Yes which now stands at $37 on average which is probably more than you what you bought at the gas station. Ethereum fees are very high too. There are other currencies that are better with this. But currently my credit card does this at a fee of ~3% instantly.
I'm curious where the $37 number comes from? I just did a quick search and came up with $13.64 for a "high priority" transaction (higher than normal fee to get included in a block sooner)[0]. It's still high, but not $37 high.
Of course the "average" might be more bytes than buying a pack of gum but the argument still holds that the transaction costs are prohibitive for general commerce.
The average transaction cost is baked into sticker prices, so at the end of the day, it's the buyer who pays the transaction costs. It's like saying 'the merchant pays rent' - yes, in a way, but really no. The customers pay the rent for the merchant via mark-ups.
However, there are a number of benefits; for one, average ticket size is about 20% higher for credit transactions vs cash (if I recall correctly) and merchants do not have to hold onto and manage piles of cash. This is a material cost savings.
Further, of that 3%, about 0.1% goes to Visa, the rest goes to the issuing bank and covers the cost of rewards programs and loan origination. Generally speaking between 1 and 2% of that will be rebated to the buyer.
For the remaining 0.9-1.9%, customers get benefits like insurance and the ability to issue chargebacks.
In Europe, debit interchange is capped at 0.2% and credit at 0.3%, and they just don't have insurance or rewards.
As it stands today if you wanted to transact in crypto, not only will you pay the $30 fee, you'll also be paying the mark-up for credit acceptance.
I know how credit cards work. I'm saying that Ethereum fees could be priced in the same way and you'd also never notice them because they'd get aggregated over every purchase. I realize this isn't a realistic scenario, but I think it's ignoring a monopoly type situation to accept that credit cards can price their costs in and other types of transactions cannot.
Not really. Your wait depends on the attached transaction fee and current network conditions. If you cheap out, then yes you have to wait, but it's also entirely avoidable.
