I pay all my bills/groceries/expenses with a credit card, and get points. I use to use my debit card. Might as well get something out of a process I'm already doing.
Here in Australia, a 2 points per $ is the best value I can seem to find.
Edit: I just did some quick searching, and cash-back cards do exist here, they are just horrible value.
Meanwhile, Visa's interchange rates keep getting beaten down, they're passing through 1.8% to whoever your bank is on average across all cards, with the higher end rewards cards being of limited issuance. If they issued everyone a Visa Signature Preferred card (at 2.10% interchange) like the Chase Sapphire Prefered, Visa would get sued by Walmart, Kroger and the like. Interchange keeps falling due to regulation and lawsuits, up in Canada Walmart even stopped accepting Visa.
Interchange Rates for Visa: https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-in...
Sadly, the current situation is:
* People want to pay with cards.
* Merchant doesn't want to lose 3% on every sale, but they want customers, so they take cards and have to raise prices
* Everyone (even cash customers) pays 3% more for all of their stuff. Some people with good credit get about half of it back as "cash back".
It might be better if we just used cash... It's definitely ridiculous to ban different prices for card vs cash (google US credit card surcharge law).
Rewards cost less for the company to deliver to you, so they "give" you more of them by advertising their cost as the public listing price, and not the price they actually paid for it.
Cashing out, if fair, essentially gives you the money they set aside to buy select rewards with.
I don't think that's an option I have. My credit card's points can be redeemed for points with an airline of my choice (I've heard Krisflyer points are the best value?), or used at a special overpriced online store.