As for rewards on MC and Visa, which card are you on? In my experience, either the rewards are very small, or they are for specific retailers only, where the Bank has done a deal directly with the merchant. Occasionally they are a loss leader for the bank, working on the principle that you are
The article is wrong about the UK capping interchange fees. Removing the EU cap was one of the first EU rules that the government decided to abolish after Brexit. At one point it meant you weren't going to be able to use a Visa card with Amazon, you'd have to switch to Mastercard.
(To put it bluntly, a big amendment was automatically applied to most UK laws on exit day replacing EU & EEA with UK; and of course in the EU the definition of both of those words changed)
It will be interesting to see Google or Apple's long term play in this market, I would love it if they started providing banking services. Just so it interrupts the currently market where the middle men provide little to no real value to the general public.
If you are in the US and aren't getting atleast 2 to 5 percent back on all your credit card transactions, you have a bad mix of credit cards