This isn’t necessarily a market answer though. In a well functioning country, government could intervene to disrupt the status quo. For example, in Denmark, the government mandated a very, very low fee card system (imaginatively called DanCard) that basically ran at cost rather than profit. While it’s a fully private system now, regulation still governs a maximum charge which is far lower than the fee for using a Visa or Mastercard or, worse, Amex.

In a world where government works on your behalf, actions can actually occur to benefit the citizens.

But you do understand that if credit card cash backs didn’t exist, prices would likely fall by more than the cash back?