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Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

economist.com

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Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#71

Post by [deleted] »

dhosek wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow > FedNow is an instant payment service for both individuals and businesses. Once launched, the initial transaction limit will be $25,000. This means that FedNow be more useful for small businesses and retail payment needs until it is widely adopted and the transaction limit grows. > In early 2022, the Federal Reserve released pricing and fee details for their real-t…

>Merchants can pass the CC surcharge through Unless things have changed in the last 20ish years, if you accept credit cards you’re not allowed to charge different prices for CC vs non-CC payments (although there are apparently some carve-outs for gas stations).

[deleted]

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#72

Post by echelon »

alberth wrote: post #18

Let’s compare against other consumer choices. Can the … - Coke-Pepsi duopoly be broken? - Google-Baidu? - Nearly any professional sport is a monopoly (NFL, NBA, etc) And soooo many more.

> Coke-Pepsi duopoly be broken?

Dr.Pepper, Monster Beverage, Redbull, Asahi, Arizona, and thousands of other smaller players exist.

> Google-Baidu?

Google is a search monopoly for English speakers. Steps should be taken to remove Google's ability to enforce via Chrome and Android, or prioritize adsense sites. Perhaps the DOJ can split their business units or force third party offerings to be required.

> Nearly any professional sport is a monopoly (NFL, NBA, etc)

If sports aren't fungible, XFL. If they are, there are thousands of leagues. Did you know Michael Jordan played golf?

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#73

Post by mbreese »

dhosek wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow > FedNow is an instant payment service for both individuals and businesses. Once launched, the initial transaction limit will be $25,000. This means that FedNow be more useful for small businesses and retail payment needs until it is widely adopted and the transaction limit grows. > In early 2022, the Federal Reserve released pricing and fee details for their real-t…

>Merchants can pass the CC surcharge through Unless things have changed in the last 20ish years, if you accept credit cards you’re not allowed to charge different prices for CC vs non-CC payments (although there are apparently some carve-outs for gas stations).

It’s now allowed almost universally. I believe there are a couple of states that still don’t allow it, but for the most part, you can add a credit surcharge now. This was part of a massive lawsuit by retailers against the CC processors that was eventually settled.

Here are the Visa rules for it. https://usa.visa.com/support/small-business/regulations-fees...

Basically you can add a small surcharge amount, but nothing more than the actual cost of the transaction.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#74

Post by randomdata »

kelnos wrote: post #26
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow > FedNow is an instant payment service for both individuals and businesses. Once launched, the initial transaction limit will be $25,000. This means that FedNow be more useful for small businesses and retail payment needs until it is widely adopted and the transaction limit grows. > In early 2022, the Federal Reserve released pricing and fee details for their real-t…

Perhaps this is an irrational fear, but one of the reasons I like credit cards is because when a charge happens, no money leaves my personal accounts. If a charge is fraudulent, it gets cleared up without me being out some amount of money until it gets cleared up. I assume with FedNow (same as if I were to transact using debit cards), money leaves my bank account more or less immediately when a charge happens. That m…

Doesn't FedNow just provide transit? Whether the payment comes out of a deposit account or a credit account seems beyond the purview of FedNow and up to your arrangement with your bank, similar to how VISA is used to provide transit for credit cards as well as debit cards, depending on your arrangement with the card issuer.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#75

Post by nikitaga »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow > FedNow is an instant payment service for both individuals and businesses. Once launched, the initial transaction limit will be $25,000. This means that FedNow be more useful for small businesses and retail payment needs until it is widely adopted and the transaction limit grows. > In early 2022, the Federal Reserve released pricing and fee details for their real-t…

> Merchants can pass the CC surcharge through; I’d expect them to do so when a very low cost immediate settlement option is available.

Canada has had low-cost Interac debit cards for a long time, and although they've been very popular, merchants generally don't impose any credit card fees.

Also, even Canadian online businesses generally don't bother implementing payments with Interac online, so for online shopping it's not even an option.

Perhaps some of this will be better at US scale.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#76

Post by odrekf »

tossl568 wrote: post #66
odrekf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has much, much better scalability and uptime. The other day the entire LN went down due to 1 bad node. That has never happened, and will never happen in the original Bitcoin design (ticker: BCH).

It has better scalability if you don't care about decentralisation whatsoever and that it's possible that everyone can store a copy of everyone's else's coffee transactions in perpetuity. It's not possible without huge, expensive to run servers, which is why nobody runs a BCH node. Uptime? By what metric? Bitcoin, the real one, has 100% uptime since the fork. The entire LN did not "go down the other day due to one ba…

What you call "Bitcoin", is not Bitcoin by its own whitepaper. And it certainly DOESN'T have 100% uptime.

Keeping blocks artificially limited at 1mb doesn't make it more decentralized, it actually makes it more centralized, since barely anyone in the world can use the network or pay the fees when a bunch of people are using it at the same time.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#77

Post by arcticbull »

philip1209 wrote: post #49

Fraud protection of credit cards is the root of modern e-commerce. In some ways, Visa and Mastercard are the privatized court systems of the internet. If I end up on a random, self-hosted ecommerce site and decide to make a purchase - what guarantee do I have that the item will show up or be as-described? If I bought something through a bank transfer, reversing that purchase would be incredibly difficult. And, suing…

The fees are 3% only in the US and the bulk of that is returned to buyers as cash back or loyalty points, and to offset the cost of loan origination and warranties.

The EU has capped debit interchange at .2% and credit at .3%, Australia in the low 1s if I recall correctly. They just don’t really have rewards.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#78

Post by dcolkitt »

philip1209 wrote: post #49

Fraud protection of credit cards is the root of modern e-commerce. In some ways, Visa and Mastercard are the privatized court systems of the internet. If I end up on a random, self-hosted ecommerce site and decide to make a purchase - what guarantee do I have that the item will show up or be as-described? If I bought something through a bank transfer, reversing that purchase would be incredibly difficult. And, suing…

The Achilles heel of this setup is that not all transactions are equal risk. Very low risk transactions are paying near identical fees to very high risk transactions, despite orders of magnitude differences in fraud rates.

How long will Apple selling in-store products to 800 FICO score consumers be willing to subsidize eBay vendors and gift card resellers?

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#79

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #25
10g1k wrote: post #6

1.4 billion people in China use WeChat to pay for everything. They don't even bother with credit cards.

Fortunately, phones never get lost. Or broken. Or stolen. Or discharge. Or malfunction. Or lock people out for no good reason. I can put a $100 bill through the washing machine and it's still perfectly usable. When I can do that with a phone, maybe I'll switch. I ran a credit card through the washer and dryer last month, and even though it got bent, and the stripe doesn't work anymore, the chip does. And the numbers…

[deleted]

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#80

Post by stefan_ »

echelon wrote: post #57
10g1k wrote: post #6

1.4 billion people in China use WeChat to pay for everything. They don't even bother with credit cards.

A single point of failure, leverage, unilateral negotiation, and control. Horrifying for all people and businesses (especially competitors). Real Standard Oil situation there. Not that our own duopolies aren't also problematic.

The grandparent is exaggerating somewhat, it's split between Alibaba and WeChat.
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