(Offtopic) credit card charges

People don't like an exposed charge only because they are not used to it, and errantly think it is free. As it stands there is a significant spread in percentage fee to the merchant from the lowest to highest card, and there is no reason for this other than abusive behavior by the credit card company.

Here in .ca the GST is an after the fact charge, it isn't built into the advertised price. People got used to it.

Yes there are benefits to the merchant, and yes cash costs money to process too - the point is there is a completely captive and non-competitive market here, and it is *very* lucrative to the middle men. The banks/etc have figured out they can offer a premium card to their customers to grow their market and completely pay for it by charging the merchants. Nobody can stop them.

In Canada MasterCard *raised* their charges to merchants because they were too low in relation to VISA. What you say? Its simple, the BANK is MasterCard's customer, the merchant and consumer are the PRODUCT they sell to the bank. With low merchant fees their product was not competitive.

Banning this hidden fee is the only way to get things back in order where merchants and card holders are the customers.