[rowyaboat]

Ok, here's why.

Many other businesses have incredibly slim margins and chargebacks hit them hard. Airlines where I live in australia charge big extra fees for credit card payments, but no transaction internet banking payments are free. These payments are actively encouraged. These don't work for international payments and are clumsy even for australians. If bitcoin becomes mainstream enough to offer a minimal fee alternative to credit cards (and over time the 1% bitcoin processor fee will get smaller and smaller as it is a competitive market) then it will get widespread acceptance on many low margin merchants.

At this point, a number of people will adopt bitcoin to avoid the obvious extra credit card charges.

At that point, my stash of bitcoins will suddenly be worth $10000+ each, and THAT is why bitcoin supporters are obsessed with getting rid of credit card fees.

[vtlynch]

Can you explain more about the fees they charge? As we have been discussing, usually transaction fees are 5% or less. Obviously for the airlines this is significant to their small margins, but isnt the fee they charge for using a credit card nearly equal to the 5%?

Surely no one wants to pay a surcharge for using a credit card, but if Im buying a $500 plane ticket, is a $25 extra fee really "large"? and is it the number one priority for cost cutting? If the fee is much larger than $25 then its not in relation to how much the transaction fee is.

Also, chargebacks are discussed here as if they happen often. If you are providing good service they should never happen. While it is an undesirable expense for businesses, it is a very important feature for consumer protection. At my company around 1/10,000 transactions is charged back. I would guarantee the number of sales lost if customers knew they had no ability to dispute payments would be much greater than 1/10,000.