Credit card interchange fees being ridiculously high is pretty much a US thing:
> In the United States, the fee averages approximately 2% of transaction value. In the EU, interchange fees are capped to 0.3% of the transaction for credit cards and to 0.2% for debit cards, while there is no cap for corporate cards.
Sensible regulation can make a big difference.
FWIW, I can pay bills by initiating a transfer both in HK and the EU instantaneously and for free.
Note also in your comparison of costs that most people still use fiat, and then pay the enormous fees of exchanges like Coinbase or Bybit that (for retail investors) are ridiculously high. So, a fiat-crypto-transfer-crypto-fiat round trip has another 2% or so on top (plus volatility).
It goes to rewards which go straight back to the consumer.
My main credit card gives me 2% back on all purchases. In cash. Zero annual fee. And it's a card anyone with a normal credit score can get. Nothing special about it.
It really only makes sense to compare interchange fees after subtracting the proportion of them that get paid back to consumers.
Sure, smart consumers can claw back some of that. But what you have then is merchants raising average prices, and consumers that use such credit cards being subsidized by those that don't.
> In the United States, the fee averages approximately 2% of transaction value. In the EU, interchange fees are capped to 0.3% of the transaction for credit cards and to 0.2% for debit cards, while there is no cap for corporate cards.
Sensible regulation can make a big difference.
FWIW, I can pay bills by initiating a transfer both in HK and the EU instantaneously and for free.
Note also in your comparison of costs that most people still use fiat, and then pay the enormous fees of exchanges like Coinbase or Bybit that (for retail investors) are ridiculously high. So, a fiat-crypto-transfer-crypto-fiat round trip has another 2% or so on top (plus volatility).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee