i think the concept of making money digital and paying by card is brilliant. In the digital age, cryptocurrencies would have been nicer (peer to peer, decentralised, etc.) but those have unfortunately been hijacked by investor bros and black market dealers.

(edit: credit cards are distinct from debit cards, the former are sort of like loans where you are given "credits" to spend, which you are then billed. If you overspend, it's easy to go into debt. Very important distinction!)

However, credit cards are controlled by just two American companies, MasterCard and Visa (the latter constantly confused with visas, as in the travel kind), and American Express if you count that. UnionPay is Chinese state-owned and also very big, but it is mostly used in the Asia-Pacific (not very common in Western markets)

Each of those companies, because of the lack of any real competitors, have policies that are favourable to business execs, not the users, and it's also a bit of a security risk given that all payments through credit card go through these giant companies (who could be compromised from many parties, whether that's foreign governments or malicious hacker groups)

Most people don't have a wide understanding of credit (likely intentionally by the companies to push people to overspend), I barely do, and that benefits them, not us

They have increased prices by at least 2% and may make one spend too much money.

Eh, in an ideal world, they could be fine. It's just a way of deferring goods/services to a future time in exchange for present needs.

Alas, this is not an ideal world, and debt fucks people harder than a methed out porn star.

Thing is, in the same capitalist hellscape that makes them so ugly, they become a necessity, and the purest form of evil

Bad, it's another way to steal from the poor through excessive usury.

credit cards are just credit.

credit is a great invention. economic growth basically didn't exist for 1000s of years because of usury laws and how restricted credit was.

credit is the only way most people can make major purchases and use those purchase to make more money.

without credit the only way to get large sums of money is to inherit it.

Good for you? Or good for the market?

Imagine how many more things we could build if we didnt have to process every transaction.

Well, if the alternative is carrying cash around... yeah, I'd say they're a great invention.

Back in the day charging interest was a crime. Things change.