Credit cards, compared to Zelle or even higher-dollar direct-transfer things, have a pretty big moat:
* for people who don't have the money up front, it covers "spending money that isn't in their account today" (for better or for worse). BNPL seems like worth paying attention to from this front, though.
* for people who do have the money up front, why move to something with more of an immediate hit to my bank account in case of fraud? For large stuff (car downpayments or above), the fee was already significant and a reason not to use them, but unless BestBuy is going to drop support for CCs, why would I move off?
Is high-dollar consumer goods what you expect to move away from CCs? Will US consumers let them?
I suppose we will need to see what happens when someone like Walmart or Amazon decides to prioritize instant payments over CCs in their checkout flows. The cost savings to them from avoiding merchant fees at their volume makes it inevitable they’ll test it. I can’t say if they’d start to pass along CC merchant fees, but I’m interested to find out. They can even offer BNPL
or credit directly to their customers without the customer needing a credit card, whether underwriting them by order history, credit underwriting, or a combination.
With regards to your fraud point, you assume a level of sophistication of your average financial services consumer that doesn’t exist in my experience. CC surcharges will allow consumers to self sort regarding whether they want the CC transaction benefits (and will pay for them) or not.
Gas stations do this widely in my area, I wonder what their take rate on debit vs credit is. I've never seen data on that, unfortunately.
Amazon/Target/Walmart etc are in an interesting situation re: who would blink first on implementing surcharges. They haven't yet in 5 years, but of course that doesn't mean they never will. Walmart is the one that would seem most likely in terms of targeting value-first customers, Amazon in terms of technical flexibility (e.g. you can already link your checking account if you want), but a lot of the other ones desire those sorts of more financially-sophisticated customers.
Local gas station said their CC payments were 2.5% while debit card payments were $0.25 per transaction. At one point they had a sign up encouraging debit card use
Online shops in Germany do that for a decade. Payment with direct bank transfer is free, and things like credit cards and PayPal may have an extra charge of 2%. If the free options offer the same level of convenience, I assume people prefer those.
* for people who don't have the money up front, it covers "spending money that isn't in their account today" (for better or for worse). BNPL seems like worth paying attention to from this front, though.
* for people who do have the money up front, why move to something with more of an immediate hit to my bank account in case of fraud? For large stuff (car downpayments or above), the fee was already significant and a reason not to use them, but unless BestBuy is going to drop support for CCs, why would I move off?
Is high-dollar consumer goods what you expect to move away from CCs? Will US consumers let them?