1. Most places don't charge extra for a credit card payment.

2. Most cards have a cash-back arrangement, where you earn credits for what you spend.

Together, that means you're generally not paying anywhere even close to 3%.

Most places charge extra for any payment because of the high credit card cost. So you pay the 3% even with cash. Same reason quite a few restaurants have a sign with cash only. Same reason lots of restaurants in Europe had cash, card only for 20€+, no credit card (EC card was <1% fee, credit like 3% so they said no thanks).

In Denmark it's not unusual for company credit cards to be charged extra, and foreign credit cards to be charged even more.

(Before 2018, it could also apply to personal credit cards. It seems a step backwards to exempt them, as the national sysetem, Dankort, has much (much!) lower merchant fees, but now there's no incentive for people to prefer it to Visa/MasterCard.)

Legoland example: https://servicecenter.legoland.dk/hc/en-us/articles/20258981...

They don't charge extra for credit card payments, but they pay the fee on the majority of their payments, so it's baked into their margin. The cash-back arrangement reduces this by ~1% in effect.

> The cash-back arrangement reduces this by ~1% in effect.

For people with good credit, as the article mentions. It's effectively yet another tax on the poor.

> 3% of your credit card spend is a steep cost to pay for that security though

You're not paying anything for the protections the credit card offers.

Or more precisely, you are but we all are, even if you pay cash or with a debit card, since the vendor prices the items accordingly and there's no cash discount. (There are exceptions, but very rare in the US.)

And most credit cards give you cash back so it's actually cheaper.

> And most credit cards give you cash back so it's actually cheaper.

Do you really think that banks and card networks work for free?

Even if you use the best rewards card and never pay a cent of interest or fees to your bank, you can bet that the program on aggregate is running a profit for the issuer, or they would not be offering it in the first place.

In effect, your rewards have to be either paid by the merchant (i.e. you, in the end, in the form of higher prices for goods and services), or by other cardholders in the form of interest, fees, using a suboptimal card/rewards category combination etc.

> > And most credit cards give you cash back so it's actually cheaper.

> Do you really think that banks and card networks work for free?

They certainly don't work for free, I addressed that above.

The credit card fees the merchant has to pay are bundled in the price of each item, so you can't escape them. By using a cash back card you can recover some of it, so you're leaving money on the table if you pay by any mechanism other than a cash back card.

A few gas stations around here offer a discounted cash price. In those, I'll pay cash.

> they can't clean out all your money if you don't tie all of it to the debit card, just put a months worth there at a time and you are better off with debit unless you get your debit card stolen every year or so.

You can set up daily/weekly/monthly limits for debit cards, and separate ones for online purchases, physical terminals or ATMs, if you want.

In the EU credit cards can't be charged more than other payment methods anymore, so _youre_ not paying 3% more.

Or from another point of view you're now hit with the higher bill even if you choose to pay by a more efficient method. It's debatable whether the EU's rule actually helps cardholders or whether it just protects the card networks and their overpriced payment schemes.

In Australia they allowed merchants to pass on the payment network costs, and a good lot of them did - so you might pay x for cash, x + 0.5% for debit card or EFTPOS (equiv of European EC card) or x + 2.5% for credit card. I think it was partially responsible for a significant reduction in the use of credit cards in the country. But perhaps not the dominance of Visa/Mastercard in POS transactions, since most debit cards are in their network.

At first I hated the rule, but then I realised it was exactly a rule that put the decisions in the hands of the customer and the merchant and took power from the card networks.

(I don't live in Australia at the moment so maybe this is changed. I gather there is now also app-based credit payments which have eaten into Visa/Mastercard's market, both for credit payments and for POS transactions. But how significant, who knows)

EU credit cards also don’t have any (or anything close to) the benefits US cards have, right?

Personally I think that's a good thing.

And yes, it's reflected in the fees that a card issuer is allowed to charge.

It isn't costing me 3% directly, it costs the vendor. Which is already baked into the costs and charged to all of the customers no matter their payment method (typically). So I get other benefits and points / cash back on my purchase, and anyone not using a credit card misses out on those things.

Its kind of a messed up system honestly. The people who are already well off and can get the top of the line credit cards get all kinds of great benefits. And the costs are subsidized by those who cannot get them.

Dealing with cash isn’t exactly free. You have to worry about employee theft, robberies, etc.

If I owned a business, I wouldn’t accept cash at all.

And no, it’s not a federal law that you have to accept cash except in service of debt.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

I'd also have it empty before filling, so it never accumulates.