[epaulson]

I just wish that merchants could pass the interchange fees on explicitly to customers, and so the folks who are paying with cards that have high-interchange fees pay more. I'm sick of subsidizing other people's airline mile because Target charges us the same price no matter how we pay, even if I'm using a cheaper payment method. My understanding is that the credit card companies as part of their merchant requirement prevent that, and it'd be nice to see the government explicitly prohibit that sort agreement. (Some stores creatively work around this by providing a "cash discount" or charge a 'convenience fee')

Maybe the card with the higher interchange fee is worth it for the charge dispute or whatever, but if you want that piece of mind, pay for it your damn self.

I think there's some additional complications that different cards charge different interchange fees and merchants don't find out what that fee is until well into the transaction, so maybe this is harder to do that I realize, but that'd be another spot for some good regulation to make the marketplace more transparent.

[nostromo]

> I just wish that merchants could pass the interchange fees on explicitly to customers

They can do this in almost all of the US, although a few states have limitations.

Here's a good list of states and what their restrictions are on charging more for credit cards: https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/business/credit-car...

[danielfoster]

Keep in mind that American Express customers tend to spend more. Stores wouldn’t pay these interchange fees if they didn’t think the added spending is worth it.

Cash also is not free to accept. The cost of handling it is quite significant. Time spent on counts, armored cars, change scams, etc., are all added costs.

[Spivak]

> I'm sick of subsidizing other people's airline mile because Target charges us the same price no matter how we pay

You should actually love this because fees paid by the merchant are pure gravy for you as the customer. If they could charge more and get away with they should just do that. Externalizing the interchange costs would be a huge win for merchants because they just got free money while keeping the sticker price the same. All the benefit of hidden fees without the needing to hide it part, just like taxes. It would do nothing except make everything 2%ish more expensive for card users while you gain nothing. If you've ever wondered why companies push so hard against requiring display prices to include tax this is why. It's not the high cost of label printing, it's that they would just have to eat the 7% because they can't just hike prices without consumers reacting to it.

Have you never noticed that despite the fact that different retail outlets take wildly different cuts it never manifests in significant price differences? "Cut out the middleman and buy direct" is often the most expensive way to buy something.

[qingcharles]

It's complicated because it pushes fees onto the poor, who can least afford it.

Poor people only have debit cards, which have high fees.

Rich people use credit cards, which have low fees.

It would yet again be another situation where the poor pay more than the rich. Which is very often.

[tjohns]

My understanding was that debit cards typically have lower fees than credit cards (except for small-value transactions).

[beojan]

Target is a bad example, because they don't charge you the same no matter how you pay. If you use a Target red card you get a 5% discount.