Internet access isn't particularly expensive in the US.

Healthcare, education, and housing are expensive in the US for the same primary reason: political interventions that simultaneously subsidize demand and restrict supply.

Bit for bit, internet access is cheaper in America than it is in Canada or Australia.

Canadians like myself have ~40% of our provincial taxes spent on healthcare, so in my case about ~8% of my gross income. Somewhere in the tune of $20k/yr. While I was living in Seattle and filing American, quite a bit less of my gross income went to healthcare. Just food for thought.

Internet access sort of has a reason: the US is geographically huge and more sprawled out. But that's not enough to explain all of the difference.

That's what makes it a wealth transfer, from debit card users to you.

In NYC, most independent shops give a debit card discount / credit card surcharge.

> As such, I just pay with credit and have never understood this argument.

Because the merchant pass the higher processing cost to all customers.

Places around me have been starting to itemize the credit card fee. Only car dealerships so far have waived the fee for debit over credit in my experience.

Until 2013, visa and Mastercard forbade merchants from charging more for credit card payments if they accept their credit cards.

Once ever I was requested to either pay cash or via debit in a cafe in Montreal

Good for you as you're smart but less smart people don't do this and then get scammed legally.

Issuing banks typically add an FX fee to the cardholder for cross border transactions. Not always, but many times they do.

In Denmark most retailers will pass on the surcharge they get from accepting a foreign (non-EU) card with higher fees.

You see at the bottom of restaurant menus a note stating this.

It also applies to Danish business credit cards, as those aren't covered by the consumer credit card fee limits.

Most credit cards charge fat fees for foreign transactions (3% is common) and make some extra money on the exchange rate as well.

At least in Finland merchant contracts often specify higher rates for non-EU cards.

A lot of places in the Netherlands (particularly the low margin ones like supermarkets) don't accept credit cards.

Yes, you have outsmarted the entire US credit card industry and all of their actuaries!

They charge you extra, they just make it invisible. The store has to pay the fees and it causes prices to go up for everyone to cover them.

With sumup I get 0.5% cashback up to a whopping 10€/ month lol. There are other cards giving cashback, I think Amex blu has a 1% with no upper bound of monetary cashback

Presumably not very, because the large majority of Europeans do not use credit cards.

My understanding is that they are much less generous on average compared to U.S.

E.g. for now I have the most premium card offered by my bank (50€/mo), and it gets me extra product insurance, rental car insurance, travel insurance, free lounge access, and some other things like that, but no cashback or similar.

I think some premium cards do offer cashback nowadays, but they are in the minority. Some cards also offer airline reward points. My experience is limited to Finland, though.

Normal cards not very generous. Fintech can sometimes give 1% cashback capped at 30-50-100 EUR.

Some weird crypto stuff can give more cashback, but it mostly for scheming nerds.

In the UK (which broadly follows the same rules), I get 0.25% with a Visa and 1.25% with Amex. Sometimes there are introductory offers for a few months.

Usually ~1%. Some direct cashback, some via rewards points (e.g. 1.5 AMEX MRP earned per EUR are roughly worth 1ct).

There are similar caps in the UK and most credit card rewards seem to be low after an initial offer period.

There are some specific discounts and benefits but not cash rewards.

It is illegal (not banks will not let you, actual legislation) here to charge more for card payments or discount for cash or bank transfer.

That's because the $ prices are without VAT