If most purchases are from cards (not saying they are, but we are slowly trending that way) that's essentially a 3% drain on the entire economy for shuffling ar

If most purchases are from cards (not saying they are, but we are slowly trending that way) that's essentially a 3% drain on the entire economy for shuffling around some rows in a database. If I were a government overseeing an economy that has a total expected yearly GDP growth of less than 3% (like the US/EU/UK) then I would exceedingly interested in removing that drain on the system. --- If anything, I'd say rewards cards are the perfect example of a product resulting from a system that has too much revenue compared to costs. They make so much money from having you use your card that they're willing to share some of it with you (admittedly - often through convoluted systems that are hard to place a real dollar value on).