Doesn’t work in Costco. Visa works everywhere.

Costco only accepts whatever credit card the Costco credit card currently is. Right now that's Visa, but it used to be American Express before 2016, ironically.

Supposedly this exclusively allows them to negotiate down the fee really low.

It's Mastercard in Japan

https://www.costco.co.jp/GlobalCard

mastercard in canada too

Surely the grand total of Costco’s US credit-card fees can’t amount to more than a percentage-of-a-percentage of all credit-card spending in the country?

...otherwise WalMart and other major retailers (Amazon?) would have partnered with a single credit-card network to benefit too

Walmart and Kroger have had their own disputes with Visa (for one example) and (at least Kroger) started blocking some of their cards at select chains in order to negotiate a better deal. Costco has super tight margins. The the point that when their execs are talking about the price of goods they don't say, "[Item] is $70." No, they say, "[Item] is 69.99." Their culture is about every last penny of the margin. Their money comes from memberships.

Costco UK accepts all three card networks (Amex/Mastercard/Visa). I wonder how their UK division can do this if Costco prefers to do exclusivity deals that allow them to lock in a low fee?

Europe has lower fees by legislative fiat. UK still has these (mostly) due to the majority of these caps existing pre-Brexit.

Amex’s business proposition to sellers is “we charge high fees but a lot of rich people have Amex so you (the seller) should suck it up and accept us anyway”

Sure that works if you’re selling perfume or handbags, but if you’re a family restaurant then rich people and regular people eat the same quantity of food, your margins are low, why accept it?

Moreover Amex is pretty rare outside of certain markets. If only foreigners use Amex, and your business is not catered to foreigners, then you probably aren’t going to support it or in some cases even know what the hell it is.

Whelp, here in Germany many Starbucks and McDonalds, as well as some restaurants(middle to high end) immediately decline(or block Amex payment at counter), though if I am a bit sneaky and use Apple Pay method they can't see it and sometimes actually work.

The issue with other cards here(Germany) is, everything is fake credit, i.e. my Visa/MasterCard is just "Debit" and immediately books paid amount from my bank and some also comes with hefty monthly fees because they issue a shiny/designer "Debit" card. My bank indeed issues a real MasterCard but the monthly fees are unreasonable added on top of my already expensive checking account fees and it has very crappy app where trying to temporarily (un-)block my card needs calling their support and waiting in line while amex app gives me these features immediately on app.

Amex however gives me real credit(though they book the whole amount on start of next month) and also payback points in exchange for minuscle monthly fees but they have free same card with less sexy design which doesn't signal my ego correctly.

What you describe for your particular Amex card isn't a real credit card either. That's a charge card. Germany doesn't do real credit cards much (if at all?)

It does, he could get one from Hanseatic Bank for free, DKB had a proper credit card for years (now with s fee). They are mostly fee-ridden, since germans don’t like them very much (cultural thing?) and they are offered as an extra.

Beside the culture (losing everything twice in the last 100 years),

I think money transfer plays a big role. Germany never had a culture of cheques and switched from money to money transfers early on (before WW1), so most stuff in Germany either I pay by money transfer ("Ueberweisung") or a company takes the money from my account ("Bankeinzug") - like mortages, cars, rent, electricity, travelling etc. In the US credit cards partially replaced cheques (and added credit, duh!), which was never something in Germany. The only use of cheques in Germany were traveller cheques when travelling - and then only to get money at the hotel.

Even for the catalog business people payed by invoice and money transfer (and the catalog companies gave you credit).

What is left, like groceries, is often paid in cash.

It's a total difference of point of view.

In Europe, banks don't like you taking out credit cards. Borrowing money is viewed as a weakness and it's best to never do it.

In America it's considered a virtue to have many credit cards and shuffle them so you can be seen to pay it off. Really weird.

> In Europe, banks don't like you taking out credit cards. Borrowing money is viewed as a weakness and it's best to never do it.

Don't know about that, "Europe" is a big place. Credit cards are pretty common in the UK at least, and stuff like balance transfer cards (for shuffling) are too. Maybe not to American extents, but hardly a weakness.

In fact, looks like more people in Iceland, Norway and Switzerland own credit cards than the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/675371/ownership-of-cred...

Well the UK is a similar state to the US.

I don't believe this about Switzerland though. They are a very typical people that abhors spending money you don't have. But I think they may be counting debit cards there.

Credit cards have a crucial benefit over debit cards: they add a layer of indirection to my bank account.

Steal (or mischarge) my credit card, run up 10k in charges, no problem. No money ever comes out of my bank account and I dispute the charges/report the card stolen.

Steal my debit card, run up 10k in charges...there's 10k gone out of my account until the bank resolves the situation.

Here they won't let you dispute charges. There's no purchase insurance included either. Or those cashback awards like you get in the US.

> My bank indeed issues a real MasterCard but the monthly fees are unreasonable added on top of my already expensive checking account fees and it has very crappy app where trying to temporarily (un-)block my card needs calling their support and waiting in line while amex app gives me these features immediately on app.

Get yourself an N26 account/card if it bothers you too much. It works as a Mastercard (still the "Debit" kind though), has no account fees and you can do basically everthing from within their app.

I prefer a debit cards. Makes it easier to track my spending, and no risk of overspending.

Plus, probably lower fees…

One thing that never made sense to me is that im sure 99% of all the rich people who have amex also got at least another card. If you dont take amex wont those people just use another card.

Two things:

1) the backup is likely a high end rewards / corporate card whose fees are as high or higher than Amex for most categories of spend; and

2) it’s kind of weak for the last interaction with a business be them saying they won’t take your preferred form of payment because they imagine it boosts their margin by .3%.

Yeah I have never met someone using an amex card that didn't have a backup visa or mastercard.

Sure, they’ll do that once. It might annoy them so they don’t come back. This might bother some business owners and not others.

> but if you’re a family restaurant then rich people and regular people eat the same quantity of food

rich people can afford adding two half strips of bacon for almost half again the price of the burger. they can also afford to leave a third of it on the table (daaaang that off-label semaglutide does magic) and then do it all over again tomorrow.

doesn’t mean they will. but they could. they have the means to do so.

that is what amex is advertising, even if it isn’t quite what they provide.

Same in Europe. I have an Amex card from work. Hotels and most restaurants accept it, most taxis and shops don't. They absolutely hate that card and even if they accept it you practically have to beg them to take it (and even then they will pretend "the machine is broken"). Even in big countries. Try to get a taxi in the queue at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. They will ask you to stand on the side and beg each taxi driver until they finally get one for you.

Also the damn thing never works in machines, like for public transport tickets :( Which is often a far better option than taxis.

I have to use that card for business expenses and I hate it so much.

As an American, I only use my Amex at businesses I dislike, but am forced to patronize for whatever reason. And groceries. It's pretty good for groceries.