Re: Credit Card Fees
In the US, there are usually two reasons why a credit card would have fees. It is either for some benefit (United Airlines miles for example) or because of credit worthyness. Having an annual fee is what allows the sub-prime card issuers to still make profit on the overall card portfolio for those in the lower FICO buckets.
That being said credit card fees were quite common in the US until the late 80's early 90's until the monoline card issuers started to encroach on the banks card portfolios. Realize this comes from the banking structure in the US. At one point the US had 14,000 banks. Most other countries have a banking system that is still controlled by 5-10 banks and a closed system that does not encourage competition. All of this adds to the banks ability to charge additional fees.
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