Visa is now a publicly traded company, but it used to be a chaord, owned by the banks that used it. It's a data network and a standards organization. It doesn't issue cards or handle the money, it just passes transactions from one bank to another. The banks settle up separately.
Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
261–270 of 547 posts
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
and that's why this is called systemic inequality - the inequality is built into the rules of the system.
I'll go one step further. This inequality is built into how humans work. Most of us would not extend credit to somebody with low odds of returning it, so why do should we expect companies and organizations to behave differently? I feel like wrapping this up as in the pretty words "systemic inequality" is framing it as some constructed oppressive structure, which I'm loathe to do.
Not extending credit to people who are likely to default: makes sense
Denying a 2% discount to people who are likely to default: ???
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple Pay charges a fee as well. It also isn’t a payment system but a tokenization system similar to the chip on credit cards. Zelle was created by the big bank which is why you don’t see it at the small local banks. None of the competitor banks(fintech) have zelle support and I guess this isn’t their choice. They have to move money by ach with is much slower. Any payment/money movement system needs a license and you…
Small banks can integrate zelle, it’s their choice they’re not being locked out
0.75 per transaction locks out the small banks. It would be the most expensive way to transfer money.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't like to carry cash around, and I hate it that I have to pay a surcharge when paying by card. So you think your use of a credit card should be subsidized by people who pay in cash?
People who pay in cash are subsidizing the store’s costs to handle cash. Paying employees to count the cash (usually after closing), putting it in the safe, distributing the cash to cash registers, refilling when they run out of change, paying for the security service (Brinks etc) to deliver cash to/from the bank, insurance against robbery... Cash is not free for a store to handle. Stores pay transaction fees on cred…
In many places, paying cash is faster than paying by card. Before contactless, with optimized (rounded) pricing, you would often get 3x the throughput (nowdays less) and for small transactions the fees were ridiculous (smaller with contactless).
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Inflation doesn't affect the poor so long as wages keep up with inflation Does it? In an inflationary environment the status quo is that your wages shrink. I guess it’s better than holding cash because you can renegotiate your wages back, but I don’t think rich people have most of their assets as cash.
> In an inflationary environment the status quo is that your wages shrink. The US is a classical inflationary environment and wages have kept pace with inflation forever. Indeed, inflation only, and intentionally, punishes those who hoard cash.
Not always, depending on your timeframe. eg. if you look at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/United_S... there’s about 2 decades where the real wage went down.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> credit transactions tend to be 20%+ higher ticket sizes than cash purchases. In a way, the credit card surcharge baked in is something of a volume purchasing incentive Funny you mention that, because that’s yet another case where it’s expensive to be poor. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, barely making ends meet, you likely don’t have the cash flow to stock up on a sale. So rather than buying 18 months worth…
I don't disagree that this is regressive and unfortunate, although the bigger issue in my mind (and I get we can have two problems and solve both at once) is free parking. The poor tend to use transit but the cost of parking is baked into each purchase thereby subsidizing the wealthy, too. [1] [1] https://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849280/why-free-parking-is-ba...
There’s a lot of transaction costs to charging for parking. Maybe with technology it can be completely automated but historically that’s been a huge reason for free parking.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it -- bringing up Amex and Discover is like bringing up Bing and DuckDuckGo when people talk about the Google monopoly.
I was curious if this was true so I looked it up. AmEx + Discover have 20% - 25% market share depending on the metric you care about. Bing + DDG have 8% https://wallethub.com/edu/cc/market-share-by-credit-card-net... https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/un...
The stats are all over the place. This report says Amex + Discover is ~11% of US purchase volume in 2019. https://nilsonreport.com/publication_chart_and_graphs_archiv...
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had poor credit at a point in time. I "bought" a credit card to build my credit by putting a deposit. After 1 year of on-time payments I was able to graduate to a credit card with cash back. The system didn't feel punitive to me, and honestly, I had poor credit in the first place because I was irresponsible while in college.
You just described a scenario in which you were systematically bilked for at least a year —- paying full retail prices, which presumably paid for full transaction fees, which in turn did not pay you any rewards —- so you could graduate to the privilege of being allowed to purchase a consumer line of credit that reduced the level of punishment to something merely appropriate. There are relatively few businesses in the…
It was a painful year that taught me a lesson. Looking at how fiscally responsible I have become, I really have no complains.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's an oversimplification, because credit transactions tend to be 20%+ higher ticket sizes than cash purchases. In a way, the credit card surcharge baked in is something of a volume purchasing incentive. Further, the networks do explicitly permit cash discounts on card transactions, and always have. Merchants tend not to offer them, though.
> credit transactions tend to be 20%+ higher ticket sizes than cash purchases. In a way, the credit card surcharge baked in is something of a volume purchasing incentive Funny you mention that, because that’s yet another case where it’s expensive to be poor. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, barely making ends meet, you likely don’t have the cash flow to stock up on a sale. So rather than buying 18 months worth…
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#270I would rather see Visa, MasterCard, and other big banks regulated and require them to accept all legal businesses. Fraud can still be blocked but on an individualised, reasoned level. No more denying legal pornography businesses, no more denying legal fireworks stores, etc.
One option would be for people to start paying each other in gold.