This leads me to my question. You mentioned again that cash and cheque are more expensive, or that debit and credit was cheaper. What I have here is a study, a discussion paper by the Bank of Canada, that looks at a transaction that is about $36.50, which is about average, and shows that the average cash transaction cost is 25¢, debit comes in at 19¢, and credit at 82¢. It's more than three times the next level.
What you're arguing, basically, is that credit is much cheaper. What I fear with the debit, if it goes to a percentage basis, is that all of a sudden you're just changing money from one place to another, yet you're charging a percentage, and it can become quite substantial. In fact, it's more than three times as much.
The argument is that with the better card, the incentive card, people will spend more money. There is an argument for that. I don't agree with your assertion that the use of card payments can stimulate impulse, especially on larger purchases.
However, this doesn't apply to certain categories, such as grocers or gas retailers, who must contend with very small margins as it is. What we've effectively done is take a fixed level of consumption, and I don't think it's really fair to those consumers that they should have to pay a higher rate on an interchange rate that offers all these benefits. They have very thin margins. They don't have a choice whether to choose to accept the base model or the Cadillac model, for lack of a better word.