> Your No annual fee credit card is costing you $700 a year The title is inaccurate since it's not "your" card costing you $700/year. If you got rid of your ca

> Your No annual fee credit card is costing you $700 a year The title is inaccurate since it's not "your" card costing you $700/year. If you got rid of your card and switched to paying for everything in cash you'd still pay just as much, as the prices are the same and card fees aren't (usually) passed on to the customer, while losing the benefits you get from the card. And of course going cash-only isn't a panacea, as cash is actually rather expensive for retailers to handle. Cash registers, counting & recounting, "shrinkage", secure storage on-site, transportation to & from a bank… it all adds up. Electronic payments are safer & cheaper to implement; we just need more competition to keep prices down. The surprising thing to me is that the payment processors are blaming the prices increases on fraud control. Weren't the recent changes to chipped cards & contactless payments mostly aimed at making fraud more difficult by design and thus reducing the need for the more expensive anti-fraud measures?