[TBH 4,6 cents on a small transaction can be relatively much. Of course on a million dollar transaction it's nothing. Even on a couple hundred dollar I guess it's no big deal. But if you want to buy coffee every day with bitcoin IMO 4,6 cents is too much. Solution? IDK (I assume the solution now is to buy a $50 giftgard for your coffee or something so you only have to pay transaction fee once.)
How much do you think paying for that coffee today with a cc costs? A lot more than 4 cents.
Well personally I would pay coffee with cash. But I understand what you are saying.
In the Netherlands we don't use much creditcards but Maestro debitcards instead, and I had a quick look and paying with that costs € 0,07 - € 0,31 per transaction* for the merchant. I guess the difference is that the merchant pays it and the customer doesn't notice any costs directly. (obviously it is calculated in the merchant's cost so the product price would be higher and the customer does notice it indirectly.)
I also know that online payments in the Netherlands mostly go through iDeal (connected with all banks) and the costs for that are around € 0,45 per transaction. Creditcards 2,25% + €0,25 per transaction. PayPal 3,4% + €0,35 per transaction.
So yeh, in the end "even" with small transactions I guess bitcoin is much cheaper. For online transactions always much much cheaper. It's probably just the idea that you pay it directly as the customer and not the merchant (and you indirectly.)
Also if the merchant charges €2,00 for coffee for people who pay with debitcard and €2,00 in bitcoins + your bitcoin transaction costs, it is still more expensive with bitcoin since you are indirectly paying for the debitcard costs of the merchant already too.
I do think bitcoin is still in the beginning of acceptance so perhaps this will change. Like merchants can specifically say that they charge you 0.0001 less for transactions fees (obviously only relevant for the smaller payments) or even some discount if accepting bitcoin is cheaper for them.
EDIT: there are also examples of websites who do implicitly charge transaction fee. Best example in NL would be the biggest Dutch website to order food online: thuisbezorgd.nl, they say:
iDEAL: € 1,00
Creditcard: 6% of total
PayPal: 6% of total
Bitcoin: no transaction costs.That's great I guess. In that perspective that €0,032 euro transaction fee looks really cheap, even on a small food order.
* With 1000+ transactions it's € 0,07 - minimum of 100 transactions which is € 0,31 per transaction. Excluding any "normal" monthly/yearly bank account fees.