Would you be surprised to learn that in the US, banks capture 85%+ of the fee you're talking about (in their roles as card issuers and merchant bankers). I'm s

Would you be surprised to learn that in the US, banks capture 85%+ of the fee you're talking about (in their roles as card issuers and merchant bankers). I'm serious, you can even do the math from Visa's disclosures - they make $30bn of revenue on $10tn of transactions (i.e. 0.3%). The reason Mastercard and Visa exist (I'm serious, both used to be wholly owned by the banks) is to have a fall guy so that banks can blame someone else when they want more of the transaction settlement pie. Do not assume German banks are somehow "the good guys" unless interchange and merchant discount rates don't go up, because there's nothing about Visa or Mastercard that forces them to take the interchange (in fact, one of the weirdest parts of the US is that wealthy customers just get that interchange given back to them).