There are two major credit card networks and essentially 0 new entrants in that space. Your "various credit/debit cards" are most likely with the same two networks, linked to different bank accounts, just as they could be with Alipay. They just have different branding.
Two is a lot more than one, for competition purposes, but it's hardly a wide open market where "anyone can compete", and it's the same as the number of major consumer payment networks in China (Alipay and Wechat pay).
Are these cashbacks truly gifted to you though, or is the price of another product or service from the provider simply adjusted to compensate? Like Black Friday discounts, where product prices are raised so that the "discount" only drives sales volume, rather than offer a truly marked-down/discounted price to the consumer.
It’s even worse. A significant portion of cash back/rewards are financed from fees and interest payments charged to other credit card holders. So in effect, you’re getting money from poorer and/or less responsible people who carry balances and use their cards to get cash advances.
Where do you think those fees come from? You! Rebates are your own money you have to optimize to get back, and those who are less well off are usually the ones who are disproportionally impacted by the aggregate costs of reward cards (because they're paying with cash, debit cards, or other mechanisms where they don't receive a rebate).
Rewards for payments and unregulated interchange fees need to die. They are a financial transaction tax on everyone.
No, they are partially a cut of the fees the CC company charges. Show me proof that they're 100% from fees and I'll believe you. Otherwise a quick google search shows that you're not correct here.
6% back on groceries with a $6,000 cap for the Amex, $95 fee, cap met in July, gas is 3% back. Chase visa has 5% back on groceries with a 12k cap, no fee. Bank of America visa has 3% back online orders, no fee.
Delta Amex with 100,000+ miles is used for automated bills, $95 fee. Pre-covid I made back the $95 fee by saving on checked bags etc. Will be cancelled in January due to covid.
I have United-branded Visa. I was going to cancel it but the rep said that I could pay the annual fee of $95 with miles. I have it to avoid paying bag fees. Haven't traveled with United for more than a year. I guess I'll keep it until the miles run out.
I don't know if you can do the same with your Delta Amex but FYI.
> Yes and I make about $1500-$2000 in cash back a year using my various branded credit cards. How can you do that with Alipay?
Which are essentially funded through merchant fees. CC's will gladly give you $2k in cash back for all of the fees that it charges merchants. If those fees didn't exist, your overall cost of goods would likely be ~3% cheaper.
There are two major networks, but many vendors of credit cards, with very difficult qualities from each other.
If you have any problems, it's the vendors you will deal with and who decide things like your credit limit, how often that's revised (up or down), whether payments are blocked and how to unblock them, how you are notified about transactions, whether paying off the card turns into credit instantly or takes a few days, your interest rates, whether the interest is applied immediately or not, whether you have balance transfer and money transfer, whether you have 0% transfers, cashbacks and other deals, and the kind of customer service you get (whether it's on the phone or forced to be via chat, whether they answer quickly and are helpful or take forever and are not), and whether their website and app are down "for maintenance" regularly.
Almost everything you'd care about is up to the vendor of which there are many, not the network.
Two is a lot more than one, for competition purposes, but it's hardly a wide open market where "anyone can compete", and it's the same as the number of major consumer payment networks in China (Alipay and Wechat pay).