They charge no fees to YOU. Duh.
I don’t think they do point of sales out of the goodness of their hearts. Trust me, in the POS business—EVERYONE takes a piece of the action.
I did point of purchase negotiations for a large regional bank. After my orientation about debit cards and ACH transmittal, I went back to my boss and asked if the mafia knew about this process. It’s parts of pennies on the dollar, but it adds up to billions a year. It all comes off the back end.
I used to sell photos online. Did you really think that the $20 you sent on a web site is what the guy on the other end gets? Not even remotely close. The same holds true after all of the point of sale fees. The consumer never sees it. The vendor certainly does.
They don’t charge you a fee. They MOST DEFINITELY charge vendors. That’s the thing with all these credit cards and semi-credit cards. It’s very expensive for a vendor. You’ve got to pay your POS vendor to take, it costs you IT dollars to process it because everybody is a little different, and all the card companies charge you to get money from them. Most charge you both an annual fee and transactional fee. When there were 3 credit card companies in the world that wasn’t a big deal. But now there’s a dozen, and growing. Companies, especially companies that live on razor thin margins like WalMart, will be making choices. They have to.