myself money.

ska
0 replies
14m

This comes up in the article.

morpheuskafka
0 replies
2h33m

That would cause a massive customer support and frustration problem as regular customers don't know or care how their card is classified and would complaint that it doesn't work. This would affect both the merchant and the issuer negatively.

matthewdgreen
40 replies
6h31m

The only thing I would add to your comment is that merchants aren’t the ones being forced to pay these stupid fees, it’s their customers (and primarily their poorer and often non-card using ones) who are being quite heavily taxed to fund a marketing scheme for rich customers. Most competitive businesses can’t afford to fund such an elaborate targeted marketing campaign directly out of their fees without some competitive pushback: hence the actual question you should ask is why the entire system exists, and the answer has to do with a pile of inefficiency and rent collection based on regulatory capture.

gosub100
34 replies
6h27m

While we're in this topic: why is unsecured credit card debt NOT tax deductible but secured debt like HELOC is?

Fwiw I don't really care what the technical reason is, it's a rhetorical question to add to the ways the credit system holds back the poor.

ghaff
3 replies
5h18m

There used to be mostly piddling deductions for all sorts of things that you don't have today. It's probably mostly a positive to not keep track of things like sales tax in order to minimize your income tax.

lupire
1 replies
3h4m

Sales tax deduction still exists. 2017 law temporarily lowered but didn't eliminate it.

brewdad
0 replies
52m

IF you itemize. 90% don't. Also, you can only deduct sales tax OR state and local income taxes but not both.

bombcar
0 replies
4h51m

Deductions also cause people to go temporarily insane - it’s fine paying 5% unnecessarily because I get 2% back on my taxes! Ignore the 3% that is gone forever …

bombcar
2 replies
4h52m

Even then I’m not sure how much it affected the poorer people, since you still had to overcome the standard deduction (lower, sure).

The deduction on mortgage interest now mostly only affects the well-off because the standard deduction for married filing jointly is so high.

bonton89
1 replies
1h19m

The the 1980s the deduction for mortgage interest would have been significant, I suspect most people itemized then. And the huge standard deductions we have now are a fairly recent tax change.

bombcar
0 replies
27m

It was 3400 for a married couple in 1980, but yes, many more people deducted mortgage interest until 2018 when the standard deduction nearly doubled.

Many people didn't math the interest deduction correctly - only the amount over the standard deduction should be counted, as you'd get the standard deduction anyway. Can vary depending on SALT and charity donations.

toyg
0 replies
5h39m

Which is kinda stupid, when the economy is based on people consuming.

I guess Reagan's friends at that point wanted more money for Wall Street to gamble.

gottorf
0 replies
4h14m

encouraged people to consume and stifle savings

Ironic in hindsight; every monetary and fiscal policy as of late seems to be designed to punish savers and reward debtors.

nfriedly
6 replies
5h53m

Granting a tax credit for something encourages that thing. So, from that perspective, I think it makes some sense to grant a tax credit for mortgage interest but not credit card debt.

mwexler
2 replies
5h39m

Though one can write off losses from gambling in the US.

I wish the tax code had more a more positive slant per your point, but lobbying seems to be a bigger driver.

ScottEvtuch
1 replies
5h32m

Pretty sure you can only write off gambling losses to offset gambling winnings, which entirely makes sense. That way you only pay taxes on your net winnings for the year.

gosub100
0 replies
4h10m

I can confirm this.

edwr
2 replies
5h40m

Tax credit for mortgage interest encourages speculative investment in the housing market. Tax credit for credit card debt encourages consumer economic activity.

red-iron-pine
1 replies
5h15m

you have to live somewhere.

maybe you rent, but renters DGAF about the local community the way that homeowners do.

home (property) taxes also fund a lot local services, schools, etc. you want prices higher and stable, and not dominated too heavily by mega-corps that will weasel out of paying said taxes.

i80and
0 replies
2h58m

I've rented in my town for ten years, and I care about it a lot thank you very much.

Renters absolutely care about the local community.

robertlagrant
5 replies
6h7m

the ways the credit system holds back the poor

It would be good to understand this better. Doesn't everyone use a credit card? Not just the poor? Who are the poor in this case? Are tax deduction rules anything to do with the credit system?

gosub100
4 replies
6h2m

Are you aware that merchants charge more for goods and services so they can offset CC merchant fees? Even a cash paying poor person who cannot get a CC is paying for this.

My comment is to show another way this is perpetrated. People saddled with CC debt could dig themselves out faster if they could write off interest.

robertlagrant
1 replies
2h9m

Are you aware that merchants charge more for goods and services so they can offset CC merchant fees?

Well, some places add on a fee, but yes, agreed, some places apply a blanket charge. I don't see how this relates to the tax deduction.

Even a cash paying poor person who cannot get a CC is paying for this

This is about a tax deduction. Are you saying someone who can't get a credit card is going to be meaningfully affected by a tax deduction?

People saddled with CC debt could dig themselves out faster if they could write off interest.

This is true, but also the giant number of people who just chose to get into credit card debt would be paying less tax. If you want to make credit cards into effectively interest-free loans then that might cause issues.

gosub100
0 replies
1h1m

but yes, agreed, some places apply a blanket charge. I don't see how this relates to the tax deduction.

Earlier you asked me to explain how credit cards harm the poor. I showed you, and now you complain that it doesn't pertain to a tax deduction. It's not about a singular thing. The singular thing was one token example of a larger theme that for some reason you refuse to acknowledge.

NovemberWhiskey
1 replies
5h35m

People who are encumbered by credit card debt are usually people who would still be better off taking the standard deduction these days.

bombcar
0 replies
4h49m

Exactly. It sounds harsh but those encumbered with usurious credit card debt would be better served by being forbidden from having it at all; but that’s a position strongly fought against on all sides.

gruez
3 replies
6h16m

While we're in this topic: why is unsecured credit card debt NOT tax deductible but secured debt like HELOC is?

AFAIK it's a carve out specifically for houses. Car loan interest isn't deductible despite being "secured".

judge2020
2 replies
5h10m

It's a bargaining chip to get votes. If one party promises a larger tax saving on homes, then homeowners are more likely to vote for them.

dboreham
1 replies
4h15m

Besides that, there may be some societal benefits to increased home ownership.

ghaff
0 replies
3h50m

As I understand it, mortgage interest deductibility was originally basically social policy (rightly or wrongly). And you can't take a benefit like that away--even if the government kind of did for most people by increasing the standard deduction. (Which was probably not a terrible way of doing so.)

scarface_74
2 replies
5h20m

To a first approximation, no one actually takes advantage of the mortgage tax deduction any more because the standard deduction is so high and the cap on state tax/property taxes is so low that most people don’t itemize.

Only about 10% itemize.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-itemi....

ghaff
1 replies
5h13m

And the majority of those make more than $500K. The deductions are probably mostly some combination of mortgages on very expensive properties or very large charitable contributions, probably often tax-shielded in some manner.

lotsofpulp
1 replies
6h7m

The population likely to use HELOCs votes more and/or is more populous, so they have more votes.

Same reason Medicare (old people) pays healthcare providers more than Medicaid (young and poor people).

scarface_74
0 replies
5h41m

The real estate lobby is the largest lobby in the US.

sgerenser
0 replies
38m

HELOC debt is (since 2017 TCJA) now only deductible if used to purchase or upgrade/repair the house. And now the vast majority of people are not going to be deducting any mortgage or HELOC debt anyway, since the standard deduction is so high now.

Spooky23
0 replies
5h37m

It was! Auto leases were deductible too which was a big subsidy for the auto industry.

Once rich people figured out how to get poor people to be angry about things like higher marginal tax rates for rich people and “death taxes”, we raised taxes on the suckers to benefit the richer people.

judge2020
4 replies
5h12m

The only thing I would add to your comment is that merchants aren’t the ones being forced to pay these stupid fees, it’s their customers (and primarily their poorer and often non-card using ones) who are being quite heavily taxed to fund a marketing scheme for rich customers.

Counterpoint: i will pay you $500 if any of the big retailers (>2k stores) lowers prices now and cites "lower credit card fees means we can charge less".

supertrope
1 replies
2h7m

Because of the stickiness of prices, passing through of cost savings usually manifest as slower inflation. Costco is rumored to have negotiated 0.3% from Visa in exchange for exclusivity. This is part of how they are able to sell goods at thin markups. Aldi USA used to only take debit cards. They caved and now take credit cards. Travelers Insurance offers two prices on every quote: by bank account or a higher one by credit card.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/

judge2020
0 replies
2h3m

Most insurances do charge lower fees for direct deposit - Allstate does it at well.

bombcar
1 replies
4h54m

Do you think prices would remain the same if interchange fees doubled?

ryandrake
0 replies
3h28m

If the company could profitably charge more for their products, they already would be, regardless of what interchange fees (or other costs) were.

abalone
14 replies
4h49m

> But how far does this go in explaining why merchants "choose" to participate in this program. The obvious answer would seem to be that they get no benefit from the system as it exists but have no real choice, but maybe there is a better answer?

The simple reason why issuers don’t make every card a signature rewards card is that merchants would revolt.

The interchange fee schedule[1] is fascinating. Dozens of categories of merchants with different rates. There is no technical reason for this. Fraud costs are borne by merchants and to some extent processors, but not the issuer banks that receive the interchange fee.

The fee schedule reflects a kind of battle for customers. It’s worth repeating that most of interchange for these higher end cards is passed back to the customer in the form of rewards. Essentially, merchants are willing to pay higher fees to support the cards that higher spending customers prefer.

But there is a limit. We can observe that not all merchants accept AmEx, which has some of the highest interchange rates. If every visa/MC card were a signature card, more merchants would push back.

[1] https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/vis...

sofixa
12 replies
4h19m

There is no technical reason for this

Point in case, there's an interchange fee cap of 0.3% for credit and 0.2% for debit cards in the EU. And there are entire countries moving to cashless, so obviously everyone is happy with it.

abalone
4 replies
3h0m

I wouldn’t assume everyone is happy with it. Consumers are going to prefer rewards programs over no rewards programs. And before you say it results in higher prices, that’s not necessarily true. Australia regulated away interchange and it didn’t result in lowering prices. Merchants kept the profit.

A lot of times these regulations are pitched as helping consumers, but it’s really merchants pushing for them. You could make a similar observation about the EU regulatory fight with Apple et al right now. It’s actually Spotify fighting for it, and they have different interests than consumers.

andruby
1 replies
2h31m

I wouldn’t assume everyone is happy with it. Consumers are going to prefer rewards programs over no rewards programs.

Personally, I would disagree. I prefer no rewards and a simple landscape where I don't have to compare credit cards.

I lived in both EU and US, and didn't like the work needed to compare (and keep comparing) all the credit card offerings. In the EU, you just the credit card from your bank and don't feel like you're missing out.

alibarber
0 replies
39m

I my part of the EU I'd certainly feel like I'm missing out if I just kept on paying the ~€5 a month fee for a bank account and didn't look for a card that gave me some kind of return on my spend every month...

(It's Finland btw, and you need a Finnish, not "anywhere-in-SEPA", bank account in order to practically function in society here with the strong online authentication service)

mumblemumble
0 replies
49m

"Lower prices" doesn't necessarily mean they just suddenly and immediately drop. That's no surprise; dropping prices purely out of the goodness of your heart isn't terribly good business practice. Also, for a lot of retail, MSRP is MSRP, and that's a pretty big anchor point.

What I'd expect instead, based on my having taken exactly one class in economics as an undergraduate, is subtler effects that play out over time. Maybe the general growth in prices over time slows down a titch until a new equilibrium point is met. Maybe wages rise a little bit because retailers can afford to pay their employees more. Maybe life gets easier for smaller businesses that have less negotiation power than the multinational behemoths. Maybe some bank executive somewhere decides not to buy that third luxury car at the same time as ten thousand restaurant owners decide that, just today, they will treat themselves to an espresso drink from the coffee shop instead of making drip coffee at home. That kind of thing.

I think maybe that last example is most interesting to me, because it calls attention to how merchant/consumer is a false dichotomy and things are always a bit more subtle than how the news likes to make us think they are.

fallingknife
0 replies
28m

Yeah that's kind of how the system operates in the US. The CC duopoly fleeces merchants and gives out a share of the monopoly profits as rewards to consumers to make any antitrust action against them politically unpopular. It's a shakedown, and yes, getting rid of it would be bad for consumers, at least in the beginning. But it should be done anyway.

lupire
3 replies
3h14m

"point in case" is a funny term. Are you a mathematician or programmer, using "case" in the sense of "branch of a proof", not "matter to be settled"?

notpushkin
1 replies
11m

That's interesting: I've only seen "point in case" being used, never "case in point" (although it does make a lot more sense, now that I think of it).

whimsicalism
0 replies
6m

you must not be a native speaker, i have never heard 'point in case' before this conversation. but fwiw, neither really make much sense to me

dboreham
2 replies
4h17m

I went to Stockholm last week for a couple of days, worried that I didn't have any local currency. It turned out that nobody takes cash, so everything worked out fine.

whimsicalism
0 replies
6m

it's even more intense in China

ghaff
0 replies
3h57m

Europe varies a lot from largely cashless to you will probably need cash if you want to have a beer.

fallingknife
0 replies
31m

There is a government to government payment fee category in there. Why on earth would two government agencies ever need to use a CC to pay each other and lose over 1% in fees?

twoodfin
12 replies
6h54m

The answer is that the system doesn’t work if a 3%-fee card isn’t held by a low-risk, high-spend rich person. Indeed if that weren’t the case, merchants would reject the tiered fee structure.

