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Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

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Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#11

Post by derefr »

logicalmonster wrote: post #4

I’d love to see some action here but I’m skeptical. It seems like attacking payment processors is the main avenue that the thought-crime-police use to attack alt-tech sites that don’t play ball with censoring. If there was any mass protest movement to push change here, the media would absolutely flood the public with scare stories about (insert evil monsters here) using payment networks to finance (evil activity here…

I feel like it'd be fine if every single payment processor were individually part of the surveillance-industrial complex, as long as there were enough players in the space that one could get running a service by hopping around between them. For grey-market businesses to succeed, they don't really need air-tight legal protection; they just need their actions to be illegible.

This is basically the situation VPN service providers are in. Yes, in theory, any given provider could be beholden to the state. However, when a new VPN provider can spring up so easily (spin up some DigitalOcean instances, stand up a WordPress/Shopify e-commerce frontend), it's unlikely that any given new player in the space has been gotten to yet by the state (unless, of course, it's a new marque of an existing company, set up specifically to serve as a honeypot for switchers.)

Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#12

Post by sharemywin »

xfour wrote: post #3

While I agree with the sentiment, things have certainly opened up lately quite a bit with the mainstream-ization of the crypto currencies. One could conceivably avoid Visa / MC in a way that just wouldn't have been possible before. Visa / MC remind me a bit of Ticketmaster in that they've got parties on both sides defending them because of kickbacks. You charge the merchant the "interchange fee" plus some amount and…

Pretty much the digital economy. As long as the consumer only get screwed a little per transaction, and consumers don't see the charge directly.

Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#14

Post by DennisP »

random3 wrote: post #2

Cards still account for less than 18% of US payments (source https://go.plaid.com/rs/495-WRE-561/images/Plaid-Modern-guid... ).

Just to clarify, that says 18% of the value, not 18% of the number of transactions. From googling a few months ago, credit cards appeared to have the most transactions.

Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#15

Post by sm4rk0 »

random3 wrote: post #2

Cards still account for less than 18% of US payments (source https://go.plaid.com/rs/495-WRE-561/images/Plaid-Modern-guid... ).

However small you think that %-age is, the absolute numbers are still huge (src: Wikipedia):

"100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion"

Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#17

Post by lima »

xfour wrote: post #3

While I agree with the sentiment, things have certainly opened up lately quite a bit with the mainstream-ization of the crypto currencies. One could conceivably avoid Visa / MC in a way that just wouldn't have been possible before. Visa / MC remind me a bit of Ticketmaster in that they've got parties on both sides defending them because of kickbacks. You charge the merchant the "interchange fee" plus some amount and…

> mainstream-ization of the crypto currencies

And modern Tendermint[1]/Cosmos SDK-based chains or Solana are basically distributed databases, using consensus models similar to Raft, except with byzantine fault tolerance and Proof of Stake for leader selection.

No mining, no forks, finality within seconds, large throughput. Pretty boring, actually, with little hype surrounding it - it just works, like a regular database, except there's no single entity controlling it.

One of the top five payment gateways in Korea - CHAI - uses the decentralized Terra[2] blockchain as their backend.

[1]: https://tendermint.com/docs/tendermint.pdf

[2]: https://terra.money

Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#18

Post by grawprog »

random3 wrote: post #2

Cards still account for less than 18% of US payments (source https://go.plaid.com/rs/495-WRE-561/images/Plaid-Modern-guid... ).

Bet those stats go way up in the next few months as more and more businesses get on the refusing cash bandwagon. Apparently it's for 'safety' but I live in a country where my money's made out of plastic or metal, that shit can be sprayed or dunked in iso. The excuse seems pretty flimsy too when again, places don't seem to bother cleaning off their pinpads before the cashiers or other customers touch them anyway.

Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly

#20

Post by tiffanyh »

I am reading so much incorrect information in this thread it’s maddening.

The card network (Visa, Mastercard, etc) do NOT make money on Interchange.

It’s hard to have a healthy dialogue on this topic if folks don’t understand the basics of how the card networks generate revenue.

Below is a decent primer.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032615/how-mas...

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