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A comment on Anatomy of a credit card rewards program. Parent comment

Re:Anatomy of a credit card rewards program by bombcar on Thursday April 04, 2024 @09:27AM (#39930135)
They used to be but the law was changed to make it illegal for the card companies to demand that they don’t offer a cash discount (or charge more for credit). Smaller businesses are doing that more and more since the pandemic to try to hold to their prices as long as they can.

Big companies do a similar thing by offering you a store card. Costco likely makes more money from you when you pay with your Costco card than if you pay cash, because they get the interchange fee very very low and have to pay to handle cash. Rumor was AMEX was eating the interchange fee AND paying them … because they more than made it up by the customers who made the card Top Card.

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Re:Anatomy of a credit card rewards program by joshuaissac on Thursday April 04, 2024 @02:37PM (#39934229)
In the EU, the opposite of this happened: the EU directive PSD2 made it illegal for merchants to apply surcharges on purchases using consumer credit and debit cards from early 2018.
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Re:Anatomy of a credit card rewards program by graemep on Thursday April 04, 2024 @04:48PM (#39935620)
I thought this was a UK govt being stupid thing. So it was the EU to blame!

Given what this article says, it sounds as though not only are cash buyers cross-subsidising card buyers, but non-rewards card buyers are cross subsidising rewards card buyers.

So much for free markets.

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Re:Anatomy of a credit card rewards program by owlbite on Friday April 05, 2024 @10:52AM (#39943107)
I'm told cash is actually more troublesome for merchants than electronic means, especially as more transactions become cashless. They have to pay for keeping change, physical security, transport of takings, bank cash processing fees, etc. Given the EU/UK caps electronic interchange fees to something reasonable, it may even be card buyers are cross-subsidizing cash buyers in some businesses.
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