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Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

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Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#291

Post by bserge »

adventured wrote: post #243
rwmj wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the $75-$100 come from? Is it that prices are generally more expensive, or is it a transfer from people who get into terrible debt?

US card transaction processing fees are higher than in most peer nations. That creates a nice profit stream in the credit card industry in the US, which largely doesn't exist eg in Europe. It funds the points & benefits systems that cards offer here. It's how Visa ($540 billion market cap) can be worth more than the world's most valuable banks (eg JPMorgan $453 billion), and has an almost unbelievable 64% operating i…

I don't even see the issue with debt, tbh. It's not like people aren't riddled with it in the form of taxes for their whole lives.

Some private debt on top isn't changing much in the end.

Barring extreme cases where people go on a spending spree, usually for mental health reasons.

Besides, rich people in Europe always leverage credit/loans/debt.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#292

Post by [deleted] »

sleepyhead wrote: post #284
pjerem wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m wrong but I have the feeling that credit cards as a norm is really just an American thing. In Europe where I live, I know nobody who buys anything with a credit card or barely if there is a 0% rate promotion. Credit cards do exists here but they are the card some shop gave you for whatever reason that you’d better never use. What is interesting is that we use the term « credit card » to speak about our debi…

> In Europe where I live, I know nobody who buys anything with a credit card or barely if there is a 0% rate promotion. Do you live in Germany? Here in Norway credit cards are quite common for various reasons (safer to use online, pay later, bonus points).

[deleted]

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#294

Post by zizee »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #193
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at interest rates from 1990 to now, and average household debt, it's easy to see why the economy has been up up up up. People have been spending way more money than they make for 30 years in Australia. That will make any economy boom. The difficult thing is... when does it stop? The above could have been said 10 years ago, just replace the 3 with a 2. Should it have stopped then? Now? In 10 more years?

That type of economy (powered by extreme consumerism beyond the customers’ means) isn’t unique to Australia. It’s only sustainable so long as the target population continues to increase (kind of like social security). The forecasted global population drop that will hit home in the next 15-20 years is going to completely destroy economies propped-up by fake money.

I agree that Australia's economy is propped up by continued ion growth, a giant pyramid scheme if you'll excuse the hyperbole.

However Australia has such a large amount of land, and such a small population that forecasted worldwide population drop won't affect Australia so much. It's such a desirable place to live that immigration at the current rates will be sustainable regardless of the rest of the world's population growth rate. Whether or not our cities can keep up with the growth and maintain their high levels of livability is another question.

I'd also question your statement about population drop on the next 15-20 years. All forecasts I have seen are that the world's population will continue to grow until the end of the century. If the world's population were set to start shrinking in such a short timeframe, I'd think it would be a huge talking point in any discussion about sustainability and global warming.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#295

Post by smichel17 »

cheschire wrote: post #277
healsjnr1 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Points for most people are a zero sum or losing game. I worked for a points loyalty program, and the customer always pays. The bank knows their market well, they know the redemption rate of points for different demographics and they set the annual fees on points earning cards appropriately. For a small number of very diligent points hack customers, the bank loses money on this and the customer wins. For a larger prop…

It’s so painless on the Apple Card. Automatic x% back into an Apple Cash account depending on the specifics of the purchase (phone vs card, Apple store vs other store). When you pay off the card, it can automatically debit the Apple Cash account first. Basically all my purchases are 1% cheaper on that card than my other ones. Sure, spending $9,900 instead of $10,000 doesn’t sound like much, but it’s painless free mon…

That "free" money comes from fees paid by the seller to the credit card company, and is passed along to you in the form of higher prices. Unfortunately, paying cash seldom lets you opt out of these credit card driven price increases.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#296

Post by marcins »

pylon wrote: post #20

As a customer are there any downsides to using these BNPL platforms when I'm buying something? I generally never buy anything online that I can't afford to pay for it outright so I have never used them before.

I might have misunderstood, but when I looked into this a while back the main downside is the loan amount shows up on your credit report. Even after you pay it off you now have this “credit” with the provider. This could affect, for example, a future mortgage application.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#297

Post by dna_polymerase »

osrec wrote: post #205
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes money is all a joke right now. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

Is that massive jump covid related?

No, it's a change in methodology. The "money printer goes brr"-crowd is just unable to digest information.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#298

Post by justincormack »

hnick wrote: post #164
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an early 20s Kiwi zoomer, so somewhat similar demographic. I don't have a credit card and see no point in it. I use a debit card for everything. I don't think most of my friends have credit cards either, but maybe they do and I don't notice.

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.

Most of those things are US only as in most other places the fees are much lower so there is less money to give back. Free float is worth very little when interest rates are about zero. Insurance is a benefit in most places still.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#299

Post by andrewinardeer »

danwills wrote: post #271
mrtksn wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the jokes about how FB purchased a photo filter app and how easy it was to make photo effects. Sometimes it feels like techies not always get what is valuable and what is not as much.

I want to share my recent fractal renderings, that I think are valuable, here's a fun example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AT9bcRZygdcCiMs5TvRXK50iik5... Despite it being where-everyone presumably-is I do not want to use Instagram, so I am not sure what's best to do.. is there a good-enough 'open'/decentralised alternative now? Maybe a simple rss feed would do it?

Pixelfed

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#300

Post by fauigerzigerk »

RobertoG wrote: post #283
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this 32% increase was not initially new money in anyone's pocket. The Fed simply replaced some treasuries and other debt on banks' balance sheets with reserves, which don't have to be backed by equity. This gave banks more wiggle room to sit out the pandemic without reducing lending at the exact wrong time. So the Fed has done its job on the way down. Now they just have to do their job on the way up as well,…

>>"or this money will eventually end up as new money in someone's pocket (via new loans) and potentially create inflation. " For that to happen you need enough credit demand in the economy. It could happen, and, as you say, the Fed would increase the interest rate making reserves less available (credit more expensive), but the number of reserves in the system doesn't cause directly more money in the economy. It depen…

Agreed, but the difficulty is that the Fed cannot easily distinguish between different kinds of credit demand.

They may justifiably want to keep interest rates low and loans easily available to help businesses and governments roll their pandemic induced debt until they can grow out of it.

But then some other credit worthy borrower comes along and snaps up those cheap loans to buy into some asset market that doesn't need any support.

And where they do have the tools to make that distinction they don't appear to be using them. I don't understand why they keep buying mortgage debt while house prices are already looking dangerously inflated.

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