(This is also the answer as to why in the absence of regulation, exchange fees aren’t higher than they already are.)

nordsieck
7 replies
6h36m

the system doesn’t work if a 3%-fee card isn’t held by a low-risk, high-spend rich person

There's many rewards cards that require an annual fee (which encourages a high spend to recoup the fee with rewards). But there are plenty of 1.5%-2% cards with no annual fee. You just need a good credit score.

scarface_74
6 replies
5h24m

Almost every card with an annual fee has enough credits and perks to offset the annual fee without spending any money.

The second and third tier Delta cards come with a $250 and $650 Annual fee.

The second tier card (Delta Platinum) has an annual fee of $350. But it comes with a $150 Delta Stays credit for hotels and one round trip an economy companion pass - basically buy one get one free - for any place in the US, Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean.

The higher end Delta Reserve comes with similar benefits. But a first class companion pass. If you never use either card except for the credit, the benefits more than offset the annual fee. The Reserve also comes with airport lounge access

I have three Delta cards just for those benefits.

I could explain the Amex Platinum, Gold, Green, every cobranded hotel card, the high end Capital One cards the same way.

The credit card companies as the article says are betting that the typical customer will use credit cards in a suboptimal manner. They are banking on most credit card users not to be like the typical r/creditcards users who carry 6-8 credit cards including “sock drawer” cards that are just held for the outsized benefits to annual fees and aren’t their primary cards.

My wife and I travel a lot and yes I have nine cards and $2700 worth of annual fees. Most of those cards are “sock drawer” cards that are just used because the “coupons” make travel cheaper.

ghaff
4 replies
5h3m

You need the right spending pattern and you need to manage the card rewards. When my travel went way down, I dropped a couple cards though I keep a pretty low-cost United cobranded card to basically keep me with some semblance of status. But things like airline club membership just weren't worth it any longer.

scarface_74
3 replies
4h55m

I agree completely and I didn’t even discuss the entire “churning” strategy where there is an entire cottage industry, a subreddit and a flowchart discussing how to get sign up bonuses and how to get the best return.

(I am not affiliated with this site in any way)

https://www.offeroptimist.com/

bombcar
2 replies
3h40m

At some point the maintenance becomes too complex and people just either use the card or eat the fee.

They know exactly how many do this. The people who churn are just free advertising for them.

scarface_74
1 replies
2h47m

Is it worth it for someone who likes to travel, and wants to save for retirement and never wants to “work for a FAANG” (again) like in my case? I would say so.

Just from the cash savings of my card setup, I would say it’s worth $3500 that offsets the $2700 in annual fees.

Then take into account the points I earn from everyday spend is worth another $3000-$5000 depending on how I choose to redeem them (see r/awardtravel).

Then take into account sign up bonuses and churning, I’m planning on doing over the next year worth around $5000.

It’s the only way that I can balance our travel hobbies with my goals of maxing out my 401k including catch up contributions (I turn 50 this year), max out my HSA and not use it and “retire my wife” so she can enjoy her hobbies.

This hobby isn’t just for people with above average incomes. If you are steeped in the culture, you can lean more toward churning and legal manufactured spending

https://frequentmiler.com/manufactured-spending-complete-gui...

bombcar
0 replies
1h43m

Ah, for the era of buying dollar coins and flooding your bank with them. Brings back memories.

brewdad
0 replies
37m

The other benefit the Delta AmEx (and I presume other AmEx cards) gives are the various merchant discounts. In the past year I've gotten statement credits totaling about $600 by using the card to pay for various streaming services, shoes and clothes, certain restaurants and even my utility bill. The offers rotate every few months but I make sure to scan them when I login to view my statements and activate any of them I think I might use.

All of these things were items I was already using or would have purchased anyway and the discounts stack on top of any available merchant coupons too since they are credits coming straight from AmEx.

ptero
3 replies
6h39m

Sorry, can you explain why the high spend is important? What is the benefit of a low risk buyer having a single card vs three different cards?

Low risk is clear -- the lower the risk the more money is left, after handling problems, for the rebates and profits.

twoodfin
0 replies
4h52m

In this context, it’s important to the merchants: They want these customers, so they grit their teeth on the higher interchange fees demanded by the banks. If the banks started handing out these cards to everyone, the merchants would revolt.

robertlagrant
0 replies
6h12m

for the rebates and profits

And salaries and pensions, etc.

kasey_junk
0 replies
6h15m

Interchange. The fees go directly to the issuer not the network (which collects much smaller scheme fees). If you have 3 cards they’d almost certainly be for 3 different issuers so they’d split the interchange. Making you less valuable.

miroljub
7 replies
6h26m

It's the legislation that disallows vendors to have different pricing based on the payment system that disaligns the incentives.

If I have a card that gives back 2% to me, back causes 5% fees to the vendor, both of us would be better off if I used a card with 1% fee, and the vendor gives me 2% discount. Unfortunately, not allowed.

kasey_junk
4 replies
6h11m

It’s been mostly legal to charge credit card surcharge fees since 2013. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5c6e1264-42a8...

The real reason that most merchants don’t charge surcharges is that they don’t want to lose the sale, calculating the actual interchange is wildly complex and in general they prefer cards to cash.

pkaeding
1 replies
4h55m

There are definitely a good number of small businesses around me (cafes, and similar places) that offer a cash discount. They don't have a sign offering it, but when I pull out cash, they revise the price down.

bombcar
0 replies
3h38m

More and more small places around here are explicitly offering the discount either with a “3% less if you pay cash” but more commonly now a “listed prices are cash or debit, credit pays more”.

It’s a noticeable fee for them.

Danjoe4
1 replies
4h23m

It is against VISA ToS. Small businesses can risk it but large businesses would get sued and VISA would refuse to do business with them

sgerenser
0 replies
36m

Nope, not against VISA ToS. Post you're replying to indicates it's no longer "illegal" but it was never actually illegal to charge a surcharge, it was just disallowed by ToS. This is no longer the case as of 2013 and retailers are now free to charge a surcharge if they so choose.

bluGill
1 replies
5h54m

Is it legislation or the contract with the credit card? My understanding is the contract to take ie VISA has terms that you cannot apply a discount for customers using other payment methods (ie cash or someone else's card). There are a few places that don't have those terms (mostly government where often a card does cost more to use).

What people forget about these fees is a credit card is cheaper to take for the merchant. The credit card is never counterfeit money. The clerk never takes money from the credit cards, nor does the manager counting it (I wasn't in retail long but I saw both). You never have a robber come in to take your credit card money. Even when all goes well, you don't pay the clerk and manager by the hour to count all the cash twice. You do have some risk of taking a stolen credit card, but overall it is cheaper for the merchant to take credit cards and that savings should be what pays for the card costs (I have no idea how to count the different costs to see if that is true)

bombcar
0 replies
3h36m

The real advantage for merchants is to take debit (assuming the payment is high enough). Much of the benefits of credit without the hassle of cash.

empath-nirvana
4 replies
5h27m

Rewards cards should be illegal and basically are privately levied tax on the poor and a subsidy to the wealthy.

smallmancontrov
2 replies
5h9m

privately levied tax on the poor and a subsidy to the wealthy

That's 2/3s of capitalism. Hold enough MA and V -- directly or through just having enough net worth in an index -- and you'll start to see this as a feature, not a bug.

realwitt
1 replies
3h49m

What's MA and V? Moving Average and Volatility? (genuinely don't know and unsuccessfully tried to google it)

frogstomp19
0 replies
3h28m

MasterCard and Visa's stock ticker symbols

agloe_dreams
0 replies
4h57m

Boy are you going to be shocked when Walmart, target, Amazon brag about the X% income increase when that happens and while prices continue to rise.

Zero, zero companies will discount the sales price when the rewards cards are gone.

There is a strong argument that discontinuing rewards cards actually helps the extremely wealthy by taking from the middle class and giving it to the Uber rich shareholders and big business owners.

supertrope
0 replies
33m

Citibank reissued my credit card well before the expiration date to upgrade it to a "World Elite Mastercard" with attendant higher interchange.

kindawinda
0 replies
49m

Wow you thought of something the author didnt cover and think the whole article should be about your post.

insane_dreamer
0 replies
1h25m

Some merchants reject cards with higher fees; i.e., Amex is not accepted at some merchants with lower margins (i.e., grocery stores).

It would be impractical for merchants to accept some branded cards and not others. Imagine "we accept "Chase Premium One" card, but not "Chase American Airlines" card." Very confusing for consumers. If it's a whole category, like Amex, it's easier to refuse it (besides, low income consumers are unlikely to have an Amex card).

dwighttk
0 replies
4h32m

Credit card processors actually provide a service for both their cardholders and the people who accept their cards…

Yes there is the downside for businesses when the processors reverse charges but if this was big enough of a downside then people would stop accepting the card.

Yes sometimes people get their number stolen and are out the money for a while during an investigation, but again if this downside were big enough people wouldn’t use that card anymore.

Yes there are new types of fraud enabled by the technology.

The big benefit is you don’t have to have liquid cash sitting around where people can grab it and disappear.

Some merchants don’t accept some cards… they’ve decided that the cost outweighs the benefit. My grocery store fought against accepting Apple Pay and they do now. Walmart doesn’t.

anovikov
0 replies
6h17m

Simply because these customers are likely to buy more and at premium prices and not be a pain in terms of refunds etc. They are willing to pay more in commission knowing they are dealing with richer people.

thundergolfer
90 replies
3h55m

The Acquired podcast did an episode on the history of Visa that covers a lot of how the credit card industry works.

As another commenter noted, this article doesn’t pull out clearly how this whole credit card reward scheme actually works. The Acquired episode does, by the end.

It works like this: the ‘luxury’ credit card providers, partnering with Visa, take money away from merchants in order to extract profit for themselves while keeping the credit card consumers happy. The merchants are pissed about this, and regularly make lawsuits to regulate interchange. The money extracted by the credit card companies and Visa causes merchants to raise prices for everyone regardless of whether they have a rewards card or use a credit card at all.

This creates in effect a massive money transfer from the poor, who do not use rewards cards, to the rich consumers who do. The Acquired podcast provides specific numbers on just how much worse off poor consumers are given this system, and how much the richest consumers benefit.

I come from Australia where interchange fee regulation tamps down on the kind of credit card mania and fetishism seen in the USA.

morpheuskafka
29 replies
3h18m

That's a one sided view of it. Credit cards increase customer spending behavior which benefits merchants. For low end customers, the appeal is access to credit, either long-term or just in between paychecks. For high end customers, the appeal is the rewards and perks they get, and the convenience and safety of payments.

This is why you are most likely to see credit card surcharges for tax payments, court costs, and other non-discretionary charges. Anything that either is optional to pay, or isn't but they really want you to pay now (ex. a debt collector) has every incentive to subsidize the card acceptance fee as it will increase their sales.

TRDRVR
23 replies
2h44m

A huge aspect people ignore is how expensive it is to handle cash. From storage, administration, transportation, loss, etc. it's usually a little more expensive to take cash vs. card.

This is why your grocery store partners with an ATM network to let you take out extra cash at the POS. As long as you're paying the fee, they'll do whatever they can to trade you cash for a digital deposit into their bank account.

aeyes
14 replies
2h33m

I worked at several small businesses and we always preferred cash, we even accepted multiple currencies. The handling was no problem but I admit that it must be more difficult for larger businesses.

Card payments made the price of the service more expensive for all customers because we weren't allowed to have a card payment fee.

ransom1538
4 replies
1h57m

"we weren't allowed to have a card payment fee. "

BTW. Good luck catching that. In SF, that is how many businesses work. You want to use a card? Ok, one extra dollar. Nothing enrages visa more, but, the merchant should have this right.

j45
0 replies
1h4m

One of the best marketing phrases I've seen to charge a fee to use a credit card:

Convenience Fee.

dhosek
0 replies
1h49m

I think the restrictions on this have loosened over the last (not sure how many) years.

devman0
0 replies
1h5m

In a properly working market, every consumer would pay their exact interchange fee and it would be printed on the receipt as a pass-through cost.

This would actively drive interchange fees lower when consumers have to choose to pay 3% on an Amex swipe vs 1.6% no frills MasterCard swipe, or .05% for a debit swipe.

