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Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

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Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#181

Post by strangeattractr »

shell0x wrote: post #121
pcurve wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds 100% like America. :-/

I'm not American, so I have less insight than you perhaps, but I'd say America is much more affordable than Australia. In Australia most jobs are in Sydney and Melbourne. Perth is mostly for mining and Brisbane doesn't have many tech jobs. Real estate prices in Sydney and Melbourne are in the million(s), but incomes are ~100+k AUD. Some people earn 200k+ as a principal engineer, but that's pretty much it. In America…

Is it possible you don't like living in Australia and that may be making you a bit myopic? You are talking about Australian's cavalier attitude towards debt and issues with housing affordability in the two most expensive cities in the country whilst imagining other anglophone countries being better.

Look at property prices in Vancouver and Toronto, New York and San Francisco or London. You're going to find them just as unaffordable relative to the median salary. The difference is that for you personally - a worker in tech, the US will likely pay you a better salary relative to the median than you receive in Australia.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#182

Post by chrischen »

geekpowa wrote: post #147
judge2020 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which merchants, under their merchant agreement, are not allowed to pass onto their customers. Is this audited by Afterpay perhaps? A company might just increase prices due to quarterly losses and not specifically because of this fee, even if it does contribute to a large amount of margin loss.

Merchants are not allowed to add a surcharge line item for using Afterpay. Instead they have to increase base pricing across the board to cover their increased costs. Afterpay are quite happy for merchants to do this, what they don't like, and what they actively police, is merchants adding a line item passing Afterpay costs onto the consumer. The macroeconomic impact is potentially enormous. Your mission is to captur…

What if you do something like a “cash discount?”

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#183

Post by ZephyrBlu »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #178
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insurance, points, cashback, chargebacks The first 3 don't really seem to exist in relation to CCs in NZ, and wanting/needing to do a chargeback seems unlikely. There are probably mild benefits to me having a CC over a debit card in NZ, but it doesn't seem to be anything like the US.

They do, although it's not a common feature for a basic credit card - for example, the BNZ Platinum Visa card comes with travel insurance, and you can either earn points or get a 1% cashback, depending on which reward scheme you choose.

Your comment inspired me to check out a bunch of other banks to see what the deal is.

It seems like a few of them have some perks like travel insurance, cashback or airpoints/reward points, but most of them have no or very tiny perks on their cards. A lot of the airpoints are also locked behind a minimum spend in the first 3 months.

For me personally even the "good" cards aren't that great because I just don't spend that much money. Though travel insurance would be nice once the world opens back up.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#185

Post by jmeister »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #34

I got hopeful when I read "Scheme Implementation," but unfortunately lisp for financial services doesn't seem to be the goal. Maybe someday.

Brazil’s Nubank is all-in on clojure:

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36297/nubank-buys-firm-...

Sweden’s Klarna seems to be using Clojure along with other FP languages:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379264

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#186

Post by LilBytes »

shell0x wrote: post #121
pcurve wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds 100% like America. :-/

I'm not American, so I have less insight than you perhaps, but I'd say America is much more affordable than Australia. In Australia most jobs are in Sydney and Melbourne. Perth is mostly for mining and Brisbane doesn't have many tech jobs. Real estate prices in Sydney and Melbourne are in the million(s), but incomes are ~100+k AUD. Some people earn 200k+ as a principal engineer, but that's pretty much it. In America…

Brisbane has plenty of tech jobs. I'm netting $250,000 inc bonuses as an SRE and the markets rife for oppertunity.

Not FAANG either.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#187

Post by LilBytes »

nsonha wrote: post #163
djrobstep wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underselling Sydney a bit there - there is a google campus, Atlassian, and a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close. Melbourne is pretty decent for high end tech jobs, but not as good as Sydney. Certainly real estate is extremely expensive and broken, but it's not like New Zealand where the real estate is almost as expensive but the pay is much lower. I had to l…

> a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close. How close? let's say AUD 300k (I'm honestly curious, does Optiver/Atlassian/Google even pay that much here?) which is a mind-blowing salary in Australia, tops all kinds of taxes, it converts to USD 220K give or take, adjusted for higher taxes and cost of living, down to about 200k. So a top earner 0.1% in Sydney makes as much as a st…

SRE's in Sydney are on $250,000K for Google, + equity.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#188

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #47

Every time I see one of these announcements, the valuations go up and up and up and up. I remember not long ago being wowed by a 1B acquisition. That was called a unicorn because of how incredible it was. And now we're at 29B. Is this just because money is all a joke?

Yes money is all a joke right now.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#189

Post by hnick »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #183
InvertedRhodium wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, although it's not a common feature for a basic credit card - for example, the BNZ Platinum Visa card comes with travel insurance, and you can either earn points or get a 1% cashback, depending on which reward scheme you choose.

Your comment inspired me to check out a bunch of other banks to see what the deal is. It seems like a few of them have some perks like travel insurance, cashback or airpoints/reward points, but most of them have no or very tiny perks on their cards. A lot of the airpoints are also locked behind a minimum spend in the first 3 months. For me personally even the "good" cards aren't that great because I just don't spend…

The better ones do have an annual fee, so also take that into account. But for us while we were travelling more frequently, the flyer points and insurance made it very worthwhile.

Chargebacks are useful depending on consumer protection laws. I'd guess in NZ they're less useful like here in Aus, but if you buy from foreign companies it can be a useful stick to wield as otherwise you'd have little legal recourse.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#190

Post by helsinkiandrew »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #174
hnick wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance, points, cashback, chargebacks. It's also a one month interest free float of your funds if you pay in full each month, meaning you earn some interest. I know some debit cards are getting closer to credit cards in these areas but at least when I first got one, they were just plastic cash. You spend it you lose it, the bank won't support you with clawing it back.

> Insurance, points, cashback, chargebacks The first 3 don't really seem to exist in relation to CCs in NZ, and wanting/needing to do a chargeback seems unlikely. There are probably mild benefits to me having a CC over a debit card in NZ, but it doesn't seem to be anything like the US.

https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/credit-card-chargebacks

Chargebacks atleast exist in NZ - this is what I mainly use credit cards for - if the company goes bust before delivering (or before you take a holiday etc), or the product isn't as described, or the company starts quibling about their unconditional money-back guarantee - the credit card company will pay (by law)

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