[simondotau]

What about transactions that weren't made directly with a credit card, but rather with an Apple Store gift card purchased from a physical retailer? Possibly during a 20% off sale? Even if you elide any such discounting, Apple's transactional cost is going to be far, far higher than 5%.

I doubt there's any publicly available hard data around the costs of running the gift card ecosystem, but a number between 15 and 35 percent would not surprise me at all.

[mikepurvis]

On the contrary, it's super profitable since loads of them are never spent or only partially spent, to the tune of $3B/yr:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/24/how-amazon-and-walmart-make-...