How to get around merchant fees?

"Cash or Check"

Decades ago, for large companies, another traditional way to dodge merchant fees was to have your own $Company_Name credit card. (Which was not a "branded" Visa or MasterCard, but their own exclusive payment networks & systems.)

Cryptocurrency has fees higher than cash/check, lower than credit cards, but on-chain transactions (e.g., BTC, not LN) tend to have a clearing time longer than both cash and card.

ACH is cheaper but the onboarding UX is worse. Maybe FedNow will solve this but probably not.

because they can. because of a monopoly.

you can accept alternative payments like cryptocurrency or venmo or something, but let's face it, most customers prefer to pay with a credit card. that's how monopolies work.