171–180 of 190 posts
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In the end it's the (usually) poor people who bought more than they could afford (either because they needed food or because they couldn't control their impulse buys) and are stuck paying interest on things they bought years ago
Credit card interest payments go to the bank. Visa/MasterCard don’t get any of that.
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It's more than semantics. I once cancelled my Chase credit card and paid (or thought I paid off ) the balance in full. Turns out, it accrued some interest ( $8.56 to be precise) from the time of cancellation to the end of the billing cycle. Chase claimed that they sent me a statement (this was circa 2005) but I never got it. A month later I moved, and it kept going to the old address. A year later, a collection agent…
>The "pay off balance within the month grace period" works only if you are on top of it all the time. If you think about how many people using the "maxed out CC" as a loan because they cant get anything else, the financial model looks rather sound. The interest rate on those things is drastic if you are no longer in the grace period, and its an easy trap to fall into, especially if you are falling on bad times or are…
If you pay off your card every month, the credit card companies consider you to be a bad investment, and they even have names to describe customers like you -- "deadbeat", among others.
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I know, it seems great. But who is paying for that fraud protection? Who is paying for that customer service team? Who is paying for the fact you get paid to use it? In the end.. It's you, through slightly higher prices on everything you buy every day because retailers have to price in the cost of credit card fees that pay for all that.
I've seen an estimate that credit cards are actually slightly cheaper overall for the economy than cash, when you factor in everything. The physical infrastructure to deal with cash is not cheap.
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Yeah, that's not helpful, I'm afraid. Also demonstrably incorrect. Amex is still operating in the UK, for example.
There is precisely one issuer of non-Mastercard/Visa credit cards in the UK - Amex - and they're not accepted nearly as widely. There are exactly five banks which issue Mastercard debit cards rather than Visa - Virgin Money, Citibank, Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, and Metro Bank - and none of them are particularly major players. (I think it was down to three or less at one point; Virgin and Citibank only switched…
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This is not true for all of Europe. Here in the UK everything works through Visa/Mastercard, whether it's your credit card or your normal "bank card" (debit card). I really miss this system every time I go back to continental Europe and suddenly have to carry around huge amounts of cash with me. Because nobody accepts cards, and even if they do it's usually only Maestro etc.
every time I go back to continental Europe and suddenly have to carry around huge amounts of cash with me. Because nobody accepts cards You must be going to the wrong areas in Europe. Literally, everywhere I go (France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands in the past 6 months alone) cards are accepted.
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>until Visa Europe was re-acquired[0] by Visa in 2015. Sadly. Visa Europe had some quite good policies such as banning ATM surcharges. It also made the payment sector seem a bit more european, now it's back to the US-duopoly. On topic: Visa Europe cards are denied when used in other countries outside of Visa Europe.
A few years ago my European Visa debit card wouldn't work in the US unless they ran it as credit. It always worked fine at US ATMs, other than the first time I informed the bank I was going overseas, which apparently they interpreted as 'please disable my card'
International cards always need to be ran as credit in the US, not matter if it is credit, debit or prepiad.
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A few years ago my European Visa debit card wouldn't work in the US unless they ran it as credit. It always worked fine at US ATMs, other than the first time I informed the bank I was going overseas, which apparently they interpreted as 'please disable my card'
I used my European Visa debit card in USA few years ago without any problems.
I wish I got into conventional currency, back in the days when mining it was profitable. Like the Iron Age