I’ve literally never bought anything with a debit card. I’ve definitely spent over a million dollars on credit cards in the last 3 decades and maybe over 2 million if you include personal and business card transactions.

That’s why businesses eat the credit card fees.

Businesses accept less money when someone pays with BNPL. They also accept less money when someone pays with a credit card.

The reason is rather obvious, people spend more money with credit than they would’ve with cash. Accepting 95 cents on the dollar to get a sale with credit that you wouldn’t have got with cash still earns the seller money, money they wouldn’t have earned without accepting credit.

5% is a pretty high rate IMO. When I worked at retail 20 years ago we got around 2 or 3%, and that was a mom and pop shop, not big retail...

Vampire Squid. But this is only in one country. Go other places (e.g. New Zealand) and reality is different. There every single transaction has the credit card fee added explicitly.

The reason for a business to want to accept cards is that some fraction of your customers would choose not to buy whatever it is you sell if not for the convenience. Whether that's a guy who decides not to buy donuts because then he won't have even to buy more scratch-offs or the woman who doesn't get those bald tires replaced because if she did the family will be leaving on cheese sandwiches until payday.

For the consumer the reason is that this is revolving credit. If you pay next month you can have stuff today. That's a small relief, unless it turns into a carried balance and then it's an ongoing burden, but you don't think about that burden at first because you're naturally optimistic.