Interesting comments on Wanna Save $6 Billion at the Pump. We should debate policy, but we should be clear on the numbers: Every time a consumer makes a purchase on a credit card, the credit card networks skims a fee off the top. The fee is typically 2%-3% of the purchase price, but sometimes as high as 15%. The level of fee relates to the merchant’s industry and size and, most crucially, the level of rewards. Merchants pay more when a customer puts down a cashback/frequent flier super-gold high premium card than when another customer puts down a plain-vanilla card. As several readers explained, this means that if a customer pays for $100 worth of merchandise at Home Depot with a credit card, the store would keep somewhere between $85 and $98, depending on the card the customer used.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1250548