It’s a shitty game. The worst part to me is that there’s a whole culture of avoiding credit card debt(which is good), that cut out credit cards altogether and many are never even aware that they’re leaving those rewards on the table let alone the other benefits (fraud protection, extended warranties, price protection, etc.) that are commonly available for credit card purchases.

I think the fee structure could be better, and that would change a lot. In many ways, the merchant fees are worthwhile as the transactions are easier to process than cash, there’s merchant side protections from fraud, it reduces crime(businesses having less cash on hand), etc… The issues are that pricing is negotiable so companies that do the biggest volume pay the lowest fees, its percentage based which hurts companies that tend to have higher transaction values, and bigger companies get more benefit from being able to track customers by their card.