[dror]

Most of these savings could be accomplished by having the merchant withdraw the payment from your bank account rather than a credit card.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Amazon doesn't offer this service. Just take the money out from my bank, offer me the same protections as a credit card, and we split the credit card fee: 1% for you and 1% for me :-).

Used to be that violated their credit card agreement to charge more for credit card purchases, but looks like that's not the case since Jan 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/as-ru...

[TwoFactor]

There is a lot more risk on the consumer allowing a merchant (and vicariously the consumer's bank) full "pull" access to a bank account. You'll need a dispute resolution system, which is what debit cards are basically providing in addition to point of sale systems. Imagine a security compromise like with Target, but if there was full bank account access as well... it would be a nightmare.

Bitcoin is "push" based which eliminates the ability to fraudulently pull charges from the sender's account. Banks also charge a fee, and add transfer times to transactions that are basically non-existant with bitcoin

[davidrangel]

Agreed. Giving someone full access to your bank account is very risky. At least with credit cards you can always dispute charges and it is the merchant who is usually on the hook, not the consumer.