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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?

#421

Post by Silhouette »

maccard wrote: post #226
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,…

In the EU credit cards can't be charged more than other payment methods anymore, so _youre_ not paying 3% more.

Or from another point of view you're now hit with the higher bill even if you choose to pay by a more efficient method. It's debatable whether the EU's rule actually helps cardholders or whether it just protects the card networks and their overpriced payment schemes.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#422

Post by makeitdouble »

Zircom wrote: post #320
makeitdouble wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. When it's easily verifiable that actual fraud has taken place I would say yes. It would've taken them literally 5 minutes of their time to investigate by going to the website, seeing it presents itself as a…

Playing PayPal'd advocate, that's a lot similar to home made "give me money to finish this personal project" and you're expecting a faceless service to go spend 5 min on one of the hundreds of thousands of claims they receive every day. Including of course the ones where you actually sent the money to your friend who already spent it out of PayPal, and PayPal has to front the money for your chargeback.

Fraud management is hard. Most actors in the domain are also jerks, but that's orthogonal to it being hard I think.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#423

Post by thematrixturtle »

jollybean wrote: post #362
Spooky23 wrote: post #296

The whole premise of the article is dumb. Lots of small businesses like to cry about credit card fees, which is absurd given the value offered for the price charged. Not only do they drive spending, but they eliminate the casual embezzlement and pilferage that plagues cash businesses. My grandfather ran pubs, and use to quip that he’d fire any honest bartender, because the guy was smarter than him. When I was in coll…

I think this is completely wrong. It's not the 'credit' that drives this, so much as the 'digitization'. That can be achieved without credit. European countries have been doing it for a long time. Canada has 'Interac'. There is utterly no need for VISA/MC. A fairly simple banking standard could make it so that you could pay for stuff with some kind of card + PIN and that's it. There'd be a tiny fee which would help t…

> There is utterly no need for VISA/MC.

Unless you're a visitor who doesn't have access to the local system.

As a traveller, it's now possible to travel to other countries and never touch local cash, because everything can be paid for by credit card. In the US, tips have historically been the outlier, but while Venmo is increasingly taking over, that's not something you'll have access to without a US bank account.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#424

Post by jjtheblunt »

RHSeeger wrote: post #278
jjtheblunt wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's a charge back? (not joking: in the US and I don't know)

It's when you tell your credit card company that a specific charge was not valid. Generally because the person/company it was too did not fulfill their end of the transaction. Generally, you're not responsible for the charge until they've looked into it and determined who they believe is at fault.

thank you

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#425

Post by thematrixturtle »

csomar wrote: post #159
Enginerrrd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm no fan of crypto, but the one place where I can see real utility for blockchain is as a backend settlement service for banks. So... what does the crypto provide there that a simple authenticated communication protocol with a few redundant centralized servers doesn't?

A blockchain will allow all these operators to transact safely. It's really just more secure because it's open (otherwise very quickly compromised). And blockchain tech has shown to be reliable when it comes to up-time and security (if you keep it simple).

> blockchain tech has shown to be reliable when it comes to security

Seriously? You would trust billions of dollars to this?

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?theme=hack

To be clear, the cryptographic underpinnings of blockchain seem solid, it's just that both implementations and actual usage are by fallible humans. And because everything is irreversible, even if you manage to guard against hackers, you still can straight up incinerate money by (say) mistyping a receiving account number (wallet).

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#426

Post by Silhouette »

Nursie wrote: post #411
GekkePrutser wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Europe it's the complete opposite. They're hard to sign up for (banks don't like giving them) and you get registered for the loan which means you will have a harder time getting a mortgage or car loan. The more loans you already have the harder it gets. I heard in the US it works the opposite way. And the pin is required here on both (and rightly so IMO to protect against skimming). Only for minor contactless…

> Here in Europe it's the complete opposite. They're hard to sign up for (banks don't like giving them) and you get registered for the loan which means you will have a harder time getting a mortgage or car loan. Which part of Europe? That's not how it works in the UK. You build up a record by using credit products and it benefits your score to keep them in good order. Though it is how it works here in Australia. When…

The UK (again) has significant legal protections for credit that mean the credit card company is jointly liable for the debt in some circumstances

And the advice for customers is often to buy mid-to-high value items using a credit card for this reason. If you order £10k of furniture for your new home from an online retailer that goes bust before delivery and you paid by credit card then you might well have a claim against your card provider instead for example.

Of course the direct connection between whether you have certain consumer protections by law and whether you technically paid on credit doesn't actually make much sense today and mostly exists for historical reasons. The corresponding risk created for card companies also contributes to the raw deal that merchants get in the terms for accepting card payments, which is a drag on the whole economy.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#428

Post by Silhouette »

misterprime wrote: post #211
skimo8 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for cash back. It helps to significantly offset sales tax for me. Yes, the money is always coming from somewhere and arguably products might be cheaper without credit cards. However, it’s the game we’re in, so why leave money on the table?

cash back *rewards. Please don't use your credit cards for cash advances unless you REALLY know what you're doing and why.

For anyone downvoting the solid advice in the parent comment, please be aware that "cash back" has been a widely used term in some countries for getting a shop where you're paying by card to charge an extra amount to your card at the same time and give you that amount in cash. It was a popular alternative to ATM use here in the UK for a long time for example. However if you were paying using a credit card instead of a debit card then the same (often very expensive) charges and interest rates would apply as if you used your credit card to get cash at an ATM and sometimes people didn't realise that and thought it was a free and convenient way to withdraw extra cash (as it typically would have been if paying with a bank debit card instead).

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#429

Post by blackoil »

RHSeeger wrote: post #267
mcv wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US, automated payments tend to be "pull based", where a company tells your bank "give me this much from this account, I have permission". The company can lie but, by the time you find out, the money is already gone and it can take a long time to get it back. The bank has no real incentive to get your money back. With a credit card, on the other hand, you see what was taken _before_ you pay them. So you can tel…

In India, now you have to approve all such scheduled payments with a 2FA and upto a limit. So even if I have approved ShadyCorp they can't demand more than approved amount.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#430

Post by doodlesdev »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #425
csomar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blockchain will allow all these operators to transact safely. It's really just more secure because it's open (otherwise very quickly compromised). And blockchain tech has shown to be reliable when it comes to up-time and security (if you keep it simple).

> blockchain tech has shown to be reliable when it comes to security Seriously? You would trust billions of dollars to this? https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?theme=hack To be clear, the cryptographic underpinnings of blockchain seem solid, it's just that both implementations and actual usage are by fallible humans. And because everything is irreversible, even if you manage to guard against hackers, you still can straigh…

See no mention of Bitcoin or Ether in that page, only centralized shitcoins such as Solana and a few buggy smart contracts. Also, if the system is to be operated by only the banks then transactions _can_ be reversed when needed due to security issues. I don't have a strong opinion whether this is a good option or not, just saying that it's not as absurd as it may seen.
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