Using credit cards for last 25 years have earned us thousands in credits to buy cars and fly airlines. All of that would be non-existent with cash spending. Any problem we had with fraud was always taken care of my the credit card companies.
That wasn’t free.
Card companies get some 3% of the transaction. Of course sellers just jack up prices accordingly. So, you pay more for the same thing, then they give you a fraction of the difference back to entice you to use cards more often.