111–120 of 253 posts
We should have a payment system that isn't held hostage by two providers anyway. At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here. Besides selling our data this also means we get American morals pushed on us, eg they won't provide payments for some websites they don't like. But how do you break up such a duopoly?
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> At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here Growing up, my parents had a Discover card (among others) and everywhere we went, I remember them asking if they took Discover because so many places didn't. It wasn't until years later when I saw the joke about this on Futurama that I realized this wasn't a unique experience: > Fry: Do you take Mastercard?…
In the US today, it's been my experience that if a business accepts credit cards, Visa, MC, Amex and Discover are all accepted. Costco would be the exception that proves the rule . This has been the case since I started using credit cards, maybe 10 years ago. Does anyone know when this changed? I don't think I've just been lucky this entire time. Edit: When traveling overseas, I've always just used VISA though, but t…
Costco was unique because they used to only take Amex credit cards and then Citi/Visa won that business.
Use cash more. I know you can't use it everywhere, and for everything, but -- for the sake of privacy, use cash when and where you can. The cashless economy is a surveillance economy, and if you care about privacy (for others, if not for yourself) then you should use cash whenever possible.
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Bloomberg reporting, circa 2018: “For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for...” “But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the c…
How does Mastercard know what you actually bought? If got to Costcos then the CC bill says the whole amount, not individual items.
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From the other side of the table, I've worked in companies avoiding Amex support as long as they could, and even after actively obfuscating the support to push the user to use another card. For smaller entities it's a PITA to have to manage a separate additinal contract, and it costs a lot more for the merchant, when virtually nobody only owns an Amex. If you're in europe there are probably other payment means that d…
> For smaller entities it's a PITA to have to manage a separate additinal contract, and it costs a lot more for the merchant, when virtually nobody only owns an Amex. I completely agree on the cost part for AMEX, but how do you mean it's a PITA to accept those cards? It's usually as simple as enabling an option with your card payment service, not very complicated at all.
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From the other side of the table, I've worked in companies avoiding Amex support as long as they could, and even after actively obfuscating the support to push the user to use another card. For smaller entities it's a PITA to have to manage a separate additinal contract, and it costs a lot more for the merchant, when virtually nobody only owns an Amex. If you're in europe there are probably other payment means that d…
Otoh, companies chasing the highest dollar value customers or differentiating via service may want to take it. Higher ticket prices, more revenue, despite the aggravations. It’s almost as if a business needs to decide if it’s mass market or high end. I would only buy certain classes of goods with my AmEx due to how confident I am that Amex customer service has my back. For example, the Amex platinum card will reimbur…
Of course, that value is entirely funded out of your own pocket.
Instead of paying with your Amex for overpriced goods, you could put a bit of money to the side for every normal purchase, and use that pot to 'refund' your electric screwdriver yourself.
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FedNow instant payments in the US. Already live, just taking time to ramp (already plugged into 108 banks and financial services providers, including JPMC and the US Treasury). What it could look like is India’s UPI. UPI is so detrimental to Mastercard’s India business it complains about it publicly. In Europe, more aggressive adoption of SEPA instant payments. TLDR utility priced payment rails provided by a central…
FedNow is a great step but most of the people I've asked tell me it isn't going to do anything to stop people from being debanked for "morality" reasons like sex work.
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In the US today, it's been my experience that if a business accepts credit cards, Visa, MC, Amex and Discover are all accepted. Costco would be the exception that proves the rule . This has been the case since I started using credit cards, maybe 10 years ago. Does anyone know when this changed? I don't think I've just been lucky this entire time. Edit: When traveling overseas, I've always just used VISA though, but t…
Amex is frequently not taken by small businesses that don’t use one of the newer POS systems like Square or Clover.
Amex charges significantly more than the others, to the point that multiple businesses I frequent offer a sliding scale - par for cash/check, +2-5% for Visa/Mastercard/Discover, +5%+ for Amex.
This is just one more input to an optimization problem for me, but for merchants makes a significant difference: my mechanic says he saves thousands of dollars a month by turning Amex customers into Mastercard customers, and Mastercard customers into cash customers.
We should have a payment system that isn't held hostage by two providers anyway. At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here. Besides selling our data this also means we get American morals pushed on us, eg they won't provide payments for some websites they don't like. But how do you break up such a duopoly?
Depends on the country!
Amex is accepted in many places in Germany these days (though you definitely still need to carry another card, so it can't be your only card).
And Discover and Diners Club are actually the same network, so in the European countries that have strong Diners Club acceptance, you can usually also get by with Discover. (No idea about how good the exchange rates are, though; those of Diners Club in the other direction are atrocious.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here Growing up, my parents had a Discover card (among others) and everywhere we went, I remember them asking if they took Discover because so many places didn't. It wasn't until years later when I saw the joke about this on Futurama that I realized this wasn't a unique experience: > Fry: Do you take Mastercard?…
In the US today, it's been my experience that if a business accepts credit cards, Visa, MC, Amex and Discover are all accepted. Costco would be the exception that proves the rule . This has been the case since I started using credit cards, maybe 10 years ago. Does anyone know when this changed? I don't think I've just been lucky this entire time. Edit: When traveling overseas, I've always just used VISA though, but t…