Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 703 posts

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#101

Post by toast0 »

echelon wrote: post #72
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 pr…

> Dr.Pepper

Dr Pepper is often bottled and distributed by Pepsi or Coke, especially outside of the US. Coke has a competing "pepper" drink (Mr Pibb), but mostly markets it in areas where the Coke distributor doesn't have rights to Dr Pepper.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#102

Post by pkaye »

andersonmvd wrote: post #43

In Brazil many stores are dropping credit card and allowing only PIX (instant debit transfer) cause it's cheaper for business (0,22% avg transaction fee vs 1%-2% of credit cards - src (pt-only) https://g1.globo.com/economia/pme/noticia/2022/03/23/pix-e-m... ). The President of Brazilian Central Bank recently said that "credit cards will soon cease to exist" src (pt only) https://www.poder360.com.br/economia/campos-ne…

I presume instant payments don't have the chargeback feature of credit card? That is the main benefit I care about credit cards.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#103

Post by cycomanic »

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…

As your post illustrates credit cards are really a solution developped for the deficiencies in the US banking system which have been exported to the rest of the world due to the dominance of the US market. 20 years when I was still living in Germany, hardly anyone had a credit card, while everyone was using automatic payments and electronic wiretransfers. I was very surprised when later (about 13 years ago) a US friend told me that they were still using cheques for most things. I had only touched a cheque maybe 2 or 3 times in my life.

Even today many people in Germany still don't have a credit card or if they have one largely use it for travel. Of the people (in Germany) I know, they also never use charge backs on the cards (I suspect many don't even know that you can do it) and instead rely on the court system to get refunds etc..

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#104

Post by lotsofpulp »

holistio wrote: post #97
arcticbull wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody really has rewards. We don't have them in Europe, and some people in the USA think they have them. What they have is crazy high credit card fees and the need to juggle a bunch around to get a few things credit card companies decided to buy for you en masse. When I buy a $5 latte, I give Visa $0.01. When you do the same, you pay $0.15. Come the hell on. "REWARDS". Smh.

I get a minimum 2.6% cash back on everything I purchase, but most things I get 3.5% to 5.25% cash back.

There are a bunch of free 2% cash back credit cards, so people would at least break even if they wanted to.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#105

Post by jpollock »

I don't understand how this is possible:

"Merchants hand over some $138bn in fees each year; according to the National Retail Federation, a lobby group, it is their second-biggest cost after wages."

Unless they're talking about more than just credit card fees? From the same article:

"But credit-card fees are unregulated and meatier, usually sitting at about 2% of the transaction and rising to 3.5% for some premium-reward cards."

Are they saying that retailers pay less than 4% of the retail price to acquire their goods? They pay more for credit cards than rent?

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#106

Post by geph2021 »

jrvarela56 wrote: post #84
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…

This. My company does payment processing for small merchants and all the complexity of credit cards is rooted in this dynamic. - Consumers can pay stuff on credit - Consumers can 'chargeback' if they feel something went wrong These two mechanisms are the lubricant that provides a +% in online commerce greater than the % charged for processing payments.

Yep. Also one of the reasons crypto will never work (as-is) for online, digital currency/payments. Customers don't want irreversible transactions.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#107

Post by morepork »

therealmarv wrote: post #91

European Union solved big part of the problem many years ago in 2015 with a new law. They capped the fees of Visa and Mastercard at max. 0.3% of the transaction volume on private consumer cards. It has many upsides (especially increased acceptance). The only downside: There are no real or good cashback programs (like getting 1-2% back) in Europe because of this.

I wouldn't say that's a huge downside as in theory prices should be that little bit lower

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#108

Post by bcrescimanno »

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…

That fear isn't irrational at all (at least, it wasn't). About 20 years ago, I had a debit card number stolen and my account was cleared out. It took about a month to get resolved an, in that time, I had some very unpleasant conversations with quite a few people including my landlord about my inability to pay my bills. In the grand scheme, I suppose it didn't harm me--but it was an extremely unpleasant situation to deal with.

Since then, I've only used a debit card very sparingly and usually more as an ATM card in the event I need cash.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#109

Post by k__ »

rvz wrote: post #85
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).

None of the mentioned coins / solutions: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Lightning Network, Ethereum, Layer 2 solutions are even close to being a credible alternative to the Visa-Mastercard duopoly. (Also, Lightning is not Bitcoin) No business wants to use a volatile asset that loses its value when a person or institution refunds and immediately sells hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin(s) and takes the whole market down with it…

I had the impression, only centralized stablecoins had issues in the last crash.

DAI is doing pretty well.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#110

Post by gjs278 »

kelnos wrote: post #87
saurik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can always log into that WeChat account from another device... your WeChat username and password are maybe a bit more secure than all those numbers printed ostentatiously on your card, but are they really that different?

What other device? If I'm out and about and my phone gets stolen, broken, or even the battery just runs out, how do I pay for my transit ride home, where I -- maybe -- have a backup device? This is the -- pretty common -- failure case I worry about. And yes, I know it's also possible for physical wallets to be stolen. But cash doesn't "break" or run low on charge. Software bugs or internet access issues don't cause p…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN