In north america, I think they mostly (still?) aren't allowed to offer differential pricing - by law - which helped the rise of credit cards. There has been a lot of back and forth on this in law so YMMV depending where you are.
It's not about differential pricing. If a vendor has to pay x% on a majority of purchases, he will just increase the price for all purchases. So without CC everyone pays less, while with a majority CC customers, everyone pays more. While CC payers get some of that additional cost back as reward points. Overall everyone would be better of without CC though.
I'm not pointing this out to be pedantic, but because I think it's interesting: it was actually not by law that merchants were not allowed to offer different prices for cash vs. credit card purchase, it was by contract.
That is to say, in the merchant agreement required to accept credit cards, merchants promised to the credit card companies that they would not charge users of credit cards more than cash payers.
As another poster points out, this anti-competitive bullshit was made illegal by law circa 2012.
These kinds of coercive/collusive agreements among a cartel of providers of a particular type of service worry me deeply, especially when a previously-luxury service (e.g., credit cards) becomes semi-necessary infrastructure for operating in the modern world. For more on this type of problem, I encourage you to read about the unbanked [0] and the challenges they face.
Despite how much better they make my life, I also look at the success of Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, and other platforms with worry, precisely because they are in many cases creating semi-necessary infrastructure in the private domain. Individuals can already be banned from Uber [1] and Lyft (and Google [1], etc.) without any legal recourse, which also means by mistake because you are treated as guilty until you can prove your innocence, and innocence is usually impossible to prove.
Here's one (hypothetical and admittedly unlikely) future I worry about: autonomous cars rule the world, 99% owned by four companies (Uber, Lyft, Waymo, ???) that provide Uber-style transportation services. There's no public transport anymore (all outsourced to those four, it's much cheaper than dealing with public transit unions!) and so to get around more than walking distance requires being in the good graces of at least one of those four companies.
Poor John takes a ride in an Uber, gets sick from something he ate in earlier that day, and makes a mess in the car. Uber bans him for this infraction, and shares his name on a ban list (e.g., credit reports) so now John is banned from transportation, and has no recourse (e.g., Google's Gmail bans) -- for the simple mistake of eating undercooked scallops, John is now royally fucked because our infrastructure is outsourced and our society has no say.
I don't expect this future to come about. I expect heavy regulation of these semi-necessary infrastructure companies, and I expect it will come soon. GDPR is one example of this pushback, perhaps not the best example. But I welcome more.
There are still laws at the state level in the US that make it illegal for a merchant to charge more for credit cards. I lived in Colorado when the law passed there. It was impressive marketing by the credit card companies under the guise of consumer protection. Sucks because most people fell for the propoganda and now it's law.
Colo. Rev. Stat. §5-2-212
“(1) Except as otherwise provided in §§24-19.5-103
(3) and 29-11.5-103 (3), C.R.S., no seller or lessor
in any sales or lease transaction or any company
issuing credit or charge cards may impose a surcharge
on a holder who elects to use a credit or charge card
in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means. A
surcharge is any additional amount imposed at the time
of the sales or lease transaction by the merchant,
seller, or lessor that increases the charge to the buyer
or lessee for the privilege of using a credit or charge
card. For purposes of this section, charge card includes
those cards pursuant to which unpaid balances are
payable on demand.”
I also live in Colorado. It is still legal for vendors to offer discounts if you do not use a credit card. Some gas stations have lower prices for gas with cash versus card. If you are buying something you bargain for (e.g., furniture), you may be able to negotiate a lower price with cash versus card as well.
>A PCN cannot stop you from offering your customers a discount or another incentive for using a certain method of payment, as long as you offer it to all your customers and disclose the offer clearly and conspicuously.