The reasons there is no downward pressure today is because there is because there is no transparency, and no incentive for consumers to choose a lower cost card.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF
0 replies
1h30m

I think the law should be that you state the maximum price for a given transaction and then discount down.

So you can have a cash discount but it's okay to say no credit card fees. These are the "junk fees" that came up in political discourse in the last year or two. Credit card vendors shouldn't be allowed to restrict cash discounts. I know this isn't libertarian, but I want it to be a pre-negotiated thing simply for the sake of keeping cash alive, like how minimum wage is a pre-negotiated wage to avoid the overhead of getting the whole nation into a labor union.

That's why I like free shipping on Amazon. I know it's not literally free, I just want to see what you're _actually_ gonna charge me, it cuts off an avenue of bullshit.

TRDRVR
3 replies
2h28m

we even accepted multiple currencies

You accepted multiple currencies without taking a spread on Forex? How did you convert it for free? Not even actual forex businesses can do that...

thaumasiotes
0 replies
2h24m

How did you convert it for free? Not even actual forex businesses can do that...

Actual forex businesses convert currency at negative cost. That's what it means to be a forex business.

a_vanderbilt
0 replies
2h24m

Plenty of places in the world accept currencies besides the local ones because they are more stable or just worth more in general. Depending on the business, they might handle currency the same way too.

Scoundreller
0 replies
2h23m

When I sold on eBay and they allowed cash/bank draft payments, I accepted local currency, but also major currencies like US$ (in cash or bank draft because I had a US$ account too) and other major currencies in cash (like EUR and GBP) because they were cheaper to convert with when travelling (or I could use directly). Without a spread.

Used the EUR in Cuba when a buyer mailed me cash.

ses1984
1 replies
2h24m

Small businesses put in sweat equity to handle cash payments, like the owner going to the bank to make a deposit. If they had to pay an hourly employee to do that, it might even out with credit card processing fees. Also small businesses can fudge numbers with cash payments in a way that’s a lot harder to do when some other company keeps a record of all of your cc transactions.

ta1243
0 replies
1h53m

Yup, cash handling costs are significant when done as a service, they can be cheaper if you don't account for the time and risk (of both theft and forgery). Banks in the UK typically charge about 0.6-0.8% to pay cash in for large companies, and even more for small ones, and very few locations will take cash.

However nothing beats that sweet sweet tax evasion that cash allows.

Kranar
1 replies
2h9m

I also worked at small businesses and they absolutely preferred cash but not because it was easy to handle but because, you know... taxes, wink wink.

whatsthenews
0 replies
1h32m

many such cases. imo it's a skill issue but understand the thought process and why it's so prevalent

dhosek
0 replies
1h50m

Back when I was publishing a magazine in the 90s, I preferred credit card payments over checks in the mail because while there was the 3% vig for the merchant account on the credit cards, taking piles of checks to the bank was a pain and there was always the risk of a check bouncing (yes, there was also the chance of a charge being reversed, but in the whole time I did this, that only happened once—selling subscriptions for a print product is a good hedge against fraudulent use of cards and the one time I got stung it was someone who bought a big pile of back issues and had them shipped to Hungary). Add in that credit card orders could be handled by phone or internet while checks had to come in the mail and it was a clear win. And that’s ignoring the multiple studies that show that credit card purchasers at brick and mortar retail tend to spend more money than cash purchasers.

reaperducer
2 replies
1h21m

This is why your grocery store partners with an ATM network to let you take out extra cash at the POS. As long as you're paying the fee, they'll do whatever they can to trade you cash for a digital deposit into their bank account.

This is not universal.

Where I currently live, and where I lived five years ago, supermarkets charge a fee (50¢ here, 25¢ where I used to live) to take out cash at the POS, because the card transaction cost more than handling cash.

There was a lot of "Are you sure?" prompts on the screen because the supermarkets (both big chains) didn't want the burden of the plastic transaction.

I've seen it stated a lot in technology forums that "cash is more expensive for merchants than cards," but I've never seen that spelled out from any source other than the card companies.

Every low-margin business I patronize, from the garden centers, to the convenience stores, to the antique stores all either offer a discount for cash, or charge a fee to use plastic.

Just last week, a woman who's run an antiques store for 35 years told me that card fees were going to put her out of business, and she practically begged me to go down the street to my bank to get cash for my purchase.

gnopgnip
1 replies
1h5m

A lot of businesses have a few percent cash discount to offset credit card costs, so they make the same amount either way. An antique store that would go out of business unless you pay in cash is either because they aren't paying consigners honestly, or they aren't paying taxes.

reaperducer
0 replies
43m

I hope you don't mind if I take the word of a woman who's been running her business for 35 years and is a staple in the community over some rando on the internet who doesn't know her business, hasn't seen her financial records, has zero information about how much the fees actually cost her, and may not even be in the same hemisphere?

whartung
0 replies
2h2m

I was just thinking about the other day how much cash used to flow through grocery stores.

The routine was to show up at the store with your paycheck, cash it, pay for your groceries, and keep the change.

Our store used to have the safe up front next to the bags of charcoal.

watwut
0 replies
2h14m

You do not need credit card for that. Debit card is enough.

resource_waste
0 replies
1h36m

My wife takes big payments at her company.

I'm pretty sure lots of people are putting these on credit and... might not ever pay it back.

She literally couldnt get cash from these people.

(US medical btw)

mateo1
0 replies
1h21m

I agree, which is why merchants should be allowed to charge different prices for different card operators and for cash.

Scoundreller
0 replies
2h27m

Meanwhile eBay forces payments by debit/credit card/Paypal, because they have arrangements with a (formerly owned) processor, even though I, as a seller, would be happy to accept cash/drafts/cheques/COD/whatever to keep that ~3%.

insane_dreamer
1 replies
1h42m

A large segment (in the US) that does _not_ subsidize credit card fees are gas stations, where, for the most part, the price for paying in cash is lower than with credit, or there is a per transaction surcharge for using a credit or debit card.

Car-centric as it is, gas prices are arguably the commodity that US consumers are most price sensitive to (and which is also most commonly evoked in politics). So this shows that consumers would prefer to discriminate between card and no-card purchases if given the option, except that the vast majority of retail outlets do not give them that option.

panzagl
0 replies
1h29m

Is this still true somewhere? I thought this went out decades ago, except maybe for a few Mom and Pop places.

lostlogin
0 replies
3h12m

This is why you are most likely to see credit card surcharges for tax payments, court costs, and other non-discretionary charges.

This will vary depending on where you are.

Most retailers here in New Zealand pass the fee on to customers. Even paywave gets the percentage fee.

ghaff
0 replies
3h2m

I think the other thing that happens is that governments outsource electronic payment collection to a third party which imposes a surcharge for its collection and remits the full nominal amount to the government.

Which can lead to seemingly ludicrous results somethings. I paid a "convenience" fee for parking the other night because presumably collecting a bunch of quarters from a meter was cheaper for the municipality than getting a bit less money transferred from the parking app people?

Spivak
0 replies
3h6m

The other side is also that this is great for card users because we're the price sensitive side of the transaction. I feel like this dynamic is rarely talked about when it comes to two sided transactions. Businesses can't "just pass it to the consumer" is a lot of cases and just have to eat it because businesses don't have that kind of pricing power.

This is how Doordash works on the restaurant side, they can't charge you the customer 20-30% of gross on orders, everyone would stop ordering. So mostly they just have to eat it or lose those sales. Some places choose to lose, some choose to raise prices on DD if they can but mostly they eat it.

duxup
26 replies
3h30m

This creates in effect a massive money transfer from the poor

I'm always a little confused on exactly HOW this plays out. I could see someone with terrible credit being denied, but most cash back cards I use are hardly gated / limited to "rich folks only".

I feel like the reasons / the way it plays out are more complex than the results. And really if someone is poor, struggling to pay their card, that's a larger issue than the type of card they use.

I'm just not sure reward cards = "This creates in effect a massive money transfer from the poor" as simply as stated.

driscoll42
11 replies
3h23m

There was a study by the Federal Reserve that came to the conclusion last year that rewards cards is basically a money transfer of ~$15 billion from poor to rich per year. Discussion on Hacker News about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34492502

WaitWaitWha
5 replies
2h10m

That is exactly the opposite what the study states. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2023007pap...

In the abstract:

sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of na¨ıve consumers.

Then in the study:

Next, we study whether the redistribution across FICO scores is driven by differences in cardholders’ income, suggesting a transfer from poor to rich consumers. Indeed, We adopt the following terminology: “Reward cards” are credit cards that earn either cash back, miles, or points; “classic cards” are credit cards that are do not earn any form of rewards. credit card rewards are often framed as a “reverse Robin Hood” mechanism in which the poor subsidize the rich. Our results, however, show that this explanation is at best incomplete. [...] Thus, high-income consumers with high FICO scores benefit from reward credit cards largely at the expense of high-income consumers with low FICO scores.
0xbadcafebee
2 replies
1h58m

At the end of the quote you excluded this:

"We find a redistribution from low- to high-FICO consumers regardless of income."

Poor people have low FICO scores. There are also high-income people with poor FICO scores. Both are involved.

"Thus, high-income consumers with high FICO scores benefit from reward credit cards largely at the expense of high-income consumers with low FICO scores."

The high-income people have much more money, thus have more to contribute to the pool of money going to high-income high-FICO people.

But poor people, who already don't have much money, are also contributing to this pool of money going to high-income high FICO people. And more to the point, it impacts poor people much more, because... they're poor.

So it's not completely the opposite, it's just inaccurate. The poor are subsidizing the rich, and the rich are subsidizing the rich. The difference is, there is a much larger effect on the poor, because... they're poor. They have less access to credit and that lack of access affects them more. A small amount of money lost has a larger impact.

In addition to all this, people of color also have lower FICO scores, so not only is it a burden on the poor, it's a burden on people of color (and the young in general). https://finmasters.com/average-credit-score/ https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/black-and-hispanic-americans...

skrbjc
1 replies
1h11m

Are any of these people required to open a credit card? If you're poor and low FICO, then you shouldn't have a credit card in the first place, just a debit card. And if you're poor and high FICO, then a credit card will provide you benefits.

It seems like the proposal is to take away rewards for everyone because there's a group of people that can't help themselves. Why not just be more strict about who gets a credit card.

daveoc64
0 replies
44m

People without a credit card are still subsidising those with reward cards, as the high interchange fees are spread out across all of a store's transactions.

TehCorwiz
0 replies
2h6m

Also from the abstract: "We estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated, poorer to richer, and high to low minority areas, widening existing disparities"

Kranar
0 replies
2h5m

The Fed is very careful to differentiate between income and wealth. You can be wealthy with little income and you can have a lot of income but not be wealthy.

While the study points out that high income, high FICO consumers benefit at the expense of high income low FICO consumers, which strictly controls for income as opposed to wealth, ultimately the study concludes what OP said it does, that reward programs transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, and I quote:

Credit card rewards transfer income from less to more educated, from poorer to richer, and from high- to low minority areas, thereby widening existing spatial disparities.
duxup
4 replies
3h17m

Gotta be honest that I'm not reading 60 pages at this moment.

But that reads like they're talking about the net effect measuring across FICO scores, but it's not clear that they're talking about the overall cause / if this is a case where some of the poor could in fact choose to use these cards.

Being poor is complex, just not having time (two jobs, etc) often means they don't have time for a lot of things, including shopping for credit cards. I wonder if things like THAT are playing a part.

I don't disagree with the math on the end result, I do think the reason is larger than just say rewards cards, and has to be approached careful.

bakhlawa
2 replies
2h9m

I think the Grandfather was making a different point. That because rewards cards = higher interchange fee for the merchant, this results in the merchant increasing fees on everyone (the payment networks prohibit charging a higher fee to only those paying with a credit card).

>>The money extracted by the credit card companies and Visa causes merchants to raise prices for everyone regardless of whether they have a rewards card or use a credit card at all.

>>This creates in effect a massive money transfer from the poor, who do not use rewards cards, to the rich consumers who do.
duxup
1 replies
1h55m

The pricing point is such complicated one too. Demand creates pricing changes, supply chains, etc...

If say the poor used these cards at a higher volume, wouldn't they then to be passing on the changes to other poor?

wyre
0 replies
1h21m

The poor/low-FICO scorers are either A) not getting accepted into credit card programs, B) paying higher interest rates, or C)not able to make their payments in full each month.

Compared to another individual that can put all their purchases on a rewards card and pay off their balance every month.

The pricing point isn’t that complicated either. Nearly every business accepts credit card and can’t avoid the higher credit card fees that pay out to reward programs.

11101010001100
0 replies
2h59m

If these 'luxury' credit card companies wanted poor customers, you think they would have found them by now?

whoisburbansky
8 replies
3h25m

It plays out this way because anything anyone buys with a credit card, reward card or not, ends up costing 2-3% more than it would otherwise have, because of interchange fees. If you have a rewards card, the CC issuer turns around and gives you, say, half of that back (1% cashback on everything) and keeps the rest. It's kind of like a tax break that you only qualify for if your credit score is above a certain threshold, but you have to pay into regardless of income/credit score.

woobar
7 replies
3h5m

ends up costing 2-3% more than it would otherwise

This is a very simplified view. Cash handling is not free. Fraud levels with cash are different. Overall attractiveness of a small but cash-only business is different.

