The huge amount of money from those transaction fees has not been lost on companies other than banks, which would explain why so many are now promoting their own credit cards. I assume that purchases at their store are a wash but they collect a pile for purchases made in other stores
Look very closely at those cards and you will see that although it may say AcmeCard on the front if you read the fine print it is still a Visa or Mastercard. Large enough merchants may have setup their own captive bank to handle the financial transactions or they may have an agreement with one of the "too big to fail" banks to act as the intermediary financial institution. But rest assured there is a banking entity involved.
Oil companies and major chain stores had their own
in house credit cards for purchases
only at their stores long before Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/
et. al. were on the scene. But in the last few years many of those
in house cards were converted to Visa or Mastercard, in some cases even without the customer's permission or knowledge. That may have proven to not be viable however as I have recently noticed some of those companies are once again offering their own brand specific credit cards instead of a
Brand X Visa card. Maybe the bank's merchant fees were too steep?
