One reason to like the visa mastercard duopoly. They work everywhere. I go to the Netherlands a lot for work, and it is a real pain as they have their own payment system, IDEAL, one needs to live there, that is closed to foreigners. Many vendors, especially outside of main tourist areas will not take foreign cards. Guess they don't want to pay 0.1% fees. Yesterday, was left embarrassed in Albert Heijn where they only took Dutch cards and I did not have enough cash. (some AH do, most don't)
Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
161–170 of 253 posts
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#162One reason to like the visa mastercard duopoly. They work everywhere. I go to the Netherlands a lot for work, and it is a real pain as they have their own payment system, IDEAL, one needs to live there, that is closed to foreigners. Many vendors, especially outside of main tourist areas will not take foreign cards. Guess they don't want to pay 0.1% fees. Yesterday, was left embarrassed in Albert Heijn where they only…
Outside of main cities and Germany is the same for restaurants and cafes. Pita
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#163Imagine you go to a market notorious for haggling and the company that sold you your wallet monitors all your transactions and reports them to whomever of the market sellers pays most. You are now the fat chicken, ready to be plucked: You just bought a hammer, now you need nails. From your social media trail sellers can also infer you are somewhat of a dimwit. Hurry, nails are in high demand in your area. But no worr…
"always was" is such terrible rhetoric. hand-wavey and without substance. A thought terminating cliche.
It honestly makes crypto look desirable, and buildings designed with sensor blocking materials. You can't passively surveil a data-center. Why should my home, office or shopping mall be any different?
The powers-that-be never gave us a choice to opt-out. It's been a slow gradual decline.
We have to incentivize haggling over our own data. My unseen/unknown data is my asset and I will protect it's financial value.
We can't trust random joes to not sell out crypto exchanges and the like, so you have to build technology that functions as a manual crypto exchange - without a developer on it's back to pull the ripchord and destroy the technology whenever money shows up.
Manual software is key, as soon as it becomes "automated", some developer has to be roped into hand-holding it through tech changes. Crypto software that only exists because a man put it together and went hands-off, is Key.
Then you can build the normal philosophical/structural/relationship management ideas on top of that.
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ended up creating a “my data” account. I am curious what MC has been collecting across my 2 MC branded cards (one of them is an Apple Card which advertises protecting user privacy). Once I get back that report will be requesting deletion.
Apple will hate if this blows up with a headline of "Apple card users spending data being sold"
Neither the EFF or PIRG mention Apple Card. I was under the impression that Apple had taken measures to prevent exactly this kind of information from being leaked from Apple Card use.
That is, beyond rotation of card numbers whenever Apple Pay is used.
Knowing Apple has put an emphasis on customer privacy, and that Apple Card is run on Mastercard makes zero mention of it in either article kind of stand out to me.
It would be great to get clarification on what the scope is of Apple Card customer exposure to Mastercard’s commercialization of payment data.
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh. I hadn't even heard of Discover.
It's the company that now owns Diners Club (and is better known under that name in many countries other than the US), who in turn invented credit cards way back :)
They did not invent credit cards. Diners Club was a charge card. They did not invent that either. American Airlines had their own charge card a few decades before.
They did start the first payment card that wasn’t linked to a specific company (i.e. the American Airlines card).
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#166Anyone who makes an account on a commercial website has consented to this indirectly. We've crossed the Rubicon long ago. Most people seem content with their info shared, sold, brokered, etc.
Tha's a very blunt measurement of 'content'.
Vito Corleone knew how to make an offer you can't refuse. Tech has done the same, in very finely measured increments.
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#167Actually all current card payment providers should be put out of business altogether. Two companies(master/visa) hold complete control over the entire customer spending in the whole world.- They also prevented banks from catching up to the 21st century, technology-wise, and we still do not have instant online payments. There is so many things bad with banking and many causes can be traced back to these card payment providers. We need alternatives, as many as there are banks in the world. Every bank needs to be a card payment provider, an online payment gateway providers and so on.
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the whole credit/lending part isn't even needed. In Europe this is only a marginal thing and most people just have debit cards.
There are advantages to credit. For example, the money remains in your hands until you pay your credit card bill, so if there is a dispute, fraud, or overcharge, you don't have to fight and wait to get your money back. Also, some businesses, such as car rental companies, won't provide services to debit card holders. Also, it's a free [edit: zero-interest, not free] loan (if you pay credit card bills in full); you get…
In the UK you also get access to better consumer protection using credit thanks to Section 75
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#169We 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?
You start an EU competing service with the top EU banks and money lenders. You build a bunch of credit card infrastructure. You tie your infrastructure to the merchant systems and get gateways to implement your protocol. Not exactly easy but it’s not impossible. An app based system could probably do it and force ApplePay and GooglePay to use it in those areas. They will if it’s in place.
Could you not just use the same protocol?
Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are advantages to credit. For example, the money remains in your hands until you pay your credit card bill, so if there is a dispute, fraud, or overcharge, you don't have to fight and wait to get your money back. Also, some businesses, such as car rental companies, won't provide services to debit card holders. Also, it's a free [edit: zero-interest, not free] loan (if you pay credit card bills in full); you get…
There are some benefits, but it does complicate the transaction significantly. It's no longer between two parties (a consumer and a merchant), there are now at least two more: a lender and a credit bureau. And that's why we're in this mess to begin with. Credit card transactions are reported to credit bureaus (from a quick web search, it looks like debit card transactions aren't) and this normalizes the idea that you…
Credit reporting makes getting loans easier because lenders are more willing to give loans when they can look up your credit rating instead playing it safe and declining you because they have nothing to judge the risk with.
You also get fraud protection.
It’s not free, but you’re not necessarily paying for it. The main concern is that some people are definitely paying for it disproportionally more than others.