TheDong
4 replies
2h43m

The alternative to credit cards that charge 2-3% fees shouldn't be cash, but rather debit cards with close to zero fees.

Cash handling isn't free, but a digital transfer that doesn't have rewards is obviously cheaper than a credit card.

chii
2 replies
2h6m

if the credit card merchant was able to extract 2-3% for using their network, what makes you think that a free debit card with low/zero cost wouldn't also be owned by the same credit card merchants and force the same fees to maintain their monopoly?

dhosek
1 replies
1h47m

Because right now debit card purchases don’t have a transaction fee while credit cards do. I just had two recent purchases where the vendor charged a 3% surcharge for credit cards but would do the transaction by debit card free.

woobar
0 replies
27m

It is an example that greed is everywhere. Not only among card issuers but also among merchants. The moment merchant find a socially accepted way to extract extra they will do it. Similar to tip screens on square terminals in all takeout places. Costs nothing to ask, generates some additional revenue.

brewdad
1 replies
2h41m

There is a reason every concert and sports venue near me has gone cashless. It's not because they enjoy giving away 2-3% of their revenues but rather those places aren't active every evening and tend to turn over employees quickly. Handling cash is expensive and risky in that environment.

astura
0 replies
2h7m

In a concert and sports venue concessions environment you're also prioritizing throughput much more than most businesses. Being cashless helps with throughput a lot - the employees don't have to wait for people to count their money, then recount it, and spend time making change.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan
2 replies
3h7m

Poor people, actual poor people who are just scraping by, usually have bad credit and cannot get credit cards.

autoexec
1 replies
2h28m

Poor people can always get credit cards. They get constant offers for them. The catch is that they are terrible cards with fees and insane rates. The credit industry is perfectly happy to let everyone get into massive debit. They'll give them to anyone (https://www.mymoneydesign.com/nine-year-old-daughter-credit-...)

supertrope
0 replies
1h55m

Credit cards for those with subprime credit often do not offer reward gimmicks and may even require a deposit and/or annual fee.

insane_dreamer
0 replies
1h35m

because poor people, typically: - do not quality for high-rewards cards (which have higher credit score thresholds) - if not savvy, carry a balance because they can't afford to pay off the amount in full, are subject to higher interest rates because those are the cards they qualify for, and thereby pay much more than than well off consumers (increasing the transfer of wealth) - if savvy, realize that having a credit card costs them more than not, and stick to cash - are more likely to be receiving payment for services in cash themselves and will just spend that rather than depositing and using a CC (if they even have a bank account)

(update: 4.5% of US households are unbanked; these are mostly from the lower quantile) https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html

lotsofpulp
6 replies
3h43m

The money extracted by the credit card companies and Visa causes merchants to raise prices for everyone regardless of whether they have a rewards card or use a credit card at all.

There has been nothing stopping US merchants from offering cash and/or debit card payers a discount since Oct 2011.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-el...

Most merchants are betting that people paying with credit cards are willing to buy sufficiently more or buy at sufficiently higher prices such that credit card transaction costs are more than offset.

That is the only reason why a cash/debit card discount would not be advertised.

Edit to respond to below:

I don’t buy that. Merchants of all types already engage in myriad types of discounts and promotions to price discriminate customers all the time.

A simple sign saying “x% discount for paying cash/debit” is of negligible complexity.

stuart73547373
2 replies
3h38m

yes there is. that's an enormous added pricing and communication complexity for businesses. which we know has a high cost because of all the businesses who have decided it would be higher than just stomaching the credit card fees.

massysett
1 replies
3h26m

Would a 1 percent cash or debit discount be an enormous burden? Some merchants already programmed their terminals to prod debit customers into entering their PIN rather than charging it as credit, so would offering a discount really be that much harder?

ghaff
0 replies
3h17m

One answer is: It's just annoying. I normally use a credit card. Yes, I can use my debit card and enter a PIN. If it's a discount specifically for cash, I may not have any on me and don't want the change anyway. In any case, it's adding mental overhead to just paying.

(It's usually more like 3% delta which I almost get in cashback anyway but still annoying.)

mason55
1 replies
3h3m

Does accepting cash really save a business that much money? I've heard arguments in the past that it ends up being a negligible difference once you account for all costs of processing cash (someone has to take it to the bank, it can get stolen in a robbery, employees can skim, you have to count it, you need a safe, you need cash deliveries, etc).

I have no numbers, so it could be totally off-base, but it feels not-impossible that it costs a percentage or two to process all your cash anyway, so the difference between cash & credit cards isn't actually that big. It's just that the interchange fees show up as one big chunk whereas the cash processing is lots of little bites, or even accounting for things that didn't happen (like skimming).

I guess this only applies if you're legitimately reporting all your cash take, if the business itself is skimming for tax reasons then the savings on cash would be substantial.

astura
0 replies
1h41m

It's just that the interchange fees show up as one big chunk whereas the cash processing is lots of little bites, or even accounting for things that didn't happen (like skimming).

Not just skimming, but lost business for cash-only establishments is huge. The amount probably varies by type of business, but I sometimes go to a bar that's cash-only and I've seen so many people walk in, try to order, and walk out and never come back once they find out it's cash-only. Even groups of 15-20 people. That's a significant cost (in lost revenue) even if it doesn't directly show up as a line item.

Even I admit to choosing a different place from time to time I think "I could go to the cash only bar, but then I'd have to go to the ATM first or I could just go to the other place that doesn't require an extra trip to the ATM. I should probably just go to the ATM so I could have some cash on me anyways, but traffic is heavy or it's cold/rainy/dark/late."

holden_nelson
0 replies
2h7m

I don't disagree with your point; I do want to point out, though, that whether it's "the merchants have to raise their prices" or "the merchants benefit too and are complicit", the end result is still that it's still the poor who lose.

vishnugupta
5 replies
2h14m

To add to your point; there's an IMF paper[1] backing this claim of "massive money transfer from the poor...to the rich".

I'm quoting the summary below

"We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify redistribution between consumers in retail financial markets. Comparing cards with and without rewards, we find that, regardless of income, sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers. To probe the underlying mechanisms, we exploit bank-initiated account limit increases at the card level and show that reward cards induce more spending, leaving naive consumers with higher unpaid balances. Naive consumers also follow a sub-optimal balance-matching heuristic when repaying their credit cards, incurring higher costs. Banks incentivize the use of reward cards by offering lower interest rates than on comparable cards without rewards. We estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated, poorer to richer, and high to low minority areas, widening existing disparities."

[1]

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2023/03/10/Who...

thegrimmest
1 replies
1h25m

Can't this be rewritten in plain English as "unsophisticated (dumb) people don't know how to use credit cards in their own interest?". Isn't that just the free in free market?

Why is a principled objection to a paternalistic state intervening to protect dumb people from making bad decisions seen as unethical? What entitles dumb people to such protection?

benreesman
0 replies
50m

What’s dumb is the statement or implication, which is made constantly, that the typical person is dumb. I don’t mean to pick on you personally, who I have no grievance with, but rather to heap scorn on an idea both illogical and presented in bad faith frequently, a practice I always aspire to.

The typical person is the result of ruthless selection pressures over millions or billions of years depending on how one sets their watch, a chain of the fittest, savviest, toughest, and hardest to kill members of the most dangerous life form we know about.

Most people, more than half, are unsophisticated by the definitions implied, which would make people of above average intelligence “dumb”. Dubious, to put it mildly.

A much more plausible theory, and one not laden with all the trim and tackle of a bigoted agenda, is that the typical person receives a poor education, leaving them ill-equipped to outmaneuver operations research PhDs whose entire job is to use the very efficient frontier of mechanism design, dark patterns writ large, to outfox individuals who (in the typical case) didn’t have wealthy parents or some other greased path into an advanced degree.

And the real kicker to me, as someone who has spent serious time with seriously high-profile people in technology, is that for whatever combination of reasons (one watches out for post hoc ergo propter hoc type fallacies, cause and effect are nuanced in human affairs), I’ve found that the higher someone’s station in life is, the less formidable they seem. I don’t know if power corrodes the necessity to stay sharp, or if privileged positions emphasize some other set of traits at the expense of basic competencies, but if half the big shots I’ve met started from scratch in my neighborhood, they’d have been an easy mark for the unscrupulous and/or hungry.

Being ill-served by an education system that is broken by design, and being outfoxed by fraudsters with sophisticated mathematics who all but write their own laws doesn’t make someone stupid.

vineyardmike
0 replies
1h40m

Technically this paper doesn’t say “poor to rich” it says “subprime borrowers to super-prime borrowers”. Income-to-FICO score is only moderately correlated. Well, it says rich to poor in the abstract and conclusions, but not the actual writing.

The paper says high-income borrowers who run balances “lose” the most in this transfer - because they spend more in absolute terms, and banks are better able to capture that through balance increase.

To quote: “our findings are inconsistent with the reverse Robinhood hypothesis”.

jmilloy
0 replies
51m

This is interesting. The study you cite and quote is about a transfer of money from "naive" credit card consumers to "sophisticated" credit card consumers, which correlates to "poor to rich", "less educated to more educated", etc. I'm even more interested in the transfer that occurs from both cash and non-reward-card consumers to specifically reward-card users.

cbdumas
0 replies
1h33m

I don't read that paper as backing that claim. At best the paper finds that the mechanism is more complicated than "money transfer from the poor... to the rich". To quote the conclusion directly:

"Notably, our results are not driven by income, as they hold within the sub-samples of low-, middle- and high-income individuals. In particular, high-FICO high-income consumers benefit the most from reward credit cards, but they do so at the expense of low-FICO high-income consumers. While credit card rewards are often framed as a “reverse Robin Hood” mechanism in which the poor subsidize the rich, our results show that this explanation is at best incomplete."

alberth
4 replies
1h25m

The money extracted by the credit card companies and Visa causes merchants to raise prices for everyone regardless of whether they have a rewards card or use a credit card at all.

Case studies indicate otherwise.

Dodd-Frank Act postulated what you stated, that higher fees result in higher prices for consumers ... and if you lowered the fees for the merchants, merchants would lower their prices (to pass along that savings back to the consumers).

But studies have shown otherwise, and merchants did not lower fees.

https://www.cutimes.com/2015/09/03/durbin-failing-to-lower-m...

sf_rob
0 replies
51m

Claiming that merchant fees result in higher prices is different from claiming that reducing merchant fees would directly, immediately, or measurably lower prices. Isn't a plausible explanation that companies are hesitant to lower prices for any reason?

Let's consider the opposite scenario, if Visa raises their fees do merchants keep prices where they are? I suspect not.

Devorlon
0 replies
1h20m

Two thirds of the merchants surveyed reported no change or didn't know the change in their debit costs post-regulation. One fourth actually reported an increase in debit costs
dheera
2 replies
3h28m

Rewards is only part of it.

There's also everything required for the credit card company to operate, down to building leases, datacenters, hardware, employee pay. All of that is vastly funded by late payment fees and interest, which are almost exclusively funded by the poor.

At one time I wanted to start an "ice bucket challenge" to start a snowball of rich people donating 100% of their credit card rewards to the poor in some capacity. I'd happily join if I could get the snowball going, but unfortunately, if the snowball doesn't happen with a bunch of multi-millionaires I'll just end up indirectly giving my money (not poor, not rich) to the actually rich and I don't want that either.

lupire
1 replies
3h17m

Merchants pay 3%. Cardholders borrow from banks, not card payment networks. Rich people can donate to poor people regardless of the credit card situation.

dheera
0 replies
3h7m

The cost of running the credit card company plus rewards is a lot more than that 3%. Money is fungible. So your rewards comes 85% from interest payments in the case of Capital One or 71% in the case of Chase.

https://www.valuepenguin.com/how-do-credit-card-companies-ma...

Rich people can donate to poor people regardless of the credit card situation.

While this is true my idea was more of a wide scale protest or behavioral art to make people aware of how bad the credit card system is for the poor. I know it isn't going to solve poverty but it might raise awareness about something not everyone knows about.

adrr
2 replies
2h56m

I see interchange is capped at 0.20%. How do credit card companies not lose money by giving a 60 day interest free loan to customers? That is what interchange fee covers. BNPL providers charge 4% for 90 days interest free loans to the merchant.

supertrope
0 replies
1h47m

In jurisdictions that cap interchange banks cut the fat. No rewards programs, and ending perks like price protection and extended warranties. On the revenue side they are more likely to charge an annual fee. Some customers carry balances at 29.99%.

milesskorpen
0 replies
2h50m

Interchange is not capped at 0.2%

thaumasiotes
1 replies
2h26m

The money extracted by the credit card companies and Visa causes merchants to raise prices for everyone regardless of whether they have a rewards card or use a credit card at all.

