I doubt it is anything other than the relationship between the Visa Network and a bank like Chase issuing a Visa card. Visa aren't going to waste their time cutting special arrangements for such small players.

Assuming I'm correct, I find the 2.5% especially weird given that ANX, as a card issuer, will receive merchant interchange fees of 1.54% - 2.24% and make money of the BTC/fiat exchange. Smells fishy to me.

Agreed for 2013, I was just puzzled by the last 3-4 months of flatness (by bitcoin standards!). In a way you're reinforcing my question; the 2013 rise was through a huge increase in demand. It seems nothing got in the way of the overall price rise.

Great explanations / hypothesis everyone. My takeaway is that although aggregate demand is steady(ish) transaction volumes may indicate a rotation of ownership as franky1 indicates.
Just had a look at the transaction charts here
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
but I can't conclude with confidence it supports the rotation hypothesis....will stare at it a bit longer 

If I look at bitcoin price over the past 3 months it's been in the $500- $1000 band, That's huge volatility by anyone's standard, but I have a question for others who understand the supply/demand/price relationship better than I do: why hasn't bitcoin price been rising rapidly for the last 3 months? Surely it must be that demand is rising, at best, with supply (about 10% p.a. by my reckoning). Hardly meteoric. What am I missing? Is this a temporary lull? Have we run out of early adopters and are at the foot of Geoffrey Moore's chasm?