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They’re talking about interchange fees you pay on every transaction. Which is where the money to fund rewards comes from.

In the US you’ll be paying something like 1% on interchanges fees for every transaction, in the EU it’s something like 0.05%. Orders of magnitude less, thus orders of magnitude less rewards, and also fraud, because banks can’t use the interchange to write off fraud and thus implement proper controls.

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Unless the merchant is offering discounts for cash payment, it's the customers who are not using credit cards that are paying/subsidizing the fees. Sadly, not using a credit card is just throwing money away in North America

In reality it’s people with poor or non-existent credit that pay. They can’t access cards that offer rewards, so they end up eating the costs. It’s a remarkably good way of transferring wealth from the poor (who are usually deemed not worthy of credit) to the rich (who are worthy of credit). Pile on the other costs like fees for using cheques rather than direct deposit (also common for poor people who aren’t salaried), crazy overdraft fees etc, and becomes pretty clear that the US banking system is paid for by the poorest in society, and only benefits the richest.

Your reward is basically money paid by the poor routed via the merchant and bank.

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