Merchants bear the brunt of the cost of fraud. Credit card companies and consumers bear none. And as the credit card company oligopoly currently* has no viable replacement, merchants are stuck bearing the cost of fraud.
* the replacement will be when folks like Square, PayPal, etc grow large enough that merchants can replace credit card systems with them for a decent % of customers
* the replacement will be when folks like Square, PayPal, etc grow large enough that merchants can replace credit card systems with them for a decent % of customers