Greentext

You are entirely incorrect. The credit card company makes most of their money from the fees paid by the merchant. They make money when you, the customer, spend money because the merchant gives a chunk of it to them, usually with an additional flat fee. (Different merchants and card processors have different payment structures. A grocery store is more likely to pay a much higher fixed daily fee to avoid unpredictable transaction fees on small purchases)

They don't lower your score if you pay back early. People get confused because they see their score drop after going from $10k credit card limit with $800 in monthly usage paid on time every time and a $500 balance on a $25k car loan that's been paid on time every month to just the credit card. The reason it went down is that the number of regular timely payments went down, which means fewer trust signals, and credit utilization went up. (3% to 8%). It doesn't however snap down as though you hadn't just made a bunch of good payments, it just doesn't boost when you're done.

The credit card company makes the most money when you make a huge number of modest purchases and then immediately pay them back. When you have credit card debt their money is sitting in the merchants account. They want to minimize the time they don't have their money so they charge you based on the risk that you never pay them back, after a grace period. (You have usually a month before any interest acrues).
It's why as you get better credit scores the credit card company starts offering you increasing incentives to buy things. Bonus cash back on purchases at places that tend to be frequent, smaller purchases without bulk processing rates and so one. They'll refund you on purchases in a dispute with the merchant and then figure out the merchant dispute independently (usually by just dropping it because they don't care about $124.99 in potentially substandard curtains or whatever they just want the customer to keep buying curtains and the merchant to keep thinking it's a net positive). You're a walking $0.25 + 3.0% per purchase. Making you regret spending money is the last thing they want.