Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete to blame these fees on "the power of the free market" when the visa / mastercard duopoly exists due to regulations making the entry barrier to creating a new card network essentially infinite

Anyone is free to use discover and it works for most merchants in the USA.

American Express leverages the fact that most consumers don’t care what the merchant is charged

I don't think it's due to regulations. It's just a natural monopoly due to network effects. Any new entrant has to convince hundreds of payment processors and retailers to accept their cards before anyone even has them. Regulations are a trivial barrier compared to that.

I think that was parent’s point. That the US does not have as free a market.

> EU & UK cap it

suggests that was not the GP's point.

The problem is not that credit card companies charge large fees. The problem is that they do not allow to pass the fee on the customers. Because of this I don't like European regulation - instead of capping the fees they should just make clauses that not allow merchants to set a card acceptance fees, illegal.

The clause that doesn't allow passing fees on the customer is the only thing that makes market non-free.

I think it would be only fair if people paying with a card were charged more. They get the cash back from the bank anyway.

Also I know that there are super-discounted stores in my country that do not accept cards for this reason.

They absolutely allow you to pass the fee on to the customers... as long as you phrase it as a cash discount from the posted price, instead of a credit card fee on top of the posted price.

In the US it is legal to have card acceptance fees (in most states anyways).

This changed a while back.

I'm super super glad this change was made. It genuinely makes me smile every time I go to a merchant and they raise the price when I pull out my credit card -- it's not always convenient for me to carry cash, but this has helped me trend in this direction.

Rewards drive up transaction fees. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/who-pays-ge...

"merchants are fee-insensitive, while consumers are rewards-sensitive. In other words, consumers pick credit cards (and, indirectly, networks) based on the goodies they receive, and stores will grudgingly tolerate high fees in order to accept credit cards."

If it were really a free market we would have more alternatives.

Yes - entire cost of processing trx including all intermediaries in EU is around 1%. Less if you are huge. Unlikely they were able to beat it.