This creates in effect a massive money transfer from the poor, who do not use rewards cards, to the rich consumers who do.

Not quite. Credit card companies obligate merchants to charge the same prices regardless of whether you pay with a card, but merchants frequently don't honor that obligation. And there are also merchants who only take cash.

The poorest customers are likely to patronize these merchants. They're also likely to be given discounts that aren't card-related; the whole idea of price discrimination is that, because impoverished customers have low willingness to pay, you charge them less.

In a voluntary system, money transfers are always going to end up being much smaller than they looked like they would be when you thought about their effects, because people adjust their behavior to avoid them.

psadri
1 replies
1h57m

This is an interesting flywheel. Once I realized that by not using a CC I was subsidizing everyone else, I decided to opt into using a high reward credit card myself.

supertrope
0 replies
1h21m

There are Prisoner's Dilemmas everywhere.

Many jobs require a college degree as a blunt filter for employee quality. Now that more and more people have that so it's been devalued. You now need specific majors or to come out of an elite college to get the same advantage that used to be conferred by being a college grad. Colleges talk about affordability but many colleges spend big on recruiting star professors and new facilities to compete in the rankings and alumni donations arms race.

Car traffic makes not driving dangerous so people are incentivize to drive. SUVs make driving a sedan more dangerous during crashes so people choose to buy bigger cars.

Marketers race to the bottom on ever more annoying, numerous, and louder ads. People block or mentally tune out ads which feeds back into advertisers pushing the envelope to get noticed.

If ransomware victims did not pay it would become unprofitable. But each business is rightfully concerned about mitigating its immediate business interruption.

jollyllama
1 replies
2h18m

It creates a massive money transfer from small businesses to credit card companies, transfer partners, and wealthy consumers.

skrbjc
0 replies
1h9m

Seems to make sense to transfer money from one group to another for a service that one group uses and the other provides.

humansareok1
1 replies
3h45m

Theres a net gain between credit card rewards and higher prices for reward card users?

Retric
0 replies
3h32m

Yes because they are required to charge non reward customers the same amount and competitive markets forced prices down.

Suppose the reward is 2% so someone is paying 98% of the listed price. Now if everyone was a rewards customer the price just moves to 102.04$ from 100$, in effect nothing changes. However not everyone uses a rewards card, and the prices stay the same.

Net result with an even split would be that 98% discount applies to 101$ and Bob an unrelated customer is stuck paying the extra 1% to give the reward customer their 1% savings.

However, it’s not split 50/50 so rewards cards sometimes have more victims funding their rewards and other times few victims and it’s effectively just a marketing gimmick.

abalone
21 replies
4h23m

Fun fact: this is why crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards. Too many entrepreneurs focused on “lower fees” as if it were some technical property. But it was never about the technology.

Interchange fees primarily fund consumer rewards programs and benefits. To become an appealing choice for consumers, any new payment method has to offer competitive benefits. Those benefits are funded by the fees.

Visa/MC/AmEx have essentially created a system whereby higher-spending customers are able to wrench more value from merchants in the form of higher fees. This is reflected in the fee schedules that slice and dice merchants by category and customers by card tier.

If you want to build a new payment system it is important to understand that it’s not just a negotiation between merchants and issuers. It’s a two-sided market where customers also leverage their spending power, directly or indirectly.

ninepoints
9 replies
4h20m

Surely that isn't the only reason

MrSkyNet
6 replies
4h14m

The complexity of crypto is probably the biggest.

The second biggest is the missing need: Most people don't have any advantage of using crypto. They go to work, get a salary, buy/sell things and thats it.

If you don't need to buy something illegal or really believe that there is still a soviety left to take some crypto in worst case scenario, fiat is great.

twosdai
3 replies
3h0m

I have this pet theory that the idea of decentralized currency is a bit ahead of its time, and the best consumer use case is for frequent travelers since you could more easily sidestep foreign exchange issues, and hassles.

There's a bunch of backend and b2b use cases to be explored but those also take time.

All this assumes the volatility issue is solved.

organsnyder
0 replies
49m

frequent travelers since you could more easily sidestep foreign exchange issues

I don't travel internationally very frequently, but whenever I do my credit card handles currency exchange for me automatically. Perhaps I'm not getting the best exchange rate, but the difference is minimal enough that looking into alternatives isn't worth the hassle.

howeyc
0 replies
1h21m

Also doesn't need to be decentralized or an existing crypto currency to solve those issues.

For example, central banks are exploring smart contracts for international payments. https://www.bis.org/press/p240403.htm

BizarroLand
0 replies
2h36m

Ahead of its time. Not a bad call.

In a quasicapitalist utopia, crypto would be a very convenient way to enable the government to set a stock value for a universal cryptocredit and make that credit its default method of value transfer.

They could do something like pin the value to 1 credit = 1 hour of unskilled menial labor, and strictly control the supply.

With appropriate software monitoring and a lack of other methods of direct wealth transfer, it would make it impossible to not properly pay your taxes and vastly more difficult to exchange wealth without government oversight, and make money crimes vastly more difficult, from hiring criminals to do crimes to purchasing drugs and weapons for illicit purposes.

It's the perfect system for a dictatorship as well.

margalabargala
1 replies
2h48m

Amother huge piece is that it (Bitcoin and most other major cryptos) is by design a deflationary money system.

Why would you spend crypto when you could get more for it if you wait a week?

You wouldn't.

And people don't.

max51
0 replies
29m

Why would you spend crypto when you could get more for it if you wait a week?

that never stopped capitalist from spending their money even if they make profit from their investment. If your logic was true, no one who has access to investment opportunities (eg. the stock market) would ever spend any money.

albrewer
1 replies
4h5m

15-60 minute settlement times early on certainly didn't help

mindcandy
0 replies
2h52m

Visa/Mastercard have settlement times of over 24 hours.

Meanwhile, for over a decade now, Litecoin has had a settlement time of 2.5 minutes. And, for tiny (sub $100) transactions, it’s totally reasonable to just look up the wallet’s holdings in an instant.

For online transactions, you can always let the customer go immediately. Just wait 3 minutes before you ship :P

ThrowawayTestr
3 replies
4h19m

this is why crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards

I thought it was because transactions take minutes instead of seconds.

tcmart14
0 replies
3h13m

That is almost certainly one reason and an important one. But as the other commenter to your comment shows, there is a lot more. Protections is a big one. I also personally side that, you need a way for people to interface with their crypto like they do with their current bank and as simple as possible. Normal people don't want to have to juggle around keys. Hell, Im a software engineer and I hate having to keep track of keys. So every time I get a new machine, I create fresh new SSH keys. My SSH keys are disposable to me.

SketchySeaBeast
0 replies
4h15m

And because it's uncompelling. I have a bunch of consumer protections around my credit card, why would I want to use crypto instead? Especially when it's a wildly fluctuating speculative asset and the burger I buy for $15 worth of coins today will be $60 dollars of coins tomorrow.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi
0 replies
1h24m

They can take either; waiting for confirmations is only a matter of reducing double-spend risk.

In practice, seconds after a transaction has been signed and broadcast, it is already very unlikely to double-spend. Miner incentives are such that the first-seen transaction is the most likely to be used. A delay of a couple seconds is sufficient to account for network-propagation lag.

You wouldn't do this for high-value transactions, but there's some threshold where real-world risk is lower than the convenience of a fast transaction, and that threshold is reasonably high.

throwaway918274
1 replies
4h2m

This is where a lot of tech folks fail. It's almost never about the technology. Most of the time all you need is a spreadsheet.

bombcar
0 replies
3h35m

Most tech things are various forms of spreadsheet.

Blockchain is a distributed and complicated one.

objclxt
1 replies
4h14m

this is why crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards

If this were true you would expect crypto to have taken off in countries with low interchange rates. Europe, for example, has far less of a rewards and points culture for payment, and (compared to the US) much lower interchange.

Crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards for many reasons - the biggest coins out there are simply too volatile to be usable as a currency, they lack the consumer protections you get paying with a credit card, and they’re simply too complex for an average person to understand.

abalone
0 replies
3h15m

Interchange is regulated in Europe. You would likely run into legal issues if you tried to jack up merchant fees via a novel payment method.

However, even if it were legal, I don’t think this would counter my claim. I’m merely saying that you’d need to match existing rewards schemes in markets where they are established. Introducing them into a new market is an entirely different matter. The system we have today evolved through many decades of negotiation and deal making among merchants, issuers and card networks.

You’re right about consumer protections —- it would be very expensive for a crypto-based system to provide those without an intermediary that can adjudicate and reverse transactions (chargebacks).

skrbjc
0 replies
54m

It's not just crypto it's any alternative payment system. Multiple payment vendors have tried to up-end the credit card companies by focusing on lower fees for merchants, but customers have no incentive to use that new system if they have a benefit to using their credit card, at least in the US.

It's why, though, there are a bunch of payments companies that have popped up in places throughout Asia that aren't competing with rewards systems off the back of interchange.

Sohcahtoa82
0 replies
57m

Fun fact: this is why crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards. Too many entrepreneurs focused on “lower fees” as if it were some technical property.

I always thought the big problem with crypto was that the fees were atrocious for any small transaction.

And the fees only get higher as the network gets busier. You can choose to have a send some money with a small fee, but the miners will never confirm your transaction, as each block is limited.

wlindley
14 replies
6h12m

Bottom line: Pay cash if you want to support your local shops. Use credit cards if you love enriching your local megacorporation.

kasey_junk
9 replies
6h8m

This is mostly not true of the local shops near me. They’ve stopped taking cash because costs of cash are higher than cards.

jowea
3 replies
4h57m

Debit cards?

cmurf
1 replies
4h50m

It seems some common vendors still charge their standard merchant fee even when the customer uses a debit card. I don’t know why this is permitted. It seems contrary to federal law.

bombcar
0 replies
3h18m

All debit cards can be run as credit (if they have a visa/mc logo on them at least) and many merchants/customers don’t know/don’t care.

ajdude
0 replies
4h48m

I used to love debit cards but one time a business overcharged me and that was money out of my actual bank account that I had to wait several business days to have back.

I also saw that places like gas stations "pre pay" if I select debit, trying to hold $60-$100 from my bank account until the final transaction comes back.

While this hasn't happened to me, I've read that if your debit card is compromised or if a charge back is required, you would have to fight your bank to get your money back and it's a bit easier with credit cards.

JoeAltmaier
2 replies
4h44m

How do they get around the rules regarding cash? E.g. "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"?

kasey_junk
1 replies
4h24m

I’m not a legal expert on this topic but it’s my understanding that you’ve not incurred a debt at the cash register. You just haven’t made any transaction at all.

If the store was extending you credit (ie leave now with the goods and in the future pay us back) they’d be required to accept cash at that point.

ghaff
0 replies
3h28m

That's my understanding as well.

That said, there are laws in some jurisdictions against card-only payment policies. I suspect they're not widely enforced for smaller places.

jjice
0 replies
5h23m

My experience lines up with yours. I love paying with cash when I can, but even in my smaller city, so many places won't accept cash. My assumption is that handling cash is a cost they'd rather not deal with.

For food, most places will accept cash here. Hell, even a bookstore near me won't accept cash anymore.

SL61
0 replies
4h52m

There seems to be a split in my area with small businesses, mostly along generational lines.

The ones run by younger people are very credit-card-first, love not dealing with cash, etc. They usually have one of those Stripe iPad things. If you do pay with cash, they'll get a bit flustered because it breaks their flow.

The ones run by older people are either cash-only or try hard to disincentivize customers from using credit cards, sometimes with signs guilting customers about how much money card companies take from businesses.

It really feels like a generational thing depending on what people are used to. The older shop owners remember when cards were a lot more rare, and they've seen their swipe fee expenditure go up over the years. While the younger owners have only ever lived in a credit card oriented world and just bake the swipe fees into their prices from the beginning.

agloe_dreams
2 replies
4h48m

This is actually a lie.

Using a credit card is always cheaper to the merchant, maybe the merchant doesnt realize it but cash is a bad deal like Uber is a bad deal - They money is up front so you never realize the costs. In the case of user, it is fuel, vehicle wear and tear, and shifting demand.

In the case of cash, it is the cost of counting and keeping the drawer, security, deposits, change, and internal training/theft. Most estimates show it to be ~10-20% of income of a business is wasted. Always less than the cost of credit.

Well...that is...if you didn't do what maybe 50% of small businesses do: Screw the taxpayer. Sure, these credit card companies take 3%. Many small businesses take cash so they can do cash accounting and keep "money in" away from the IRS. They dont report it, they pay workers with it under the table and you, the customer and tax payer, may pay less, but you are getting screwed.

