Visa and Mastercard are American companies, and they essentially tax everybody by taking a percentage of purchase prices for themselves. Not exactly a small percentage either, 1.2% to 2.65%. Ever wonder why so many merchants say they don’t accept American Express? That’s because they charge quite a bit more to merchantes, 50% more than Visa or Mastercard. Anyway, we’re letting American companies tax us and we love them because we get rewards when we use cards. But it’s just a shell game because we pay more up front because businesses need to charge more to make up for payment processing charges. They get to sit in the middle and rake in the money.
Now the alternative in Canada is Interac. Interac charges a set amount per transcation. How much? 2 to 5.5 cents. Unless you’re going through Apple or Google Pay, and then it’s a percentage again.
Interac is also Canadian.
Want to stick it to Trump? Stop using credit cards (and Google Pay or Apple Pay) and switch to Interac. Want to make Canada better? Stop using credit cards and switch to Interac. Is it going to be inconvenient? Yes. Online shopping will be much harder but I have seen online Interac payments before and we can ask our favourite Canadian merchants to accept Interac online.
Oh wow no cash back at all??
What is it? You always pay the exact amount, why any cash (change) back?
On a lot of credit cards you get rewards for using them, like interest income. Basically the more you use it, the more interest you get, and you’ll get a credit in your account annually.
Some cards have different rewards like 2% back on all grocery spending for example.
Oh, we don’t have that. Nor air miles. Nor easy refunds.
I suppose the “richer” Europeans do though, I heard it referenced in an English movie of the same name.
Also, we never used checks, pretty much. Probably contributed to the explosion of CC use in the 90s despite the lack of benefits.
Is that a Cashback reference?
That’s very interesting, I learned something new today!
I’ve only ever used a debit card when I was in Europe. There was zero incentive to get a credit card. Moving in the US was different, I needed to build credit and cards were the best way.
Now I have a Prime card because 90%+ of my spending is on Amazon and at Whole Foods, both of which give 5% cash back. I get thousands every year, something really hard to give up. I wish I could stop giving Bezos money, but the convenience of Amazon is just too much of an advantage for me. And I know that shopping is now just a drop in their earnings compared to AWS.
God, I would honestly be so happy if we did away with credit entirely in Canada and removed all incentive to have credit cards.
Many credit cards in North America have a cash back or loyalty points scheme. In cash back, you essentially get a cut of the network fee back as virtual value to pay off your statement. With points, you earn the points based on the amount spent, and can redeem them for things like travel or gift cards. Some merchant categories earn more as an incentive (e.g. 2% of purchase value or 10 points per dollar for groceries and monthly automatic bills, 1% or 5 points on everything else).
Edit: Oh and I should mention, some offer complementary car and travel insurance benefits, airport lounge access, electronic device insurance too. So it’s definitely compelling for a lot of people, since >90% of places don’t offer cash discounts or CC Fee, so people would essentially get or lose the benefits with no difference in price.
Well, we get none of that, which is why most cards used here are debit cards despite all being colloquially known as “kreditky”.