Visa recently banned gab.com from accepting payment over dubious 'hate' speech.
Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
381–390 of 547 posts
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interchange fee pricing is set based on how much MasterCard charges the bank That’s not true though, or at least is a massive oversimplification. In the US, interchange fees are extremely inflated to allow banks to recuperate the rewards they give out to distinguish their card offerings from one another. The 2% cashback has to come from somewhere.
"The 2% cashback has to come from somewhere." Yes, but in reality, the program comes from an upside down approach to overcoming the obviously anti-competitive practices that VISA/MC use to forbid retailers from offering discounts for not using VISA etc.. You can't say "Get 2% if you use cash instead of VISA". (Notice that nobody ever advertises that?) Because VISA doesn't allow it. You also can't say "$1.99 + 20 cent…
Interestingly, in Japan most electronic shops (like Bic Camera or Yodobashi Camera) have a point card where you get 5% not directly as cash back but as "points" that you can use any time for a further purchase.
But that's only if you pay by cash, you don't get any point by paying by card.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#383This is a very us centric view. Most of the europe is so much ahead of US in payments that it is funny. There are dozens of alternative payment methods in the Europe. Especially in the Nordics card payments are on a big decline. There are basically two "tracks" to move money - card networks and bank to bank. Most new payment methods use bank transfer as the method of moving money. In the Nordics, every country has a…
In some European countries maybe, but in France it's all Visa and Mastercard.
Even Amex has an even lower market share than in the rest of the world.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
“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 boot…
I have read the book when I was a child but seeing it everywhere on HN is starting to get on my nerves. There is a shorter way to get the idea across. "If you buy cheap you buy twice."
I read the books as a child, too, and I appreciate when those quotes come up. They demonstrate something about the books that never became clear to child-me, something I only dimly started to grasp when I was older and only fully realized a lot later: Those books go far far beyond an entertaining story. They are a pointed critique of society and politics. They have an opinion. They're not mere books for children.
And the point Samuel Vimes is making goes far beyond a simple "If you buy cheap, you buy twice." It extends that basic knowledge by realizing that some people have no other option than to buy cheap, forcing them to spend resources over and over and over again and still get a worse result in the end, and how this is a fundamental and systemic social unfairness.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
“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 boot…
I have read the book when I was a child but seeing it everywhere on HN is starting to get on my nerves. There is a shorter way to get the idea across. "If you buy cheap you buy twice."
> "If you buy cheap you buy twice."
And for the kinds of goods I buy, in most cases it doesn't hold up. Cheap shoes might be only 25% of the price of good shoes, but in my experience last 50% as long, costing less overall. Compound that with other chances of loss (getting dusty in the back of a cupboard and eventually being thrown out in a declutter), and cheap works out far cheaper
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember being charged 5aud for paying by card at a hostel, being Swedish this was a very weird experience. While I do like the anonymity of cash, cards are very convenient.
I think it's fair to pay for convenience.
Definitely, but 5aud for a single low value transaction is a bit steep.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
you can't rent a car without credit card, they won't accept debit card or even debit VISA/MASTERCARD, it has to be full on credit card
I don't know anyone personally that owns a "credit" card. Virtually nobody uses them here in France and I think in the rest of Europe, it's always debit card. Never had an issue with renting cars.
It is a common issue for French people renting cars outside of France - search on Google, there are hundreds of angry people who ended up with no car because agencies in other countries refuse debit cards (debit immediat)
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the EU, interchange fees are capped at 0.2% of transaction value for debit cards, and 0.3% for credit cards. This has indeed meant that rewards and cashback credit cards have largely disappeared (with the exception of Amex, which operates outside the interchange system?). Rewards/cashback cards that do still exist are typically tied to specific retailers, with whom the issuing bank has cut their own deals.
> with the exception of Amex, which operates outside the interchange system? Right, but try using Amex in Europe. Outside of major international hotel chains, or where you can do your purchase online through Paypal, you may as well not bother asking if they accept it.
I think it used to be that way, but it's slightly better now. I live in London. I have a friend who has an Amex and a normal card, and will always try to pay with the Amex first to rack up reward points. The only time i see him pay is when we're in a bar or restaurant together, usually independent places rather than chains, and i would say Amex is accepted over 70% of the time.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are cases, where the person you're interacting with isn't likely to be audited or doesn't have a direct contract with the payment processor. Gas stations I find weird, in general. How did they get that exception?
It’s really only one chain I see doing that, and I’ve never bought gas from them and never will. The first time I lied in and they told me they were charging more for card I left.
They should have told you that they were charging less for cash.
Re: Forget Google, time to end the Visa-MasterCard duopoly
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is good news on the competition front. The traditional problem with bank-to-bank transfers in a retail, or point-of-sale, setting has been speed. Cheque was about the fastest that could be mustered. But with developments like UK Faster Payments (which is mentioned in your link) bank-to-bank transfers are getting faster, in some cases instant. And so usability at the point-of-sale is now on par with cards. In Hol…
One good piece of news I saw was that a lot of these new bank-to-bank mobile payment services like Swish are finally looking into cross-compatibility between countries, something that has really been missing until now https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_Syst...
Yes we're really lacking a Europe-wide system for this. People travel (and move) a lot between countries, national systems are too limited.