Hidden credit card fees, and what Cardano does instead

Clear costs, simple rules, rewards you can redeem.

Jeffrey Berthiaume

5 min read

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1 day ago

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Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash

Visa and Mastercard charge store owners a percent plus a few cents. As a consumer, you end up paying for it in higher prices. Cardano flips the script with a posted network fee. If you stake, rewards can offset some of that cost over time. Here’s how it all works: the fee formula, a HOSKY example, and what “change” means on Cardano.

Credit and debit cards have always charged fees to use the network, but stores paid them separately (so consumers never saw those fees). Blockchains make the cost visible. This clarity helps, but you can feel nickel-and-dimed if you’ve never seen these fees before. On Cardano, a simple transaction lands near 0.16–0.18 ADA because of a formula set by the chain. And if you stake, you can earn rewards paid from fees and scheduled issuance.

The fee you never see

When you tap or swipe a card to pay for items, the store has to pay their network a percentage of the total bill. For many Visa and Mastercard transactions in the U.S., that works out to roughly 1.5% to 3% plus about 10 cents (American Express is often higher). These are called interchange or swipe fees. You do not see these charges on your receipt because the merchant pays them separately…