Australian here - Points systems are only really worth it in Aus if you're collecting frequent flyer related ones. There are not as many cash-back rewards as the US. We have had a universal fee free bill payment system called Bpay for 20+ years, and paying via cc usually incurs a minor fee. So most households will direct Bpay household bills rather than via credit card.

I don't fly much, so I dont feel the need to harvest points. I dont want my purchasing data picked up by any more companies than necessary (my bank & the vendor), and all the various chargeback and refund facilities offered by credit card companies are a bit less critical as Australia already has stronger consumer protection law around goods fit for purpose & refunds. Credit scores are not really a thing in Australia either, you are assessed on your current ability to service a loan rather your history. Defaults still show up & count against you, but 'building good credit' is again an American concept.

Credit cards are a product designed largely for the American market.

Australia put a cap on interchange fees in 2017 that caused a drop in card rewards. Merchants argued that the lower interchange costs would be passed on to consumers. However, it appears to only significantly affected the consumer rewards.

I can't speak for Australia specifically, but most EU countries sharply cap the interchange fees that credit card companies can charge so they don't really have rewards to speak of

In Poland I get rewards for using debit cards too, credit cards do not offer anything more in that regard. The rewards offered by bank are the same regardless of which type of card I use. They are in fact based on referral programs (bank gets a small percentage of a transaction if we use their link and they share that earning with us). Debit cards are free and the cheapest CC I can get from my bank is $10/year. And every month I would need to make sure that the CC is paid. There's nothing CC can offer me besides maybe building a credit score.

In my country, merchants add a 2.5% fee to every credit card transaction. Cash is king.

Rewards/points are not free. You're paying more upfront to get something "free" later on.

Only if it actually costs you more to use the credit card. If not, it's the cash buyers that are paying for your rewards.

What do you mean? I'm not paying anything upfront for using a cc afaik. There are cards with yearly payments of course, but they tend to be marginal.

Why spend money you don't have?

If you do have money, why do you need to borrow money you already have?

> Why spend money you don't have?

Classic mistake, using credit or specifically a credit card does not always mean you dont have the money.

> If you do have money, why do you need to borrow money you already have?

Do you have a mortgage? Do you also have any money in a bank account / savings / cash in your wallet? If so "why do you need to borrow money you already have"?

Indeed the mortgage example is even worse, because typically a morgage has interest paid whereas a credit card paid off within the month does not.

Because I get 2-5% of it back if I put it on a credit card and pay it off and the end of the month.

As a matter of principle, I don't accept "gifts" from a bank or financial institution, because there's no such thing.

As a matter of principle I do +EV trades

Free money?

There is no free money, and delaying is essentially spending money you don't actually have. If you want to buy something that comes out of your short-term savings account here. Or you can choose to not do that and have all your money in one single account and everything you do goes in and out of that. And you can configure it in a way that disables going negative so you don't get this weird overdraft fee system unless you choose to.