1.4 billion people in China use WeChat to pay for everything. They don't even bother with credit cards.
And in India they have UPI which is similar in the use of QR codes, but facilitates interbank p2p payments
Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
111–120 of 703 posts
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Merchants can pass the CC surcharge through Can they? I was under the impression (unverified) that they are under contract to provide the same prices for CC customers as they do for cash or debit card.
That used to be the case, but changed in 2013 when a lawsuit settlement was reached that more or less did away with these sorts of contract terms[0]. That's why (at least where I live) gas stations that charge different prices for CCs and cash/debit are everywhere, some restaurants will offer some percentage off if you pay in cash, and some online services, even, pass credit card fees on to customers. I believe there…
This seems like a good overview - sounds like there are still some big caveats: https://constantinecannon.com/antitrust-group/payments/devel...
The no-surcharge terms are plainly anticompetive and should have been reigned in a long time ago. But customers get really mad about extra fees and think it's the merchant that is ripping them off and not Visa/Mastercard.
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#113Fraud 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…
CoD. How did that even work? I mean how was fraud prevented? Did money get counted and balanced every night? How did they prevent drivers from getting robbed or inadvertently losing money (miscounting etc?$
I bought things CoD in the days when eBay still did that (90s). The postman would come to your door with the CoD bill and you'd hand over a cashier's check to them, then they'd give you the package.
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#114Fraud 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…
To note, all of these work on PayPal, with a bank account. PayPal are a dick on fraudulent merchant account detection and it’s well know assets can be frozen on a whim, but at this point it’s the one of the few other options.
Lower fees matter most for low-margin businesses. If your business has 5% margins, then taking your payment processing fees from 3% to 1% is transformative for your profits.
The reality is that most low-margin B2C businesses are brick and mortar service-based businesses, such as restaurants. And, therein lies the problem for Paypal and for crypto payments: The low-margin businesses that care about CC fees are not early-adopters of payment networks. Restaurants can't conceivably introduce a non-traditional payment network as their exclusive provider.
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#115https://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…
Visa/Mastercard are looking very overvalued to me. When fednow comes out, I see very little reason for people to use those legacy options anymore. Its like the market is completely oblivious to the impending doom coming for these rent seekers. Every single app/store/site is gonna be begging you to enroll in fednow and will be offering 2-3% discounts/bonus points for any purchases made through it.
Debit card interchange for big bank debt cards is 0.05%. Sites/stores/apps don't offer debit cards discounts except gas stations. Big merchants offer their own payments/credit cards for up to 5% cash back, they aren't going to switch.
FedNow will get adoption as a replacement for ACH / Check writing. Paying bills and getting paid. Instant deposits of paychecks will a big benefit to a lot people living paycheck to paycheck. It will displace a bunch of Zelle market share.
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's Bitcoin by every metric you can name: users, trust, fees, hashrate, price, market cap, security, exchange support, merchant acceptance, codebase quality, developer talent. Regardless of your subjective opinion of whether it's the same as it's own whitepaper based on whatever nonsense you've read from Roger Ver or whoever. BCH still has transaction mallebility because it was born out of greed of miners who did't want to activate segwit.
Can you point me to any evidence of it not having 100% uptime since the fork? Or have you fell for another lie just like "one node taking down the lightning network"
Blockspace is scarce and valuable, and that's the way it has to be to be decentralised. And yes they can use it, on the layer 2 lightning network. It works great, I use it all the time, for pennies in fees even when there's a mempool queue.
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#117Fraud 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…
CoD. How did that even work? I mean how was fraud prevented? Did money get counted and balanced every night? How did they prevent drivers from getting robbed or inadvertently losing money (miscounting etc?$
Yes, payment for “cash/collect on delivery” is made on delivery rather than in advance. If the goods are not paid for, they are returned to the retailer.
American page:
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Collect-on-Delivery
Canadian page:
https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/support/kb/sen...
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#118Fraud 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…
I don't think anyone disagrees with you in terms of the value of credit cards, the issue is whether their fees are worth it. Their huge profit margins, as well as how they previously fought tooth and nail against, for example, allowing merchants to levy a credit card surcharge, suggest that their duopoly position is allowing them to charge exorbitant amounts for their services.
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#119https://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…
Visa/Mastercard are looking very overvalued to me. When fednow comes out, I see very little reason for people to use those legacy options anymore. Its like the market is completely oblivious to the impending doom coming for these rent seekers. Every single app/store/site is gonna be begging you to enroll in fednow and will be offering 2-3% discounts/bonus points for any purchases made through it.
I don't like the ability for arbitrary app/store/sites to be able to pull/push money directly from my bank account. The credit card companies provide a nice buffer between my wallet and the payee.
I could see it being useful for interbank transfers and for bank to billing (e.g. credit cards, etc.)
Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
That's just business logistics, though, and the company is free to form relationships with other distributors if it so wishes. At the end of the day, the Dr. Pepper company is marketing and earning the lion's share of the margin for their product.