JoeAltmaier
1 replies
4h44m

Only from some indignant-irate viewpoint. Paying less is a win. Taxes are a fraction of what you would pay (in th other imaginary scenario) - a percentage of the margins on the transaction. If those are apparently reduced to zero through some chicanery as suggested, you still pay less than what those 'missing tax dollars' would have been. You participate in the savings.

agloe_dreams
0 replies
4h10m

I mean, if you only think from the scale of 'only I exist on earth and nobody else' then yes, but if you consider the grand scale of tax evasion, the cost in your taxes from all of this is vastly greater than any credit card fee.

crims0n
0 replies
5h35m

Kinda hard to incentivize when a responsible credit card user will come out ahead financially by using a rewards card. I get roughly 2k a year in rewards for doing nothing more than swiping.

yeknoda
12 replies
5h39m

I wish stripe or some company would create a zero fee credit card that is truly equivalent to using cash. The wealth transfer from cash payers, merchants, and some card users to other card users and the cc companies is one of those gross injustices, a small and persistent leech on society. Surely there’s a way to do cc transactions for near zero? What is the point of all this tech otherwise?

dboreham
3 replies
4h12m

Isn't that called a debit card?

bombcar
2 replies
3h28m

I wonder why no bank offers a debit-network-processed card that is backed by a line of credit.

Probably because there’s no money in it.

kevincox
0 replies
2h37m

What would be the appeal of this to the customer? It is basically a prisoners dilemma. It is globally optimal to stop rewarding people for using credit cards but for each individual they lose if they don't do it. This is why in the EU regulation was passed to stop this nonsense.

melenaboija
1 replies
4h44m

Agree but maintaining the infrastructure has a cost someone has to pay and I as a customer won’t see any benefit.

I think it would be healthy to be able to have options with near zero cost but I guess this would only happen with strong regulations, which seems almost impossible in this space (in the US)

klabb3
0 replies
3h17m

Agree but maintaining the infrastructure has a cost someone has to pay

The bank? Keeping money in your account allows the bank to take out credit. Providing digital payments sounds like a reasonable service for a bank to provide. As well as fraud prevention. This is how it works in Europe, most people have debit cards. The insanity is having to take out a loan you don’t need to prove that you’re responsible.

rockostrich
0 replies
3h34m

They already started trying. The Credit Card Competition Act was introduced last year [1]. It doesn't explicitly limit interchange fees though. Instead it allows merchants to choose the payment network that payments go through which legislators hope would create a race to the bottom.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/183...

smallmancontrov
0 replies
5h37m

The leech is the point, there is no "otherwise."

phyphy
0 replies
4h17m

We have something similar in India.

[below text is from google search results]

To facilitate the penetration and usage of RuPay Credit Cards on UPI, there will be no charge for transactions up to ₹2,000, an NPCI circular said. For transactions upwards of ₹2000, the applicable MDR amount will be borne by merchants and no additional charges will be levied upon the customers.

Disadvantages of Rupay Cards Limited International Acceptance: One of the main disadvantages of RuPay cards is their limited acceptance outside of India. ... Restricted Usage: RuPay cards are primarily designed for domestic use within India.

makeitdouble
0 replies
4h40m

One side of this is cash isn't zero fee.

It has to be minted and circulated, we see it as "free" but in practice the gov foots the bill. And, for cards it would be issuers footing the bill.

Then moving cash isn't free either. Merchants handling a lot of cash also pay to get their cash moved, processed, exchanged etc. It's an aspect where card could be lower, but zero is also an impossoble goal.

ansible
0 replies
5h7m

There's still fraud detection / prevention, card terminals, and other various infrastructure to pay for. Someone's going to pay for it, somehow.

Also, suppose Stripe did offer a low / zero transaction cost card. What's the incentive for me (a customer) to get it? It isn't any better than the other no-monthly-fee CCs, and is strictly inferior to a rewards card.

For merchants, yes, they are incentivized to accept Stripe's new card. But they can't stop accepting the other ones until Stripe has a significant share of the transactions. And may not be able to do so even then.

And meanwhile Stripe is eating the cost of running this new zero fee card system, which effectively takes away money that they could invest in their own business.

Sounds like a lose, lose, lose all around.

The real solution is to have a law that caps the CC transaction fee. Or allow merchants to add a surcharge for rewards CCs.

isodev
12 replies
7h24m

The AI generated cover image was kind of distracting to be honest. If having a full-screen image to go with the post was so important, one would have contracted a designer or just purchased something cool.

The post was informative though.

MOARDONGZPLZ
4 replies
7h0m

The image content and size is annoying, agreed, but I imagine that, like myself, they would go without an image if it meant contacting a designer and spending time negotiating rates, ideating on designs, and waiting on project completion. It takes seconds and is free to generate a neat image with AI that can be very additive to something like this, but unless you’re NY Times or WSJ doing a long form article, it’s probably unreasonable to expect anyone to get something explicitly designed and paid for in this context.

wavemode
0 replies
5h59m

It also takes seconds, and is free, to Google for copyright-free photographs.

What do you think people were doing before Dall-E came along lmao

pavel_lishin
0 replies
6h28m

it’s probably unreasonable to expect anyone to get something explicitly designed and paid for in this context.

Besides the obvious answer of "then don't use an image", they could also use a stock image.

isodev
0 replies
6h40m

Well, in that case I'd say it's better to publish a post without a cover image. There are plenty of websites that offer the choices between high-quality, royalty-free images or make it easy to buy one.

ggpsv
0 replies
6h40m

I believe the parent was hinting at the other possibility: not use an image at all.

When I see these AI-generated cover images in posts I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. They look "ok" when glanced but pay more than a second of attention and they're terrible and uncanny.

If you truly care about the image's place in relation to the post, you'd go through the process that you mention and most likely you will end with a chess board and piece set that make sense, as opposed to whatever the image in the OP actually represents.

I agree with the folks behind iA Writer on this:

Average AI images drag down everything around them. An AI hero image is a comedian opening the show with a knock-knock joke. Good images enrich your article, bad images steal its soul.

[0]: https://ia.net/topics/ai-art-is-the-new-stock-image

vinni2
3 replies
7h11m

I also wonder if in future search engines would rank pages containing AI generated images or content lower.

vouaobrasil
0 replies
6h8m

It would be great if they were not ranked at all and discarded.

add-sub-mul-div
0 replies
4h14m

The search engine companies are the ones shoving AI down our throats the hardest because they're the ones set up to profit most from it.

madeofpalk
1 replies
7h17m

in 2013 we had generic unsplash bokeh-rich images for blog posts. Now, we have generic AI generated images. There's not that much different. I agree - in both cases they're fairly distracting.

ghaff
0 replies
4h43m

The common wisdom among a number of publications I've written for is that you need some sort of graphic, even if generic, mostly for reasons of social media sharing (and, these days, because a lot of blog templates assume a post has an image).

Those publications usually had a contract with some provider of public domain or CC-licensed fairly generic graphics.

Waterluvian
0 replies
7h16m

You don’t like the upgraded variety of kings or the brand new bishopknoght that can move in a W shape?

hnthrow289570
12 replies
5h42m

Redditors are frequently sophisticated with their spreadsheets; many of them could clearly earn three orders of magnitude more from the financial industry if they stopped thinking that the right way to monetize spreadsheet skill was in gaming credit card signup bonuses.

It's a pretty decent outlet for having something complicated to work on. Another would be EVE Online with the added bonus that it's also an actual game. My guess is most of those people are just trying to min-max what the companies allow them, rather than trying to find an exploit in the system that prints money per spreadsheet CPU cycle.

I am suspicious that anyone can get a job in finance with only churning (or EVE) spreadsheet skills. I have rarely found "well if you can do that hobbyist but seemingly proximal activity, you can walk into a decent-paying job" to be true in tech and I suspect it's true for finance too.

Maybe the finance bros just need a leetcode-for-spreadsheets website to run their technical interviews to open the floodgates though.

sam2426679
7 replies
4h47m

I was also intrigued by that quote and find it rather dubious. Coincidentally today, I and 5 other family members are boarding business class international flights worth ~$60k cash, paid for with signup bonus points. This doesn’t even include the other tens of $thousands of redemptions we’re doing on both this trip and the rest of the year. This is also just side hustle/hobby-that-pays-for-itself “money,” in addition to the (not) “three orders of magnitude” faang income.

This was otherwise an interesting article.

ghaff
2 replies
3h33m

The value of points is sort of hard to determine.

I'm guessing (but could be wrong) that you would not actually have paid $60K for business class seats for your family had you not had points that would cover. (I have gotten really good deals using points for something I'd have paid for anyway--but it's been rare.)

margalabargala
1 replies
2h43m

Only sometimes. Depends how you use them.

If you have some specific flight that you pay for regularly, e.g. to visit family, then replacing that flight's average cost with points gives a concrete number on point value.

If you are using points to fly first class on a trip you would not be taking at all but for the point redemption, then the value gets a lot more muddled.

ghaff
0 replies
2h36m

Absolutely. If you use points for something you'd pay cash for otherwise, they're typically worth something like 1 to 2 cents per point. But a lot of people (and I've done this myself with upgrades now and then) treat them as more of less "free" money. Presumably the upgrade or whatever has some incremental value but we wouldn't have paid for it out of pocket.

DrammBA
2 replies
3h53m

I find it hard to believe you're getting almost 6 figures of value out of signup bonus points and other card reward redemptions in a year.

bombcar
0 replies
3h30m

Those $60k flights are almost certainly list/last minute pricing.

It’s even mentioned in the article that the airlines love flight miles because they can play with the redemptions to sell unused capacity for what the customer sees as real money. It also encourages loyalty.

MattGaiser
0 replies
3h25m

A lot of that depends on how you value the flights (a lot of the benefit comes from being able to do international business class one way with points very easily, but those tickets being very expensive in cash), but it is pretty straightforward if you both optimize the earning, optimize the spend, and optimize the points programs.

To give you an example, a business class ticket from Seattle to Taipei with EVA (a very nice airline) is about $8000 round trip or $6000 one way. You can book it for 75,000 Aeroplan points one way. That is 1-2 credit card signups.

But Aeroplan also lets you have a stopover in the middle of a trip and lets you string together up to 6 flights and only pay based on the distance.

So you could do Seattle, do a layover in Taipei, have a stopover in Manila, stay a day in Singapore, and then land in Darwin Australia for 92,500. Which is closer to 2 credit cards, but still easily achievable in a month or two. But the value of that trip when I did something similar was closer to $12,000. Prices out at around $9000 for my test dates for the flights I did.

Now, you need to take many trips a year to do that as a single individual (which I am), but the referral streams for credit card signups are also very powerful, so get a Player 2 as it is called, and you can easily get 20-30% more on your signup bonuses and each person can also do the bonus.

And that is just business class. Once you start getting into First Class redemptions (hard to do, but the serious people manage it), the value can easily be the equivalent of a 12K for a simple round trip, yet alone stacking First Class products as many programs let you do.

Some of the pricing is also probably last minute. Points costs fall last minute, but cash prices rise. That boosts your cost per point, or CPP as we call it.

woobar
0 replies
1h32m

Is $60K cash split between these 6 people? Then it is not that impressive.

If you want higher ROI on spreadsheet hobby start using it for your own financial/retirement planning. Playing with numbers in that field can change outcomes by hundreds of thousands dollars.

MattGaiser
1 replies
3h35m

I am pretty deep into the credit card hobby and most of the people in it are high-earning professionals already. The last meetup I went to consisted of half of software engineers.

So we already have jobs that pay well for optimizing things.

wil421
0 replies
26m

How does one get deeper into the credit card hobby? I optimize for cash back on gas and groceries but not much else.

ghaff
0 replies
4h53m

At the end of the day, it's mostly a hobby and you either find keeping track of everything and making effective use of rewards worth it or not. Personally, I have a few cards for targeted use but mostly I just take 2% cash back on a free card and figure that's close enough.

dsco
11 replies
6h19m

I find it odd that a person who understands the madness of our current financial system so well, still is violently opposed of anything blockchain related.

resolutebat
9 replies
6h10m

Remind me again, what concrete, non-criminal financial problem does blockchain solve better than the alternatives?

loughnane
6 replies
6h3m

Not op, but I want to make private payments through the internet in the same way I can privately use cash in the real world.

