There's still fraud detection / prevention, card terminals, and other various infrastructure to pay for. Someone's going to pay for it, somehow.
Also, suppose Stripe did offer a low / zero transaction cost card. What's the incentive for me (a customer) to get it? It isn't any better than the other no-monthly-fee CCs, and is strictly inferior to a rewards card.
For merchants, yes, they are incentivized to accept Stripe's new card. But they can't stop accepting the other ones until Stripe has a significant share of the transactions. And may not be able to do so even then.
And meanwhile Stripe is eating the cost of running this new zero fee card system, which effectively takes away money that they could invest in their own business.
Sounds like a lose, lose, lose all around.
The real solution is to have a law that caps the CC transaction fee. Or allow merchants to add a surcharge for rewards CCs.
Also, suppose Stripe did offer a low / zero transaction cost card. What's the incentive for me (a customer) to get it? It isn't any better than the other no-monthly-fee CCs, and is strictly inferior to a rewards card.
For merchants, yes, they are incentivized to accept Stripe's new card. But they can't stop accepting the other ones until Stripe has a significant share of the transactions. And may not be able to do so even then.
And meanwhile Stripe is eating the cost of running this new zero fee card system, which effectively takes away money that they could invest in their own business.
Sounds like a lose, lose, lose all around.
The real solution is to have a law that caps the CC transaction fee. Or allow merchants to add a surcharge for rewards CCs.