But as a customer you do pay the cost of the transaction after all...
Of course you do. You think the merchant reaches into his big bag of charity money when paying the VISA bill? The price you see includes a 3% VISA tax. For online merchants with even a small amount of fraud it is more like 5% to 10%. That steam game for $6 it really is $5 but Steam packs in the projected fraud losses, plus costs of anti-fraud software plus VISA $0.35 PLUS 3% which just kills on low value txs.