That's why Kroger is willing to turn you away -- they don't want to pay for your rewards.
In a business where profit margins can be a thin 1 - 2%, losing some customers that cost a 3% transaction fee while driving others to cheaper transactions can be a net win despite losing business.
Though I suspect that Visa will blink first before other retailers decide to do the same.
The credit card fee is not 12.8% to 15%, that isn’t even a convinence fee. That’s your liquor store not reporting sales and not paying taxes. That’s a big reason why some businesses won’t take cards.
I don't ever assume malice when there is a simpler answer, besides this store is prominent and at the border so they wouldn't be that dumb. The simpler answer is they give a small discount on cash, and a small markup on card purchases to really encourage cash. They are a deregulated liquor state (so they don't have a state ran "Liquor board") which means they can offer much lower prices than just across the border. And I am sure the owner just prefers to go down the street to his or her local branch and say hi to the teller and just deposit cash. Some people just like to do things the old fashioned way. My barber is the exact same way -- he doesn't take card at all, only cash.
But we are well past my economics understanding.
Visa: https://www.visa.ca/en_CAsupport/small-business/interchange....
Mastercard: https://www.mastercard.ca/content/dam/mccom/en-ca/Documents/... (PDF)
AMEX is a bit harder to find, reseller is https://www.helcim.com/ca/american-express/
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/rba-chan...
Taxation is glorified theft, but in this case I don't care because these are acceptable targets.
Despite the pain, I still think Walmart should’ve acquired and rebranded a bank, and offered financial products. Would do wonders for the unbanked, while keeping their transaction fees down.
IIRC, there's a law expressly prohibiting any company from both acting as a bank and a retail business.
edit: Yep, there is. The Bank Holding Company Act prevents companies in commerce from engaging in banking activities.
I just wanted to point out that this was actually significantly more difficult than the parent comment may have realized.
Apparently it's because the BHCA defines banks as entities marketing both checking accounts and commercial loans, and Discover Bank makes no commercial loans and is thus not, under the terms of that law, technically an actual bank.
(Also, apparently the BHCA restricts banks from operating across state lines, too.)
So instead they took a small ownership position <5%, in order to avoid the reporting and regulatory hassles while still getting sweetheart deals.
I wonder whatever happened to that digital pay system pushed by WalMart that was supposed to be on the level of ApplePay? There was a lot of chatter about it around the time of the release of ApplePay, but I haven't seen much about it since. It was some weird transaction process, open the app, present QR code, do something else on app, re-present QR code or something along those lines.
They do, outside the US. They operate Walmart Canada Bank (and issue Walmart Mastercards), although they've recently sold it.