I’d be curious what the issue rate between the Dankort & the Kroger Plus Card. It’s conceivable that Kroger has the market heft to do with selling power what Denmark did with law.
As context Kroger employees about the same number of people as 1/10th of Denmark though I have no idea how that translates to ability to change card usage.
To be clear it’s not a single network, there are two networks that fully interoperate.
Unfortunately we don’t have any regulation on credit card fees, so both credit cards go up to 2% and debit cards take over 1%. This has made the banks (who own the largest EFTPOS provider) reluctant to upgrade the system to support contactless and online transactions, both of which are possible with the technology.
It became popular with the consumers because there is no difference between cash and the debit card. It was popular with retail because it was cheap to handle.
Consumers would typically get the card for free from the bank. If you wanted it to work as a VISA card abroad as well - then you would typically pay $31/year. Points, percentage, milage and whatnot are virtually unknown.
Many retailers opted only to accept this card because the international cards where more expensive (but available!).
Unfortunately regulations are going in the wrong direction. The banks have now gotten their saving by handling less cash - so now they're pushing for more fees.
A brilliant construction which could have been a great stepping stone for a true cashless society now slowly turns into a "same same". It goes to tell - never let liberals near infrastructure.
The banks were running it as a loss leader?
There where agreements in place to ensure reasonable costs. This made it cheap to use. And it was so popular it surely did make a profit.
Then the big banks realized they where helping the smaller banks and even more profit could be made by themselves. Hence a lot of lobbying for a "liberal" market.
We still have the card. But slightly more expensive. Not sure for how long. I do not look forward to a future with global players setting the rules on "market" terms.
There are pros and cons to every system. The Dankort is very consumer friendly, and it’s cheaper than credit cards, but it’s not cheaper than debit cards and the Dankort itself isn’t really a true credit card nor is it a debit card.
The fees are low because they are regulated by legislation, but at the same time, the fees are making the company that currently owns the bid to issue and control the Dankort a lot of money from their monopoly.
One of the major downsides is actually the cost to retail. Accepting Dankort transaction is actually expensive, costing a store 20.000dkr a year per terminal. Which is why kost smaller retailers have turned to the mobile pay app.
The major upside is that a Dankort works everywhere that isn’t a tiny/indie store, and that it had relative low fees for consumers. Of course Denmark being a tiny country of 5.5 million people and no real geographical challenges as far as size go, helps a lot in that regard.
But that concept sounds like it wouldn't fare well in the US.