Credit card rewards are quite stupid, though, as it obviously requires way higher credit card fees than if they weren't a thing. Customers just end up buying higher priced products and potentially getting the higher price difference back as rewards.
In Norway a card transaction with the national system BankAxept costs 0,06% + ~$1 cent per transaction [1], in the US the fees are usually at least a percentage point or two.
It's not about the card per se, it's about the network.
Visa/Mastercard in Norway is about as expensive as in the US. The US doesn't have a widespread miniscule fee/no rewards card network option however, like BankAxept is in Norway.
As a former merchant, this was not my experience -- I recall seeing a notable difference between fees on similar transactions, and the tracing those differences back to rewards cards.
Yup, I don't know how credit cards are in Europe, but, here in America a lot of credit card usage is decided on what rewards the user gets for using it.
Some are better for groceries, air fares, or hotel bookings and pay out in different ways(cash, or an abstract token system that is formulaically tied to redeemable goods and their USD worth.)
This whole system is financed through credit card transaction fees that are applied to the business owner's expenses during the transaction. Note, the customer is not meant to pay for this fee and business that tac this fee onto the customer's bill can have their license taken away by the company that provides in the interface(VISA, MasterCard, etc.). The whole system is really interesting and worth a read on Wikipedia.
> This whole system is financed through credit card transaction fees that are applied to the business owner's expenses during the transaction.
That's part of it, but isn't another big piece of it financed by interest payments from people who don't realize that you're supposed to pay off your entire balance every month?
In Norway a card transaction with the national system BankAxept costs 0,06% + ~$1 cent per transaction [1], in the US the fees are usually at least a percentage point or two.
[1] https://vipps.no/alle-priser/bedrift/bankaxept-priser/