It's probably just a cultural difference between (broadly) the US, Europe, and Asia. In the US it's increasingly uncommon to buy things with cash or cash-equivalents (Venmo, Zelle, etc.), especially high-value items.
Basically we have very few consumer protection laws compared to the EU, and it's very much a "buyer beware" culture here. If you get screwed by a merchant, most of the time it's just too bad for you, unless the merchant has a good return policy (most big box stores do, most small places don't). We don't have the regulatory protections that EU has.
So credit cards have sprung up to offer not just buy on borrowed money, but also purchase protections that live outside the legal/regulatory frameworks. When you buy something with a credit card, you get charged interest by the bank and the merchant also pays a fee. Some tiny part of those fees get pooled into these protection (and other) services that the card offers its members.
For example, depending on your credit card, some will automatically extend the warranty of things you buy by another year or two. Or price protection is that if the thing you buy goes on sale within 30 days and you find it for a cheaper price, the credit card provider (not the merchant) will issue you a partial refund. The chargeback system is often used for disputing issues (maybe you bought something from an overseas vendor who never delivered and never bothered to answer your emails, or maybe they lied about their return, or maybe provided some terrible product). You file a claim with the credit card company, not the government or the merchant, and the card issuer will mediate on your behalf. If the amount is low enough, they'll often just refund you without a full investigation (it's not worth their time). But it also serves as a sort of review & punishment system for merchants... those who get too high a volume of chargebacks will incur higher fees or be blocked altogether by the credit card issuers, meaning merchants are incentivized to fix customer issues.
Merchants not accepting credit cards here do exist, but they're relatively rare, because so much of the population uses credit cards instead of anything else. Even debit cards (that draw from your bank balance and typically have fewer protections) still have a partnership with Visa or Mastercard to allow you to pay as though it were one of their credit cards (just with a preset balance).
Of course all of this means it sucks for the merchants, but it's way better for the buyers than paying with cash (which leaves you almost always without recourse if anything happens). Our government is so captured and so weak that basically no state or federal agency will be able to help you in most consumer issues. We do have something called the "BBB" (Better Business Bureau), but it's not a government agency, just a fake third party middleman who pretends to do that function (but doesn't actually do anything)... it's basically just an old-fashioned Yelp.
So as a buyer, if you want any protections at all, it's a credit card or nothing.