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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?

#181

Post by jrvarela56 »

geph2021 wrote: post #106
jrvarela56 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whoever comes up with a way to encode this dynamic in a smart contract(s) could make a killing - or at least raise a lot of money hehe.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#182

Post by makeitdouble »

Zircom wrote: post #128
makeitdouble wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PayPal is a joke when it comes to addressing fraud, it's completely hit or miss on both sides. My younger brother got scammed out of like $100 trying to order a chair from a furniture website that turned out to be some guy in China scamming people. The "online store" only accepts Paypal and when checking out, instead of the usual PayPal process is directs you to a page that's already completely filled out to send the…

TBF, is there any way to do fraud protection on personal transfers ? Imagine you sent 100 bucks to your cousin and 10 min later requested your bank to get your money back because you sent it to the wrong cousin.

I hate to say this, but there will always be loopholes as long as scamming js lucrative enough.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#183

Post by mcv »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #127
cycomanic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 frie…

that's the thing; businesses don't want to have to rely on the court system to get refunds. the x% CC processing fee is essentially fraud/non-payment insurance

That's the thing; lots of businesses outside the US have no problem using bank transfers. I only have a credit card for internet purchases outside Netherland; every Dutch site (including many international ones, like Steam) supports iDeal, which is far safer than credit cards.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#184

Post by odrekf »

tossl568 wrote: post #174
odrekf wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show me where in the whitepaper it mentions your metrics? I didn't see anything about say, price in there. I did see a lot of mentions about it being cash though (also cheap to use, beat credit cards, no intermediaries, etc). Also SPV wallets (point 8). Nothing about LN. In any case, BCH simply works 100% of the time, it's instant, extremely reliable and cheap to use, and it's actually being used as cash in t…

If you're going to take a group of scammer's twisted, false interpretation of a v0.0.1 Bitcoin whitepaper as the absolute final Gospel truth and something which you put faith in regarding your money then you're going to have a really bad time. > it's actually being used as cash in the real world (unlike BTC) Simply not true, on both counts. Sorry.

So your only arguments are denials and ad hominems. Got it.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#185

Post by kingrazor »

nixass wrote: post #121
cycomanic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 frie…

Why would I use credit card at all? Sure it does help when traveling but not much use for it otherwise

I use one for two reasons. One is that it puts a layer between my purchase and my bank. Any fraudulent purchases can be dealt with before any money is taken from my account. The second is for the rewards and the ability to build credit.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#186

Post by Teever »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #165
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, absolutely. It is totally embarrassing to watch my UK family or EU friends interact with their banking systems and compare it with the US. To be fair, things are improving a little bit. But we're still so very far behind the EU banking system. Instant, cost-free transfers between any two accounts, completed faster than you can lift your finger off your smartphone.

> Instant, cost-free transfers between any two accounts, completed faster than you can lift your finger off your smartphone. This is available to most people in the US via Zelle. I have been using it for nearly 10 years I think. https://www.zellepay.com/get-started Ideally, the federal government would have already made it a utility available to all, but for now the functionality is there for those who can get a bank…

Who is Zelle and what do they do with the information that they harvest from this service that they offer?

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#187

Post by 4ad »

morepork wrote: post #107
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

And yet, they are higher. Of course, not because CC fees, but regardless of the reason, as the price of virtually everything that isn't a staple is higher in the EU, the fact that lower CC fees make prices trivially lower in this particular case is somewhat of an irrelevant point.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#188

Post by searchableguy »

morepork wrote: post #111
10g1k wrote: post #6

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

We also have rupay, which is now international as an alternative to visa and Mastercard.

Credit card usage has been declining in India.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#189

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sytelus wrote: post #161
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much all banks use mainframes to do batch processing. "SFTP runs the world" This isn't an anachronism. Batched net settlement is inherently cheaper than real-time gross settlement. Canonical example: if I send you $10, then you send me $5 and I send you $2, in net settlement, there is a single $7 transaction; with RTGS there are three transactions of $17. The first system not only has lower transaction costs…

Why should transaction "cost" anything? It is just running arithmetic instruction on a number in a computer. I would argue batch processing makes no sense. If you send me me $10 and I send you $5 and bank wait for a month to run that batch, you might have already been bankrupt and have nothing to send so somehow you sent me money, I never received it and now everything is in big limbo. Transactions should be instant.

> Why should transaction "cost" anything? It is just running arithmetic instruction on a number in a computer.

Every dollar that crosses a payments platform has a non-zero chance of creating some combination of legal, regulatory and customer-service costs. Frictionless transactions are as real world as their physics counterpart.

> would argue batch processing makes no sense

It does, from a deeply fundamental level. The only case where RTGS is equal to net settlement is if we make some Econ 101 assumptions (frictionless transactions, infinite borrowing and lending capacity) together with zero or negative rates. (Even then, one could be a stickler about the cost of computation.)

> you might have already been bankrupt

Clearinghouses.

My point isn't that net settlement or RTGS are inherently better. They're not. But they're fundamentally tied, and net settlement on top of an RTGS rail will always be cheaper in the real world than that same underlying rail. On the cost side, net settlement will win. On immediacy and counterparty risk, RTGS. A strong system offers both options.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#190

Post by awillen »

einpoklum wrote: post #167
xboxnolifes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I not use a credit card? It's essentially a better debit card in every scenario, except for when paying with a credit card has an additional fee.

1. Extra hassle of interaction with a second company other than your bank, extra credentials, tracking balances, etc. etc. When I was living in the Netherlands I had my bank-account-attached Maestro card (or sometimes cash) and that was that. Except when foreign companies needed a credit card. 2. Fees. The whole point of credit cards - for the CC companies of course - is fees.

Pretty much every major bank in the US issues credit cards, so you don't need to deal with a second company. For most consumers, there are credit cards without fees (the CC companies charge fees to merchants, but unless you're dealing with a place that offers a cash discount, that doesn't affect you at all).
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