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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?

#331

Post by guntab-dan »

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…

The problem with Zelle is that it's not safe to use for anything except payments to friends and family. The Zelle user agreement [1] puts this warning in all-caps: "YOU SHOULD NOT USE THE ZELLE® SERVICE TO SEND MONEY TO PERSONS WITH WHOM YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR OR YOU DO NOT TRUST. ZELLE® DOES NOT OFFER A PROTECTION PROGRAM FOR AUTHORIZED PAYMENTS MADE WITH THE SERVICE"

[1] https://www.zellepay.com/legal/user-service-agreement

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#332

Post by novok »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #306
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I use credit card at all? Float. If I charge $10k to a card, I get an interest-free loan until the balance has to be paid off. In a zero-rate environment that's meaningless. But even at the 30-day's 2.22% [1], that's almost twenty bucks. I'm probably paying about 1% more for the CC fees, but I can use my card that gives me 1.5% back on everything. [1] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-c…

That seems so much hassle for so little. But in Europe credit cards don't give cashback.

Your going to pay with some sort of payment card, and credit cards are easy to sign up for and less hassle to use with payments than debit cards, which require you to tap in a pin all the time. Also less fraud protection, etc.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#333

Post by xur17 »

RHSeeger wrote: post #275
Jensson wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3% of your credit card spend is a steep cost to pay for that security though, they can't clean out all your money if you don't tie all of it to the debit card, just put a months worth there at a time and you are better off with debit unless you get your debit card stolen every year or so. It isn't more work than credit either, instead of paying it off every month you fill it up every month. And for fraud protection,…

1. Most places don't charge extra for a credit card payment. 2. Most cards have a cash-back arrangement, where you earn credits for what you spend. Together, that means you're generally not paying anywhere even close to 3%.

They don't charge extra for credit card payments, but they pay the fee on the majority of their payments, so it's baked into their margin. The cash-back arrangement reduces this by ~1% in effect.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#334

Post by novok »

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…

How does it work with travellers & tourists then?

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#335

Post by kube-system »

pulisse wrote: post #295
julienb_sea wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of credit cards is no one can literally drain your bank account via fraudulent access to a payment card directly tied to your bank (i.e. debit card in US nomenclature). This is a clear benefit regardless of location. Courts are slow and not scalable, and you don't want to be in a scenario where your bank has been drained right before you need to make important payments.

> The benefit of credit cards is no one can literally drain your bank account via fraudulent access to a payment card directly tied to your bank (i.e. debit card in US nomenclature This difference is a consequence of law, not payment technology. It's entirely possible for someone to make fraudulent charges on a card up to its limit (which would be the analogue of draining a bank account), but CC companies are require…

Part of it is inherent to the type of account. Ledgers have to balance out somehow, and fraud is going to temporarily be someones problem until it is resolved. Credit is, by definition, the bank's money.

For example, US also has similar laws for debit cards, but, by definition, when a charge is made to your bank account, it is made to your bank account.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#336

Post by powerhour »

Dalewyn wrote: post #256
Zircom wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

This seems like textbook fraud to me. It doesn't matter if there are hints here and there, if the "merchant" is directing you through a flow that will direct funds somewhere other than you intend (or other than they claim), it's fraud.

See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#337

Post by vimy »

yieldcrv wrote: post #245
mcv wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's available to everybody in Europe regardless of what bank or other service they use.

biiig asterisk on that is necessary basically friends in the same country using a select few major banks are likely to have instant sepa available between them and it seem like the normal thing, while the reality is that instant-sepa is a massive patch work of availability between countries, banks, currencies an outsider to the EU trying to do business is unlikely to be a part of a social circle where everyone is usi…

Normal SEPA is max 2 days and usually it takes one. That’s not what I would call super slow.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#338

Post by nobody9999 »

pulisse wrote: post #295
julienb_sea wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of credit cards is no one can literally drain your bank account via fraudulent access to a payment card directly tied to your bank (i.e. debit card in US nomenclature). This is a clear benefit regardless of location. Courts are slow and not scalable, and you don't want to be in a scenario where your bank has been drained right before you need to make important payments.

> The benefit of credit cards is no one can literally drain your bank account via fraudulent access to a payment card directly tied to your bank (i.e. debit card in US nomenclature This difference is a consequence of law, not payment technology. It's entirely possible for someone to make fraudulent charges on a card up to its limit (which would be the analogue of draining a bank account), but CC companies are require…

>There's no technical reason why bank accounts couldn't be similarly protected, but banks have thus far been successful in preventing such laws from being enacted.

My bank's (Chase) policy limits debit card customer fraud losses to the same $50 that the law requires of credit cards.

Not sure about other banks, but while I'm not sad that I have this protection, Chase's anti-fraud measures for debit cards (mostly programmatic, I'm sure) are pretty draconian.

If I travel any significant distance from my home, transactions with my debit card are almost always declined and I either have to contact customer service (a big time waster) or use a credit card.

That's incredibly annoying, although if that's the reason my debit card fraud responsibility is limited to the same as a credit card, that's a trade off that some may be willing to make and some will not.

Given that my debit card has been the subject of fraudulent activity several times and the bank has made me whole every time, perhaps there's something to be said for the harshness of the debit card anti-fraud algorithms.

But it's still incredibly annoying.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#339

Post by kube-system »

mcv wrote: post #225
snazz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, how do European banks avoid this issue? If my debit card or ACH info is compromised and someone drains my checking account, is there a way to use the stolen funds before the bank/court finishes their investigation?

How would they drain your bank account? There's quite a bit of 2FA they'd have to defeat. Easiest is stealing the card after skimming their PIN, but if you know it's stolen, you're going to block it pretty quickly, and there are limits to how much you can withdraw from an ATM. The big problem with credit cards is that all the info needed to authorize a transaction is right there on the card. The second problem is tha…

Technical exploits are only a subset of fraud. Scams bypass 2FA with no problems.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#340

Post by erikig »

travisporter wrote: post #271
njarboe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ATM cards only allow you to withdraw cash at a PLUS ATM - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_(interbank_network) , but they don't allow you to make purchases via the MasterCard/VISA interchange network.
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