Governments frown upon KYC-less digital purse cards. Gotta force everyone to share their national ID number to just open a bank account to keep out drug dealers, terrorists, or NSFW game peddlers.

Banks generally don't like disposable digital purse cards. They make money off fees and interest. If a product doesn't rope you into a customer "relationship" where you link your pay deposits or later might get a mortgage or car loan they can only make money off fees. Enjoy paying $5 to activate a $100 prepaid debit card!

Credit cards provide convenience and cash back benefits. Some might prefer to pay cash for everything for ultimate privacy, and that's fine. But credit cards are the compromise I make. I can still pay cash when I think it's appropriate for a given transaction.

Using Google or Apple Pay so I can tap my phone instead of my card gives me no extra benefit that I care about and complicates my ecosystem with another party.

> cash back benefits

Only in the U.S. In many other countries the processing fees are regulated by the government so the banks can't afford to give you your "cash back".

How dare Europe force card companies to distribute the cost of being poor on all customers. Cashback is effectively a special fee levied exclusively on those who don't qualify.

I was told the other day that the people most likely to choose to avoid the extra 2.5% fees are the wealthier.

In New Zealand, most low margin business (like cafes) ask you to accept an ~2.5% transaction fee (if you use a credit card or paywave). You can avoid the fee by using a debit card with a chip.

I'm unsure what choice the poorer make. If you're actually low income, maybe you don't go to cafes.

I did notice that a thrift store didn't charge the extra 2.5%: so perhaps poorer people have more pressure to use cards with fees?

Amex is noted for its high fees - so perhaps it is a bathtub where only the middleclass care.

When you have to care for money, visibility doing so feels like exposing weakness. But when you care for the little amounts while it's clear that this is unrelated to need, it turns into showing off a quality.

Yep. In Germany credit cards are a nuisance for banks. If you want one with cash backs and easy chargeback functionality, you are free to pay 60€ a month for an American Express Platinum card that works exactly nowhere in EU.

We used to have a "cash card" in Sweden in the 90's[0]. It flopped because nobody wants to keep manually re-filling it with value all the time. It's much more convenient to have a card that pulls from your bank account (either instantly via debit or monthly via credit). In the mass market, convenience always trumps privacy.

The places where a "cash card" have gained popularity have all been using the "backdoor" of public transit payments that are so ubiquitous they also get accepted by retail (e.g. Suica in Japan, Octopus in HK, EasyCard in Taiwan, etc)

[0] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_(betalsystem) based on the Belgian Proton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(debit_card)

Ah, yes, we had those in The Netherlands as well (Chipknip), everybody hated those cards (though if I remember correctly most debit cards also doubled as a Chipknip card), but many parking meters used them for some time.