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.
Interesting. How much money is lost by banks giving out cash back rewards to Americans using credit cards in Europe?
None. When an American uses a rewards card the merchant pays 3% interchange so the customer can pocket 1%. These are high fees compared with a local using a card with the fee capped at 0.3%.
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…
At least going by your retelling, I'll say PayPal was right to refuse reversal. Mindlessly clicking through OK buttons is end-user negligence, not fraud. Your brother presumably had multiple opportunities to notice something was not okay before completely signing off on it. It's tantamount to signing a contract without so much as even glancing through the terms, then turning around saying you never meant to sign it.…
Some arbitrary policy they happen to have about personal transfers doesn't absolve them of the responsibility of policing their platform to ensure it's not being utilized by scammers, and shutting them down when they find them, or when they are EXPLICITLY REPORTED TO THEM. That's what I was referring to when I said they're a joke about addressing fraud. The website is still up, it still directs you to the same form to send money to the same exact account. I highly doubt my brother was the first person to call them and complain about this person, but their account is still active and apparently in good standing. What a fucking joke. It would take them literally 5 minutes of investigation to go to the website, see how it presents itself as a retail store, and to go through the checkout process that eventually leads to a page for a personal transfer, which is clearly not correct, and no goods are ever delivered, and clearly it's entirely meant to fraudulently separate non-savvy buyers from their money. But they clearly have zero interest in doing any of that, since they still get to collect their percentage on every transaction sent to him, they couldn't care less.
And the EU system is way behind India’s UPI. That system really is a dream. It turned India into the world’s largest real time payment market and basically is Google’s model for FedNow they’re pitching to the federal government. It’s also what the EU is trying to emulate.
Woah, I did not know about India's UPI. And it serves more than India! Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.[1][2] UPI is an open source application program…
"Markets" here means some limited ability to transfer to/from India, but nobody uses UPI for domestic transactions in these places.
Singapore has an equivalent system called PayNow, which is equally instant and ubiquitous.
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
>It has better scalability if you don't care about decentralisation whatsoever That is not true by any meaningful use of the word "decentralization". The LN system is markedly worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbD0kiTddEs >If you're a sockpuppet then nobody is buying it sorry, your coin is dead. If you are concerned about sock-puppet shills, don't be: I have never owned BCH, BTC or any other bitcoin variant and…
> Good cryptocurrencies (like cryptonote, zerocoin, etc.) Ah, you've got shitcoins to hawk.
Those are protocols, not necessarily cryptocurrencies[0][1]. They were originally designed as improvements to the bitcoin network, but that never came into fruition due to stubborn bitcoiners like you who refuse to improve the network.
The Cryptonote[2] and Zerocoin[3] whitepapers were published back in 2013/2014 and made some pretty important security improvements to the bitcoin network. I suggest giving them a read. Many of the systems that were once designed for Bitcoin, such as P2Pool now work on projects like cryptonote[4]. We have also designed a proof-of-work system that is completely CPU-bound (you can mine it on your home computer as satoshi intended)[5].
Also, the cryptonote/zerocoin-derived cryptocurrencies are hardly shitcoins seeing as they have effectively displaced Bitcoin's original use-case as of this year.
If you want only an ATM card and not a debit card, you might be able to get one. Banks don't advertise it, but I got an ATM only card from Bank of America.
I don’t understand the difference and Google doesn’t help.
An ATM only card lacks the Visa or Mastercard logo. It can only be used on interbank networks like NYCE PLUS STAR. Or maybe only at that bank’s branches. You always have to key in your PIN and there is often withdrawal limit of $500/day because a debit card and PIN is immediate cash.
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-re…
That jumped out at me too -- so I looked up what appears to be the source [1] and it does indeed state:
> "Regardless of size, the fees are most merchants’ highest operating cost after labor"
but I'm as incredulous as you are. Obviously things like cost of goods, and also usually rent, are also going to be higher.
I can only assume it's based on some really misleading survey, and I'm honestly surprised to see The Economist, of all publications, repeat something so obviously economically questionable. (To be sure, they attribute the claim rather than state it, but they present it as if it's true.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service) > Zelle (/zɛl/) is a United States–based digital payments network owned by Early Warning Services, LLC, a private financial services company owned by the banks Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.[1][2][3][4] Those are all the biggest banks, so they probably have all the transaction information anyway.
Buuuuut as banks they have a totally different privacy policy than a 3rd party payment system, aren't they?
I have no idea. I just assume everything I do electronically is tracked.
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…
...In the US. Outside the US, credit cards are much less common outside the US. The alternative to credit cards isn't CoD, it's debit cards, which are connected directly to a bank account. Merchants love debit cards because they have near-zero transaction fees. You don't need credit card for chargebacks, just strong consumer protection laws that permit the bank to claw the money back from the merchant. As for fraud,…
Credit cards are more popular than debit cards in Japan. Its debt is monthly cleared from bank account by default and no fee/interest so basically no hassle but just useful, unless signed up revolving payment.