Consumers have an easy solution: pay with cash or check. Sadly, cash buyers will still pay the fees indirectly through price increases.

The government could do some easy deregulation here and force vendors to expose the transaction fees to the consumer. Similar to gas stations : pay 3% more for Visa than cash. This will have a big impact on big ticket items like appliances.

Truth is: businesses and government agencies like the cards. 3% of sales is less than what is stolen from the register. State & federal agencies like CC because the records can be subpoenaed.

So consumers, payment cards, vendors, governments all like these cards -- there's very little to discourage their use.