Europeans also use credit cards way differently. Pretty much all cards now have EMV crypto chip which makes traditional credit card fraud impractical. The merchants pay for the EMV terminals themselves, and the risk of offline, non-EMV transactions is born by the merchant alone. This greatly diminishes the risk of the payment processor.
AFAIK EMV terminals are not required in the US, and the payment processor bears all the risk. This could explain why they must charge higher fees, too.
Pretty much all new US cards now have chips in them. Nearly the entire market has shifted over to that in the last year. The only cards remaining without chips are those that are running out their expiration date.
Merchants are now liable for fraudulent charges if they haven't switched to EMV terminals. The payment processor hasn't born that risk for nearly a year.
It's fun to watch Europeans (like myself) use ATMs in the US.
They insert the card. Nothing happens. After a while they get confused and pull out the card. By then some infomercial is playing.
Eventually they figure out you're supposed to swipe your card in the ATM. There is nothing on the machine that tells them to do so. European ATMs tend to be wonders of usability in comparison.
>Pretty much all new US cards now have chips in them
Yeah, but pretty much all chip readers in the field are disabled. It seems most merchants would rather eat the fraud then issue a configuration change (!!).
That's good to hear. My information is based off a friend who worked in credit card defaults, but it's some couple of years ago when he elaborated on the differences between US/EU on this regard.
AFAIK EMV terminals are not required in the US, and the payment processor bears all the risk. This could explain why they must charge higher fees, too.