I’m not enamored with crypto per se, but as far as I know only crypto in general (and Monero in particular) are working on solving that problem.

criddell
4 replies
5h54m

The banks are also working on that problem through things like Venmo and Zelle. Tech companies like Apple and Google and PayPal have payment services too.

loughnane
3 replies
5h50m

But those aren’t private, right? There’s an entity in the middle that can see all the purchases I make.

criddell
2 replies
3h53m

If I use one of those to send you $500 right now, the entity in the middle can see that I sent you $500 but nothing more.

loughnane
1 replies
1h3m

That's too much for me. It adds up to that entity having a record of all my transactions, who they're with, and how much they are. Def not private like cash.

criddell
0 replies
41m

Is it just the principle of it, or would fully private transactions solve an actual non-criminal financial problem?

hx833001
0 replies
5h53m

Yes, I hope the tech world gets very involved in this. Bitcoin is a horrible product for a cash replacement, since it is not private and the price fluctuates dramatically. We really should have a digital dollar or some gold, etc backed digital currency but it is absolutely essential that it is as or even more private than cash.

someguydave
0 replies
4h17m

It solves the same problem gold does, except it is easier to transport and exchange.

cherryteastain
0 replies
3h12m

Say you are from a third world country. Your family back home needs money, but a bunch of red tape and fees in the traditional finance system (sending money to a third world country often raises KYC/AML questions and wire transfer fees are high) make it difficult and expensive. Moreover, in some countries with unstable currencies such as Lebanon and Argentina, the banks have to offer government mandated exchange rates that are wildly off the effective rates; there have even been cases where FX deposits were forcibly converted to the local currencies at these unrealistic rates. Rather than go through all this, you can just send BTC and sidestep all the issues.

GuB-42
0 replies
5h38m

Blockchains are costly and don't solve these problems.

It is as evidenced by the way blockchains are used now. Cryptocurrencies are the most important applications, and few people actually own them, and by "owning" I mean being able to make a blockchain transaction. In most cases, they have an account with a third party who does the blockchain stuff. In other words, a bank. In fact, it may be an actual bank, which is probably for the best because actual banks are highly regulated and are less likely to just take your money and disappear.

Cryptocurrencies quickly became just another financial product that is being integrated in our current system. And for the other ways cryptocurrencies are used, these are mostly illegal (drug trade, ransoms, scams, tax evasion, etc...) and governments are working on that.

Other prominent applications of blockchains: NFT, DAO, etc... are even crazier than cryptocurrencies. All the madness of our current financial system without the regulations that make it somewhat usable to grownups.

ErrantX
10 replies
4h56m

- In the EU the main reason Rewards cards have declined is that the regulator capped interchange to a very small amount in 2015. The US will follow suit at some point (as noted debit cards have gone that way) but I guess not as low

- I think the simple answer to nkurz's point on why don't all cards charge the maximum in interchange is - it's just market forces. It's not worth enough money to long-term piss off the bigger merchants (i.e. Amazon). When you have a 30% APR card non-rewards card, the 3% interchange is small beans. Also the acquiring bank would probably want a bigger piece of the pie if it were more widespread

- Credit Card economics is radically different across different countries (for all sorts of reasons). So for example, a third of card users in the US explicitly seek the rewards and another third have it for the various protections/security vs. debit cards. In the UK only 12% seek rewards, with the two biggest use cases being to spread costs of big transactions or to improve their credit score. (so for that reason it's sort of hard to have a global view of this problem)

dkjaudyeqooe
8 replies
4h37m

A fun fact is that most US reward cards with up to 5% rewards work fine in the EU.

I have noticed some strange behavior with some cards at certain supermarkets. That may be them trying to fight back against the US interchange fees, but there are workarounds.

jplrssn
7 replies
4h14m

Reading the description of the interchange fee cap, it sounds like the cap should apply also for US-issued cards used in the EU [0]:

... the capping of interchange fees should result in lower fees charged by banks to retailers for processing card payments.

If users of US cards still get 5% rewards when using their cards in the EU, I'm curious about who pays for the 4.7% shortfall.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...

sofixa
4 replies
4h10m

The card issuer and potentially the consumer via atrocious fees and a terrible exchange rate? I have a French-based American Express and their exchange rate + commission on any foreign currency transaction is flat out absurd (I'm talking like 50 euros commission on a 1k USD transaction, + a very bad course resulting in a total ~100+ euro difference than if I pay with a Revolut/N26/BoursoBank no-fee foreign currency payment card).

rockostrich
1 replies
3h39m

Pretty much all Amex cards with an annual fee have no foreign transaction fees as a benefit. The issue is that a lot of small business merchants outside of the US don't accept Amex (or will at least say they don't to avoid the higher interchange fee).

sofixa
0 replies
3h29m

Not in France - I have an Amex Platinum and with it I get the above described absurd fees and bad exchange rates.

Funnily I've gotten notified a couple of times by Amex, as per ECB regulations, that the course they've used is significantly worse than the official one.

woobar
0 replies
47m

Interesting. Europe has stricter regulations that cap interchange. As a result not a lot of rewards cards and less competition in that space. In US no caps, but much more players in the rewards cards space. I've checked recent foreign transactions and it looks like both of popular travel cards make some money on exchange rates, but not as much as in France.

Amex Plat did not charge foreign fee, but exchange rate is 1% less favorable according xe.com

Chase Sapphire Reserve also no fees, exchange rate is 0.3% different from xe.com

dkjaudyeqooe
0 replies
2h26m

I only use cards without FX or other fees. The amount is charged to the US card in Euros and Visa or Mastercard take a 50 basis point commission on the currency conversion, but since their settlement is not real time (end of day in US or something) often this can be a exchange rate win depending on your luck.

bombcar
1 replies
3h32m

It’s uncommon enough that the credit card processors just eat the fee difference. Probably the issuing bank and not VISA/MC.

The number of people who can effectively use/abuse this consistently is probably pretty low.

dkjaudyeqooe
0 replies
2h25m

abuse

Yes using the card as designed and promoted I don't know how I live with myself.

rahimnathwani
0 replies
2h46m

  It's not worth enough money to long-term piss off the bigger merchants (i.e. Amazon)
But most individual issuers (excluding Chase and maybe 1-2 others) have a small impact on the overall mix, so why wouldn't they issue exclusively the top tier (highest interchange) cards?

twoodfin
9 replies
6h57m

Probably going against the grain here, but I think it’s great that at least a modest fraction of the benefits of highly risk-optimized revolving credit and low-friction electronic payments are feeding back to the consumer, vs. having all the value derived from that technology captured by the banks and merchants.

In a world where these high-exchange-fee / high-reward cards were outlawed, merchants would pay less in aggregate in fees. But almost surely they’d lose out net from a drop in overall consumer spending.

That affiliate programs inspire gamification for consumers to optimize their spending patterns to “win prizes” seems like a neat bit of competitive market pressure: It’s obviously a win for all involved or they wouldn’t be so popular.

stevesimmons
2 replies
6h15m

It’s obviously a win for all involved or they wouldn’t be so popular.

Definitely not a win for consumers, who in aggregate lose out. The margins to make the system work are built into the prices you pay at the checkout.

Other markets like Europe and Australia capped interchange and made it cheaper for retailers and consumers.

This forced banks to redesign their products/rewards/pricing to give consumers a real choice of whether to play or not.

Some consumers decide to fund more of the rewards cost themselves (via cards with annual fees). Some keep high rewards by using new bank-issued Amex (but pay surcharges at the checkout). Some keep much of the gains for themselves (via no rewards/low cost cards, with lower costs for the retailer).

So now, consumers who don't want to pay the overhead of interchange-funded rewards for everyone else don't have to.

(Disclosure: I ran portfolio management/cross sell/profitability/customer retention for an Australian credit card issuer during the period that interchange there was capped and progressively forced down. Later, I was the Netherlands representative on one of the card schemes' European advisory committee.)

twoodfin
0 replies
1h54m

Definitely not a win for consumers, who in aggregate lose out. The margins to make the system work are built into the prices you pay at the checkout.

Prices are a function of supply and demand. Higher interchange fees hit supply (costs more to produce and sell the same quantity of goods) but they also spur demand, or no merchant would accept the cards with these fees. And indeed some large merchants have (for example) excluded American Express or Discover from their available payment methods for just this reason.

bluGill
0 replies
5h50m

Definitely not a win for consumers, who in aggregate lose out. The margins to make the system work are built into the prices you pay at the checkout.

While not wrong don't forget that cash also has costs that are built into the system - there are a number of theft ways to lose money with cash that don't apply to cards. Even when everyone is honest there is the time cost to count all that cash. Somewhere between the two is mistakes in counting.

gruez
2 replies
6h42m

low-friction electronic payments are feeding back to the consumer, vs. having all the value derived from that technology captured by the banks and merchants.

Are you talking about the cash back? Isn't that just a shell game? If the consumer is getting 2% cashback, but the merchant is charging consumers 2% more to pay for it as well, how is it "feeding back to the consumer"?

nordsieck
1 replies
6h33m

Are you talking about the cash back? Isn't that just a shell game? If the consumer is getting 2% cashback, but the merchant is charging consumers 2% more to pay for it as well, how is it "feeding back to the consumer"?

One of the issues is that the cash back rate is not evenly distributed across the buying population.

bombcar
0 replies
3h24m

The benefit for the customer is getting 2% back when prices are only 1.5% higher than they would be “otherwise” because of cash and debit payments.

The disadvantage to the customer is increased spending because of how easy it is, which probably far outweighs the 2%.

nkurz
1 replies
6h42m

It’s obviously a win for all involved or they wouldn’t be so popular.

Why is it obvious that it's "a win for all involved", as opposed to some big powerful financial companies taking advantage of a bunch of less organized merchants while providing benefit to some subset of cardholders? Obviously the merchants benefit overall from accepting credit cards, but I don't think it's anywhere near obvious that they benefit from funding the rewards programs. If there was any way for them to opt out, I feel a lot of them would. And it's hard to see how the non-rewards cards customers are benefitting from the current system---would any of them choose the current system if given a choice?

I definitely agree that someone is winning from the current system, but I don't think it's obvious that it's everyone.

bluGill
0 replies
5h49m

As the article says, those who get rewards are richer people who spend more money. so merchants are indirectly rewarding their customers who spend the most money.

ptero
0 replies
6h30m

My problem with the system is the fact that merchants are prohibited from handling different cards differently, for example by passing reward fees to the consumers.

If that were not the case I would be happy and let the market pick the preferred way. My 2c.

euix
9 replies
5h34m

Often times you will find cash only businesses, especially in Chinatown and restaurants that will give you a discount on the final bill if you pay in cash. I have been to some mid-range restaurants that will knock 10% off my bill if I pay in cash instead of credit. This is the merchant fighting back using their own stratagems.

In many cases in my experience the vendors who can successfully pull off this strategy have a high quality, high value product and operate in a no-frills store front and are often family owned, maybe a generation or two already. There is a Vietnamese banh mi sandwich vendor where I live who has been around for 30 years only accepts cash - they have the history and patronage to pull this off.

coddle-hark
3 replies
5h23m

Fun fact, this is actually illegal here in Sweden! That is, merchants aren't allowed to adjust prices based on payment method. Not sure what the reasoning is.

luisgvv
0 replies
2h44m

In Costa Rica this is illegal too but going through the hassle of reporting it to the local authorities is a pain and you won't gain much, just annoy the dealership.

Usually the POS rate is around 2% so at the end of the day you'll split it evenly and get a 3% discount. A few years back it was even highter and I bought several home appliances and saved around $100 so it's worth for both parties.

Now imagine people that deal with ranges from 10K to 100K - It's definitely worth it shaving a few bucks here and there

liotier
0 replies
3h46m

Because the main purpose of cash payments in small businesses is tax evasion - not just VAT but also paying family members in cash and thus dodging even more.

inanutshellus
0 replies
1h46m

Fun fact, credit card merchants successfully made it illegal in the USA too, but that legislation expired and now it is legal to charge more for credit card usage (though credit card companies prefer that you offer a "cash discount" than an equivalent "credit card fee").

greedo
1 replies
2h48m

My local restaurant instituted a surcharge for card users. Kind of irritating but I understand why, considering the margins in the restaurant industry.

mdaniel
0 replies
1h5m

It used to be a violation of their merchant agreement but it seems a 2013 court case made it that as long as it's disclosed in a certain way, it seems to be ok. About 4 states still outlaw it, based on some digging, but none of the card rules that I could dig up allowed applying that fee to debit cards containing the logo (e.g. https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/business/overview/support/me... )

brazzy
1 replies
5h3m

I have been to some mid-range restaurants that will knock 10% off my bill if I pay in cash instead of credit. This is the merchant fighting back using their own stratagems.

Not sure how things are in the USA, but in Germany, that has nothing to do with "fighting back" and everything with dodging VAT.

neither_color
0 replies
3h30m

Cynically that's probably often the case but if you're offering <$10 food items at a mom & pop shop the credit card fees are non-trivial so there probably is a very legitimate incentive to take cash. There's also benefits to getting immediate cash that you can put in the bank for expenses at the end of the day vs waiting a day or two for credit card money.

temporallobe
0 replies
5h18m

And then there are plenty of other merchants that are 100% cashless, presumably because they don’t want the hassle (and perhaps cost) of handing, exchanging, storing, and transporting paper cash and coins to and from a bank.

modeless
4 replies
2h41m

The big news in credit card rewards (that I was hoping this article would address) is that Robinhood just announced a 3% flat cash back card, highest I've ever seen, where the only catch is that the money is deposited into your Robinhood account.

