Subject: Reward Cards in trouble?
A recent lawsuit has broken part of the oligopoly of VISA & MasterCard, requiring them to break their stranglehold on merchant terms. Previously you either had to take all VISA or MC cards (or both) but couldn’t discriminate between those which had varying costs. Reward cards generally cost more for a merchant to process since, um, there are higher costs at the other end as well.

This was, in effect, a subsidy from straight credit cards to reward cards (not mentioning that use of credit cards is a subsidy from cash paying customers, but I digress.)

Anyway, your local merchants is now able to accept some V or MC cards but deny others, which may cause some confusion at the checkout. Best to have a couple of them so the cashier doesn’t have to say “So what else is in your wallet?”

https://www.wsj.com/personal-f...