I fully agree with you, although of course have no objection to companies making a profit, as this is what "makes the world go around".
In the long run, i dont see there will be a need for any bitcoin merchants and the only reason there is a current need or demand is owing to it being "not simple" to integrate ecommerce sites with the "bitcoin network". Once integration becomes simple (and i hope and think it will become simple) there will be no need for bitcoin merchants .
I think part of the "bitcoin problem" does come from within the bitcoin community, where some people are continually thinking "how can we make bitcoin just like fiat currencies", which i think is totally missing the point and potential of bitcoin.
Fiat currency has worked and still does work extremely well (i.e cash for a bottle of milk) and trying to change this will be an uphill battle.
There are however many as yet un-thought of potentials for bitcoin which can make some things that fiat is not too good at simple. AND i think one of these is digital transactions, that fiat currency has been adapted to deal with, although was never invented to deal with... Credit Card companies have been at the front of this "adoption"
Thre below is an extract from a post made on another thread
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Having dealt with various card merchants over the years, i can honestly say most are right "pain in the arse", play god, decide who can and can not be in business, charge high fees and even higher to the smaller companies that can not afford to pay it (ensuring the bigger companies can always out price them), move the goal posts change the terms and conditions, hold onto funds for unreasonable amount of time, ask for high security deposits, hold unnecessary retention (to gain interest! that is not passed to the merchant), refund customers without consulting the merchant first or offering chance to defend allegations, and many more dam annoying practices....
Card companies also promote themselves as offering "guarantees against fraud and theft", yet it is not the card company that pays for this, as any refunds are immediately deducted direct from the merchant along with a large claw-back fee, whether it is the fault of the merchant or not (so I guarantee against fraud and theft, not the banks!)
But, there is always PayPal
who are worse than all other card companies put together! ....
As you can tell i'm no fan of "visa like companies"
, which is one of the reasons i am so interested in bitcoins
.
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ultimately these arese hole merchant companies like visa do most of the things they do so they can make more money, even if that is very much at the expense of their merchants.
Imagine how much they make when they take around 1% or ALL money spent world wide on the internet, and then even have the cheek to charge extortionate interest to the people that are spending the money. But hay, their over heads are very low so they can manage to pay out massive bonuses to their staff, while your house gets repossessed
....
I think the sooner Bitcoin replaces them, the better!