At 3% they are clearly losing tons of money on every transaction. There is an annual fee but it is only $60. The money can be withdrawn from Robinhood as soon as it is deposited. How can they possibly afford this? What are people doing with their money in Robinhood that they are willing to pay people over 1% (I'm assuming) just to deposit money there in a roundabout way?

Sohcahtoa82
1 replies
1h33m

They take a loss from every transaction and make up for it with volume. /s

My guess is that since Robinhood Gold gives you a lower margin interest rate, enticing people to use more margin, they hope to reap all the money back and then some.

Since the rebate money goes directly into your Robinhood account, rather than a checking account, they encourage it to stay in Robinhood.

mdaniel
0 replies
1h28m

They take a loss from every transaction and make up for it with volume. /s

https://youtu.be/KodqIPMbyUg?t=54 (First CityWide Change Bank 2 - Saturday Night Live)

vl
0 replies
42m

Fidelity has flat 2% no fee "deposit to fidelity" card since forever. Probably Robinhood is competing in "small customer" segment and just passes all rewards to customers since it's attractive for their target customer?

time0ut
3 replies
6h55m

Well written and pretty interesting. Somewhat obvious I suppose.

I was hoping he would go into detail on how programs like Citi double cash work. In that program you get the normal 1% back at purchase and then 1% at payment. I assume the latter is subsidized from interest payments, but what about card holders that never pay interest? Are they subsidized by those that do?

toomuchtodo
0 replies
6h54m

Yes. Rewards are subsidized by anyone paying a fee for their card, and by everyone with higher prices. Reward programs incentive consumers to make that card “top of wallet” and prioritize spend on it, which is why the entire rewards system is afraid of interchange cram down and free instant payments in general.

(Work at a fintech, I see the financials but those I cannot share)

squaresmile
0 replies
5h2m

Citi DC is also a mastercard world elite which charges a higher fee for merchants. Afaik most (all?) 2% card are visa signature or mc word elite.

mwexler
0 replies
5h21m

Yes and note that from a marketing pov, Citi looks like a "good player" by incentivising payback. But if everyone paid back in the grace period, the care would fail as transaction fees can't offset the costs of managing the process (payouts, fraud, chargebacks, limit management, etc). Interest and "nuisance" charges are the real money makers.

So, you pick a balance of how much to return assuming that you get a mix of revolvers (borrowers) and transactors, and recognize that if you hit it right, some folks will skip the "best outcome" (for most) option of grace-period payback and faster rewards, due to choice or need (running low on cash, etc). And that's how you get the 1 and 1: folks love to spend, and Citi estimates that the 1 on payback sounds good but can be spread out as folks still pay the minimum to revolve, garnering interest and fees along the way.

It's illegal in the US to reward for debt directly (you can't incentivize folks to revolve instead of paying in full), and this card is at least a step in the right direction of doing the opposite. But if they really incentivized best behavior for consumers, we'd see all the % rewards focused on payback (and none for spend), with a reduced reward for payback on revolving debt, to incentivize reducing avoidable debt where it makes sense.

But that card would fail as a business for most banks and fin companies. While the early trans fees would be great, it would self-select responsible payback folks who never generate interest or nuisance fees. Such a card would need a massive annual fee or have to be tied to some other profit driving product, at least in most companies I've seen.

But maybe somebody will figure a clever way to make it work.

lastofthemojito
2 replies
2h54m

So what's the deal with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card he mentions almost everyone having? I don't shop for credit cards often and when I Google it I see it's myriad of rules for points and perks, but nothing really jumped out at me as the killer feature that would lead to that sort of adoption.

versuspinecone
0 replies
2h32m

I think their point was that it was the first card of its kind outside of American Express. Back in 2016 there wasn't anything else really like it other than Amex's high tier cards. It also had a really generous sign up bonus when they first released it, 100,000 points if you spent a certain amount on the card in the first few months. Since then other issuers have been playing catch-up so the CSR stands out less.

cschneid
0 replies
1h7m

When it came out, its signup bonus was quite generous, and its points could be redeemed for a lot of value if you used them right (travel). It's less generous now, but still pretty solid.

The big one is that points can be used for 1.5x travel or something like that. So 100 points buys $1.50 of travel, which can add up pretty quickly. The signup bonus was worth something like $1200. And its 'better than normal' categories fit well with professionals in cities who eat out a lot, with a high point-accumulation from that use.

jmuguy
2 replies
5h11m

I am really interested in the content of this post, and I assume other posts from the author. But his writing style is extremely long winded.

For instance, this is somehow only two sentences.

  It is a fee, ultimately paid by the card-accepting business, which gets sliced up between various parties in the credit card ecosystem to incentivize them to put their logos in the wallets and on the phones of well-heeled customers and increase the amount they spend and the frequency with which they spend it. (In industry, we sometimes distinguish interchange—which mostly goes to the issuing bank—and scheme fees—which mostly go to the credit card brand itself—but as interchange is much larger, let’s just call them both interchange for simplicity.)

sxg
0 replies
4h30m

Agreed. Lots of parentheticals that distract from the main point.

abhayhegde
0 replies
59m

Agreed. I thought I was having a bad day unable to comprehend the content, but the style is off putting.

yruthewaythatur
1 replies
1h9m

What are these rewards programs? is this a USA specific thing?

skrbjc
0 replies
59m

Depending on the card, you get around 1 or 2 or even 3% back in cash or other types of rewards like airline miles on your purchase. Basically the credit card company charges a merchant something like 3% on a transaction they accept through a credit card, and the credit card company decides to pass on a portion of that fee to the credit card user as an incentive to use that credit card over another form of payment.

In my case, I pay for as much as I possibly can using a credit card and then pay it off at the end of the month so that I can get that % reward back and am not charged any fees.

treyfitty
1 replies
6h37m

Pretty verbose article that can be summarized as “Credit cards charge merchants a fee, sometimes more when co-branded, to entice customers to use their credit card in favor over others.”

triceratops
0 replies
2h59m

Agreed. I read it hoping to learn something I didn't already know. He kept teasing us with the promise of some inside baseball but didn't really deliver.

ismokedoinks
1 replies
4h24m

While this focuses mainly on the consumer-credit card company relationship, I wanted to add this interesting study on the relationship between consumers across socioeconomic strata:

``` Since retailers usually charge the same price regardless of payment method, payment card rewards programs with different levels of rewards effectively cause some customers to subsidize the consumption of others. The research presented confirms that households with income less than $75,000 per year collectively transfer over $3.5 billion to those making more than $75,000 per year. Furthermore, the cost of interchange fees to retailers can be significant, especially in competitive sectors such as gasoline and groceries. This study demonstrates that interchange costs are typically about 17 to 19 percent of retailer profit. Variance in these costs may induce risk-averse retailers to set higher prices, thus generating additional economic inefficiencies and hurting retail consumers. Negative impacts on low income and minority households and small businesses have become “entrenched” and are likely to get worse as interchange fees continue to increase. This economic inefficiency will not change unless there is a “sufficiently large shock” in the form of policy or technology to change the dynamics of the monopolies holding sway over the credit card system. ```

https://hispanicleadershipfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/0...

abalone
0 replies
4h11m

A valid interpretation but not the only way to describe it. If a merchant offers a 10% discount for spending $1000 or more, are they making lower-spending customers subsidize the purchases of higher-spending ones? Are they transferring wealth from poor to rich?

Technically yes. But what would the impact be of outlawing the practice of volume discounts through a “policy change”?

waynesonfire
0 replies
2h4m

credit card transaction fees should be charged to the customer not the merchant.

quantumwoke
0 replies
6h3m

Good article, I wondered about the details of card rewards schemes as a kind of meta commentary on the financial system. Interesting to see that patio11 has left stripe now to work (seemingly) on this newsletter full time. I do miss the days when the articles were technical; there’s a deep software and writing skillset that we’ve lost to the financial system which isn’t nearly as fun.

jtchang
0 replies
4h27m

If you take a look here you can see how this type of tiering system works out:

https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/vis...

Some of the tiers for Visa cards:

Visa Infinite Spend Qualified Visa Infinite Spend Not Qualified Visa Signature Preferred Visa Signature Traditional Rewards All Other Products

joshstrange
0 replies
6h31m

gibbering madness

If there is a better name for the table of rates (or the list of rates on a monthly CC transaction table for your business) I don’t know it. It’s absolute madness and near impossible to make sense of.

Often I feel like they exist only to confuse the merchant into just throwing up their hands and saying “I mean, I guess it’s right”. It also means that almost none of them can tell you how much they’re paying for credit card transactions. All they know is the sales person said “I can get you the best rates” which may or may not be true, those people will lie to you and tell you anything that you want to hear, I know this from personal experience. These people are snakes and dealing with them makes my skin crawl.

I’m aware that there’s a chance that I’m leaving money on the table, but this is one of the main reasons I use Stripe. I prefer predictability an inscrutable of data that may or may not show that I’m saving a little bit more. It’s also why I normally avoid credit cards that have rotating categories or this or like. I prefer a flat, easy to understand rate that I can compare to other cards instead of having to keep track of which card I’m using which month. Again, this means I’m leaving money on the table, but I do it for my own sanity.

dhosek
0 replies
1h45m

I’m really curious about how the T-Mobile dining program works where by registering my credit card (which already gives 3% cashback on restaurant purchases), I get another 5% cashback through T-mobile.

cmurf
0 replies
4h53m

I’m seeing restaurants charge a credit card fee as a line item on receipts like a tax, with a percentage. I wish there were real time information what a particular card will cost the merchant, and that fee is what’s charged. The idea most people should subsidize other people’s kickback is obscene.

Also, I’m confused about the federal law flat rate fee on debit cards. I know merchants using Square and report that they’re charged the same fee for debit and credit cards, no discounted rate. For small businesses, I’d like to use my debit card, but not if the payment processor is going to pocket the difference between the discount debit fee and their fee to the merchant, and thus me.

cess11
0 replies
1h16m

Quite interesting. I've had one encounter with such a credit card, which I only used for making a rather large payment over the course of four months without having to pay interest. To me, that was the attraction, not having to adjust my monthly budgeting much and also not having to dip into savings. My bank would have said 'yeah, lol, you pay our 8% interest if you want a loan you could actually cash out at any time'.

Where I live credit cards are still relatively uncommon, most cards in use are debit, and from the article it seems they have a simpler scheme behind them. The idea to have a 'book-buyers credit card' seems quite foreign, though I think some people have gas-station-related cards.

astura
0 replies
3h26m

Almost everybody writing about credit cards on the Internet receives some sort of spiff if you sign up after clicking through tagged links in their material.

This is something that really can't be said loud enough. The vast majority of credit card content on the Internet is just shilling for referral money. Like almost all of it. There's so much money in this space, and most people have no idea.

That's why Doctor of Credit is the only site I'll ever visit/use - https://www.doctorofcredit.com/were-removing-all-credit-card...

About a decade ago I found some blog about credit card rewards and signed up for their mailing list. The owner of the blog emailed me directly saying how he's going to "guide me through the process" and was pushing me to sign up for certain credit cards for sign up bonuses and wanted to know if I had any questions. He was acting like he was a friend just trying to guide me. I was a little taken aback but replied I was going to spend a large amount of money soon and I wanted to earn a sign up bonus for it and I found a sign up bonus that was comparable to what he was pushing on me from Navy Federal. I asked what he thought of it. He said it was no good and I needed to use the cards he was pushing for XYZ reason, blah,blah,blah. It was so fucking sketchy, I stopped responding, unsubbed from the mailing list, and sent all his emails in the trash. Never visited the blog again.

I didn't realize until later how much money he stood to earn from me using his sign up links and the only thing wrong with Navy Federal offer was it wouldn't earn him anything.

I ended up becoming really familiar with the major credits after that.

alberth
0 replies
6h24m

In industry, we sometimes distinguish interchange—which mostly goes to the issuing bank—and scheme fees—which mostly go to the credit card brand itself—but as interchange is much larger, let’s just call them both interchange for simplicity.

It’s frustrating to read an article that acknowledges (indirectly) that payment networks don’t earn revenue from interchange nor have anything to do with reward programs, but then goes on to say that for simplicity they will refer to it as if it did.

_benj
0 replies
6h34m

What a fascinating article. Probably an unsophisticated model but the way I approach my credit card rewards program is as a “forced savings” deal. I’m aware that they are subsidized, I’m also aware that I’ll pay the same thing if I were to pay with cash (at least in all the places I buy).

Would we be better off by having capped swipe fees? Idk. Would merchants actually lower their prices instead of keeping the extra revenue that everybody is now used to pay? Idk either. I don’t trust in the goodness of the heart of merchants or credit cards issuers.

But, would I have an unexpected 3 or even 4 figures “unexpected” rewards at the end of the year that I can only use for vacations? I don’t think so. I could possibly set up something with my bank, but I don’t need to think or plan rewards… they just happen.

ReptileMan
0 replies
3h56m

In Europe, card acceptance is cheap by regulatory fiat and so rewards are far less common (or commonly lucrative) than in the U.S.

Once is while the EU does something right.