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Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

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Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#311

Post by xadhominemx »

healsjnr1 wrote: post #259
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.

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…

Are you talking about credit card loyalty programs? Because those are definitely not zero sum for consumers as merchants for pay them.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#312

Post by conradfr »

mrtksn wrote: post #249
shoto_io wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook acquired Instagram for 1bn. Ridiculous by today's standards.

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.

When Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26B, my tech lead said to me "why did they buy it for so much? It's just a website, I can code a website".

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#313

Post by Semaphor »

omniscient_oce wrote: post #301
Khaine wrote: post #132

In Australia millennials, are allergic to credit cards. Credit card usage in that demographic is really low. Instead they prefer BNPL services as a credit mechanism. Banks have also responded and offer credit cards that don’t act like normal credit cards[1] [1] https://www.commbank.com.au/credit-cards/commbank-neo.html

Myself and most people I know (early twenties) use what the banks give by default which is a "Debit Mastercard/Visa" which lets you shop online like a credit card, perform chargebacks, or pay in-store, but the money just comes out of your savings account like a debit card - not on credit (they get declined if your account is empty too AFAIK but haven't tested it ;P). Are these common overseas? I rarely see reference…

Those are what the vast majority of people in Germany use (mainly our own girocard network, but MC/Visa debit are big as well)

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#314

Post by Semaphor »

pjerem wrote: post #275
Khaine wrote: post #132

In Australia millennials, are allergic to credit cards. Credit card usage in that demographic is really low. Instead they prefer BNPL services as a credit mechanism. Banks have also responded and offer credit cards that don’t act like normal credit cards[1] [1] https://www.commbank.com.au/credit-cards/commbank-neo.html

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…

I use one in Germany, but only for the cashback and other promotions, I pay 100% off every month (automatically).

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#315

Post by refurb »

bserge wrote: post #290
refurb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone fraudulently or mistakenly charges my debit card $5,000, that's $5,000 gone from my bank account until I get it fixed. If someone charges $5,000 to my credit card in error, I've got 30+ days plus to resolve with zero financial impact to me. If it doesn't get resolved in that time, I have the option to not pay the bill (or that portion of the bill), knowing that if the error is fixed, the penalties and inte…

Have you experienced that? There's limits on charges on debit cards, usually ~2000 Euros. Credit cards are higher but then again they also have the credit limit and won't go beyond that in most cases.

I haven’t experienced it personally, but I know someone who used a debit card for their utilities on auto-pay. Gas company said they damage their meter so they replaced it and auto-debited their account for $2,500. They had to borrow money from friends until it got fixed and the money refunded.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#316

Post by xadhominemx »

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…

> US card transaction processing fees are higher than in most peer nations. … It's how Visa ($540 billion market cap) can be worth more than the world's most valuable banks

I’m sorry you are just wrong. Classic HN Dunning–Kruger.

Visa and MasterCard make their money two ways — network and cross-border transaction fees. For ordinary (non-cross-border) transactions, V/MC have a very small take, on the order of .1-.2%. The vast majority of the fees go to interchange collected by the issuing bank and then to transaction fees to the merchant acquirer (eg Square). Interchange is paid back out to customers in the form of rewards at very low (or zero) margin; issuing banks make their money when customers revolve on their lines of credit.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#317

Post by skeeter2020 »

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?

if you've got one of these frothy valuations and can find another company that will take an all-stock deal you're basically buying a company that hopefully has some real assets underneath all the foam, but if not you're paying with waht is essentially self-minted fiat currency. In the meantime you better believe the insiders are quietly converting to something more concrete.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#318

Post by danwills »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #299
danwills wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, I've heard the name around HN a fair bit and had a brief look into it in the past, loved the idea but didn't get very far yet. (Gentoo linux user here, not helpless) Do you have any recommendations for docs about getting started with sharing images on pixelFed?

I made an account on shared.graphics:

https://shared.graphics/danwills

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#319

Post by lumost »

omniscient_oce wrote: post #301
Khaine wrote: post #132

In Australia millennials, are allergic to credit cards. Credit card usage in that demographic is really low. Instead they prefer BNPL services as a credit mechanism. Banks have also responded and offer credit cards that don’t act like normal credit cards[1] [1] https://www.commbank.com.au/credit-cards/commbank-neo.html

Myself and most people I know (early twenties) use what the banks give by default which is a "Debit Mastercard/Visa" which lets you shop online like a credit card, perform chargebacks, or pay in-store, but the money just comes out of your savings account like a debit card - not on credit (they get declined if your account is empty too AFAIK but haven't tested it ;P). Are these common overseas? I rarely see reference…

Uncommon in the US as most major credit cards give you "rewards" for using them which amount to 1-5% off every purchase.

Debit cards are used almost exclusively when credit cards are unavailable.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#320

Post by touisteur »

Semaphor wrote: post #313
omniscient_oce wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myself and most people I know (early twenties) use what the banks give by default which is a "Debit Mastercard/Visa" which lets you shop online like a credit card, perform chargebacks, or pay in-store, but the money just comes out of your savings account like a debit card - not on credit (they get declined if your account is empty too AFAIK but haven't tested it ;P). Are these common overseas? I rarely see reference…

Those are what the vast majority of people in Germany use (mainly our own girocard network, but MC/Visa debit are big as well)

Well yeah, most cards in Europe aren't 'credit' who would want that. If you want a credit, take a loan... Or use the store-financed 'free payment plan' for a fridge or a dishwasher...

One thing we have is deferred payment (usually 1 month). And looooooads of credit companies...

Some payment cards here (usually with 'store points') are with 'revolving loans' which is considered quite predatory... Wouldn't want to touch this with a space-elevator-sized pole.

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