The EU also capped interchange fees though, in most cases at least.

I'd rather pay whatever payment fee (cash, debit, credit) the merchant sees fit. I have no problem paying a little more for my own convenience, but I'd rather not subsidize Amex and corporate cards.

What always surprised me is how much we're willing to put a few private firms in the dead centre of the cashless economy vision. Even assuming Visa and Mastercard stay in business forever, what's going to prevent them from pulling the plug on legal businesses that are too controversial, or enforcing a "it may be legal in YOUR country, but we won't let you accept payments because it's not in OURS" paradigm?

I'm surprised there's nobody developing a 100% state-run payment processing network which would be a near drop-in replacement for the current credit card networks. Things like bank wires and ACH aren't really set up to provide responses fast enough for retail point-of-sale.

It's vital to protect our "the advertised price is the price you pay" rules. Before these fee rules we had e.g. Ryanair advertising prices that were only available when paying with one rare credit card, and a substantial surcharge on all the cards people actually used.

I believe merchants can still offer a cash discount, which seems like a better way of handling it: cards shouldn't be subsidised, but advertised prices should be the prices when paying the way most people actually pay.