What you say may in fact be true in respect to credit cards specifically or in some very special cases (which I doubt, by the way), but as I use regular payment cards (otherwise known as debit cards), I don't pay anything. Nada. Null. Zilch.
Credit card fees are paid by the merchant accepting the card, not by the individual paying with the card. This is not some big secret. Many smaller retailers don't accept card or have a minimum spend requirement to pay by card for this reason
Why should I care as long as I'm not made to pay for it? In the worst case scenario I can just do by paying with cash
And while it may in fact take a few days to settle these transactions inside the payment system, this doesn't in the least affect me as a customer as payments with these cards are instant
No, but it does affect the retailer. If they need the money quickly, then bitcoin is far faster - in the region of hours rather than several days. Much like an unconfirmed transaction, until the credit card company processes the payment, the merchant can see it but not spend it
Let's hope Bitcoin will make them process these transactions faster
As you might already be aware, I live in Russia. Two days ago I made an order at iHerb, an American company, paying them with my payment card (which is in Russian rubles, just in case). They received my payment instantly (probably already in dollars). But since I forgot to apply some discount code (called promo code there), I canceled my order immediately and got a refund as fast as my first payment went through.
They didn't receive your payment instantly. They received notification from your credit card company instantly. They won't receive the payment for several days. The fact that you could cancel it immediately is exactly my point; credit card transactions are just as easily, if not more easily, reversed than zero confirmation transactions. Both credit card transactions and bitcoin transactions can be broadcast instantly, but bitcoin transactions will confirm within minutes to hours, while credit card transactions will take days
That essentially fortifies my point about merchants being ultimately irrelevant
I mean, as far as means of making payments are concerned. People are often asking themselves (well, this is my assumption as I don't really know what they are in fact asking themselves) why merchants are willing to pay exorbitant fees on payments made via payment cards (credit or otherwise) and they still refuse to accept cryptocurrencies which are by far less expensive in terms of transaction fees?
Long story short, this is a false dichotomy, and your explanation makes its falseness apparent. It is not merchants who have the say in these matters. It is buyers. So if buyers want to pay with credit cards (or otherwise), merchants will readily pay these excessive fees to Visa and its likes. And if they don't want to pay with cryptocurrencies, merchants will be reluctant to accept such payments either, even if they are cheaper and faster