Credit cards are solved problem for the last 30 years. The fact that they take 3% to 4% of every transaction and then extract a usurious 20% annual interest rate at a time when loan rates are 4% should be criminally prosecuted.
A 1% cut and 3% over prime rate interest rate (currently 5.5%) should be mandated by legislation!
Traditional loans (car, house, HELOC, etc...) can have much lower rates because if there are assets that are put up as collateral (the car, house) that can be repossessed and re-sold by the bank; while in the case of most credit card purchases there is no recourse for the issuing bank to recover the money that owed to the merchant bank.
As long as you live within your means (i.e. pay your balance off every month) a credit card can a convenient payment mechanism
The fees seem to vary a lot by region. Here in Finland majority of cards are VISA/MC (with no local version like described above for Norway), but the card-present merchant transaction fees are low - e.g. ~0.3% for EU consumer debit cards and ~0.9% for EU consumer credit cards.