Visa and Mastercard are American companies, and they essentially tax everybody by taking a percentage of purchase prices for themselves. Not exactly a small percentage either, 1.2% to 2.65%. Ever wonder why so many merchants say they don’t accept American Express? That’s because they charge quite a bit more to merchantes, 50% more than Visa or Mastercard. Anyway, we’re letting American companies tax us and we love them because we get rewards when we use cards. But it’s just a shell game because we pay more up front because businesses need to charge more to make up for payment processing charges. They get to sit in the middle and rake in the money.
Now the alternative in Canada is Interac. Interac charges a set amount per transcation. How much? 2 to 5.5 cents. Unless you’re going through Apple or Google Pay, and then it’s a percentage again.
Interac is also Canadian.
Want to stick it to Trump? Stop using credit cards (and Google Pay or Apple Pay) and switch to Interac. Want to make Canada better? Stop using credit cards and switch to Interac. Is it going to be inconvenient? Yes. Online shopping will be much harder but I have seen online Interac payments before and we can ask our favourite Canadian merchants to accept Interac online.
I actually need the cash back I get from my credit card though, it’s more than 1000 per year
But you do understand that if credit card cash backs didn’t exist, prices would likely fall by more than the cash back?
Here is the problem. You’re not going to get the general population to care enough to change their behavior, and then the only people who miss out are the people who are no longer getting their cash back off their whiny self-righteous protest that amounted to less than a rounding error.
Case in point: I live in one of the most liberal cities in the United States. There is technically supposed to be a one month long boycott (lol) of Target right now. Guess the parking lot of which local retailer is still as packed as it always is every day?
People won’t give a shit until they are massively inconvenienced with no alternatives.
Yeah that makes sense
People prefer cards over carrying cash though, and you have to kinda work to collect the cashback. Most don’t bother, which is why the system is profitable overall.
Honestly I think you’re better off extracting money from a large corporation you don’t like (if you can, it’s obviously difficult) compared to ignoring them.
For example, if you really hate a company, flood their sales line with nonsensical calls. It’ll usually be a domestic agent for the sales line, and in Australia at least the average cost to answer a call fully loaded, charged by a call centre management company, is around $30AUD. You also increase demand for low paid workers. If you could figure out a way to do this en-masse for a company without annoying the individual agent, you could do some serious financial damage in a way that’s probably legal.
Edit: If I hated a company, and I had a lonely/senile relative, I would give them a special phone where every button on the phone called the sales line. That way the elderly relative gets a chat and keeps their brain active, and you get to cost the company hundreds of dollars a day. The sales agent is also unlikely to be bothered by an occasional chat with a senile person to break up their day.