Originally Posted by
tmiw
Your previous comment implied that when government gets involved in anything, prices go up--not when government tries to cap the price of something.
Anyway, my point was that four additional credit networks may not be viable in the US, at least not with acceptance anywhere close to as good as Visa/MC. Especially if said networks have to offer interchange rates even higher than the current four to get issuers to sign on in the first place (since merchants are already balking at the current rates). To be honest, I'm surprised the US isn't more of a cash based society, though I guess decades of conditioning the public to not use it helps.
It is not in the interest of the greater economy to be cash-based. Cash is expensive to manage - even though the merchants don't like to admit this - since it increases chance of theft, requires time to count, bundle, and deliver to the bank (or you have to pay someone to do that for you); it also increases the likelihood of tax evasion. Merchants also don't like to admit that when someone shops with a credit card, they are more likely to spend more. For the consumer, cash is also a burden since it can be lost or stolen without a chance of recovery.
I try to avoid cash 100% if I can