I think if you limit interchange, reward cards will disappear or at least reward rates will drop significantly; and that would be good enough.
Some banks will sometimes pay more in rewards than they collect in interchange and they must make up the difference in fees and cross-subsidies, but I don't think they'll pay out nearly as much as they do now (lots of 2% on everything options, you can get more if you jump through hoops and didn't miss out on grandfathered cards)
With the EU limit of 0.3% on personal credit card interchange, I don't think they get much in the way of rewards cards; although I've heard business credit cards don't have limited interchange, so there's some larger rewards available if you can swing a business card.
American reward cards still work fine in the EU yielding 2% on all purchases, 3% on groceries and 5% on time limited categories.
> APSW looked at “Net Rewards”, which is the rewards a credit card user gets minus the fees and interest they paid on the card.
If you're paying interest on a credit card, you're using it wrong, and the rest of us shouldn't have to give up our rewards to shield you from the consequences of your poor decisions.
No kidding. For that matter, if you're paying annual fees, you're doing it wrong (unless you KNOW that you aren't).
Yes, but if people didn't carry balances and incur fees there wouldn't be money for rewards and various bonuses and promotions.