"The retailer has essentially no power to avoid this, as long as the card issuer's take remains below the point at which it would be unprofitable to service the

"The retailer has essentially no power to avoid this, as long as the card issuer's take remains below the point at which it would be unprofitable to service their pool of customers." AMEX is really on the brink of this point currently in the US. A lot of places simply do not accept AMEX and a lot of AMEX customers carry different cards because of that. Since merchants know that the average AMEX customer usually carries another card as well they are often ok with not accepting AMEX. Currently the main selling point of AMEX are rich people that swear by their black amex card and are really annoyed when somebody makes them take out their lowly visa. So places that cater to rich people or hope to cater to rich people usually try to take the hit and accept AMEX.