Living in the UK, I didn't realise rewards were such a big deal in the US. I'm shocked at the resistance though, to me,, its a no brainer to just be charged less in the first place rather than have to keep track of some silly reward system to get back the extra money that they charged me. It's the same reason I prefer Aldi to all the other supermarkets, that make me keep track of some silly reward scheme, plus use my data to sell me more stuff to boot.

Credit card rewards programs are "eh", but for me I'd be worried about being forced into a low-trust system like Europe has. In the states, I don't have to worry, at all, about someone using my credit card for nefarious purposes. Getting any such fraudulent activity purged from my card is as easy as flagging it in my banking app.

This leads to a number of positive outcomes, such as not worrying at all about sketchy or online purchases, and "American style" payment at restaurants (where we just toss our card on the receipt, and eventually it gets picked up, processed, and returned without further interruption).

The problem of paying 1-3% of every purchase to credit card companies, causing everything to cost 1-3% more.

To duopoly exploiting customers? Europe knocked down transfer fees to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit card. All fees for the merchant sum up to something around 1%. So anything on top of that, that Visa customers pay in US is pure exploitation. And US government isn't doing anything so people see alternate solutions for this problem.