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There are substantial differences in the credit card offers that banks extend to different potential customers. Less-sophisticated borrowers receive offers with more back-loaded and hidden features, as well as more upfront rewards, visual distractions, and fine print at the end of the offer letter, according to Hong Ru and Antoinette Schoar in their new study, Do Credit Card Companies Screen for Behavioral Biases? (NBER Working Paper No. 22360). Banks also ratchet up these hidden features when their cost of funding increases, and when the credit risk of consumers is lower, which reduces the risk for the banks that customers default once they are hit with the unexpected charges. Hidden fees go up when state unemployment insurance benefits become more generous.
https://www.nber.org/digest/sep16/w22360.html
One more way in which Big Data is used against Little Guys.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:05PM
> I use my credit card as a debit card with the difference that I pay it off at the end of the month, instead of directly. This means that I pay later and the CC company is losing money.
I mostly agree with the gist of your post, but for the above sentence. Two words: merchant fees. Some mom'n'pop places (e.g. my mechanic) will knock off a few percent of whatever they're about to charge me as soon as I offer to pay cash. Mostly, everyone just pays higher prices for stuff specifically to cover the credit card companies' would-be losses you're talking about...
(Score: 1) by houghi on Thursday September 08 2016, @12:00PM
Stores in Europe around pay 2% to the CC. So if you are talking about several percent it will be more then that. That means they are doing it to not have a trace and not pay taxes. It has nothing to do with the card and most likely they will be making MORE than with the taxes.