I am very happy to see this issue getting exposure. I have long been saying that CC are a big scam and essentially a protection racket taking 3% of every transa

I am very happy to see this issue getting exposure. I have long been saying that CC are a big scam and essentially a protection racket taking 3% of every transaction. People get 1% cash back (when they're lucky) and they think that money came out of thin air. The fact that vendors cannot pass that cost on to CC users is part of the racket--and is finally being recognized as illegal. But the OP gets at the heart of the matter: "Retail transactions conducted with credit cards cost 2-3%, which is a ridiculously high cost given today's technology. Retail transactions (actually, any money transfer transaction) could be profitably brokered at 0.1% or less." Given the high fees on CC's I always wondered why there was no alternative card with lower fees, or why ATM cards still had 1% fees. Now I know it's because of legislation like this. I bet the CC companies paid lots of campaign donations to the legislators who passed this thing. If I was still in CA, I'd send the email he suggested.