[kristofferR]

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.

[1] https://vipps.no/alle-priser/bedrift/bankaxept-priser/

[josephcsible]

But we do have some credit cards that don't offer rewards, and they don't charge any lower fees to merchants than ones that do offer rewards do.

[kristofferR]

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.

[bigjimmyk3]

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.

[josephcsible]

Do you remember the brand of any of the credit cards with the lower-than-usual fees?