As an aside, if you let a tip when leaving a restaurant/café, it goes to the waiter(s) and sometimes it’s shared with the cooks. If you lower their fees by not paying with an Amex, the benefit goes to the managers.
I like to pay cash/with debit cards/twint for some small local shops/restaurants that I want to support, the rest of the time, I either use the Cashback Amex or the Certo! Mastercard.
This topic might grow indefinitely, but anyway…
I sometimes do both: CC for bill + cash for tip.
BUT, I’m usually a bit against tipping the waiter. It’s unfair to the others, even if some waiter do deserve to be tipped (as I said and do). My point previously was about supporting the restaurant itself. I hope (and expect) the restaurant pays good wages and the waiters don’t have to force a smile just to get money to pay their bills.
However one point to consider
Let’s say you have three paying options
For the vendor, they need to account for higher cost and they will price their products 1%. But when you pay, everyone pays the same price.
This means people paying via cash or zero cashback cards are subsidising prices for group B.
By the way the monopoly is already broken in some countries. For example in India we have UPI which is gaining market share against Visa and Mastercard.
UPI charges vendors 1.1 % for payments above 25 USD. Lower payments are free of charge. Based on #of transactions (not value), UPI has largest share already.
Maybe Blockchain (BTC or something else) can be competitive to Visa as well. Although I don’t know the cost structure. After listening to podcast about Visa, I learnt that it was a very high tech revolution for its time. Now it is mainly benefiting from very high barrier to entry
People complaining about how cash users subsidize card payers forget handling cash creates costs in time (counting coins, bringing them to banks, withdrawing enough coins+bills, etc) not showing up in those aggregates. Let’s not forget that.
I own certo card, so I am not complaining. I was just saying Cashback is actually good for the ones who own it. It is not a zero sum game. It’s a benefit.
In other words if everyone needs to pay a higher price, then getting cash back is best deal. Obviously unless it comes with annual fees.
I think government launched it to avoid monopoly. They will also launch a public platform for e-commerce too which will reduce monopoly of Amazon / Flipkart etc
Agreed.
However as far as I know Visa only gets 0.25% of the fees. Rest is distributed amongst various parties (bank of customer, bank of merchant) and cost to run the system. There is a good podcast about Visa on Apple. It explained in details how it is distributing the money.
Other perspective - if a shop accepts cash only, I’m not buying and never returning. Cost of business is real and Visa/Adyen/Square/issuying bank getting a cut, is perfectly fine. Arguing card transaction fees in a european country with the wild-west charges elsewhere in the world 
.
Most likely you didn’t read the whole thread. The discussion was never about Cash vs Cards. It was about Credit cards with Cashback vs. Credit cards without Cashback.
@Compounding
This is just not true.
Yes, there are many credit cards with cashback where you pay fees in one or the other way. But if you inform yourself well enough, you’ll find options such as Swisscard Cashback AmEx. If you use that card responsibly (only for CHF payments in Switzerland), you definitely gain more than you pay (pay: 0, gain: cashback).
I have a question for everyone. When I pay in internet, I am never sure if the merchant is in Switzerland or aborad. As you know the AMEX card has some fees for paying abroad (even in CHF) is there any trick to know if a merchant is will process the payment in the country or abroad? I had already a “bad” surprize paying Turkish Airlines and want to avoid any other “mistake”.
As far as I know you can’t be certain where your online payment will be processed.
I have however heard multiple accounts of people being charged foreign transaction fees on .ch domains while paying in CHF (e.g., EasyJet) and getting reimbursed the fees by their banks or card providers. So my rule of thumb is:
When in doubt I always use a card without foreign fees (e.g., neon) as any issues is not worth any cashback nor the hassle of getting reimbursed.
That would interest me as well. I bought dog food on fressnapf.ch as I was too lazy to bike 1km to the next Fressnapf store, only to see I was charged a 1.75% fee because the online shop is apparently located in Germany.
I then gave my dog 98.25g instead of her usual 100g food per day to offset the fee. I’m kidding.
For the same annual fee, you get the TCS Travel Mastercard Gold with 1% cashback.
If you want to find out which party you are actually entering into a contract with, a good place to start is to take a look at the General Terms and Conditions (GTC or “AGB”) where this is usually mentioned at the very top. Sometimes the “Impressum” is also helpful.
I am not saying that this always helpful or relevant for all credit cards and their sneaky terms, but e.g. in case of fressnapf.ch this would have helped.
Indeed 
at the end I stopped paying with AMEX online unless I am certain the shop is swiss (digitech, galaxus, zalando, etc)
How well do swisscard cashback’s exchange rates (in, say, EUR or USD) compare to “normal” Mastercard mid-rates and what’s available on IBKR?
I paid a flight ticket in JPY:
03.05.2024: 1 JPY = CHF 0.00594203 (1 JPY in CHF | Von Japanische Yen in Schweizer Franken umrechnen | XE)
03.05.2024: According Swisscards: 1 JPY = 0.006091
Which is excactly 2.5% upmark and according their T&C. I used AMEX Gold.
I did not find JPY.CHF on IBRK.
EDIT:
JPY on IBRK was on 03.05.2024 between 0.0059196 (2.89% lower than SC) and 0.0059433 (2.48% lower than SC).