Compared to all the costs of marketing and doing business (like the landlord who'd rather charge $2X for rent and have 30% of the storefronts be idle), credit card fees are nothing. Storefronts, employees, shipping and advertising eat up much more of the cost of a purchase than does the credit card fees.
I appreciate the feedback! I think if you talk to business owners, you'll find that's not true. It's the second highest store-leve cost for most businesses, including Big Box.
I, for example, was running a monthly ramen-box business charging $20 per month per box. My costs were:
Ramen: $7
Shipping: $5
Credit Card fees: $1.20
That means without CC fees, my profit went from $8 a box to $6.80. That's a 15% reduction on my profit, and that's without labor costs factored in. With labor factored in, that's my whole profit, 100%. Sure I could have raised the price or whatever, but there's always options: my point is you can see how destructive that can be.
Compared to all the costs of marketing and doing business (like the landlord who'd rather charge $2X for rent and have 30% of the storefronts be idle), credit card fees are nothing. Storefronts, employees, shipping and advertising eat up much more of the cost of a purchase than does the credit card fees.