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Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

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Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#201

Post by amelius »

nologic01 wrote: post #153

Imagine 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…

> You just bought a hammer, now you need nails.

The standard response from someone working in ad-tech: "But isn't it great that an advertisement informs you that you need nails too? Nothing would ever be built without the help from ad-tech!"

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#202

Post by BrandonS113 »

em500 wrote: post #187
BrandonS113 wrote: post #161

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…

But as you just discovered, they don't work everywhere. Plenty of Dutch and German stores don't accept them. Visa and Mastercard interchange fees are nowadays capped to 0.3% by law, but they used to be 2%+ (and still are in the USA AFAICT), that's why historically Dutch and German retailers shunned them. Why pay 2% to accept a few more cards from foreigners and tourists when 99% of your customers already have a 0.3%…

I agree. But plenty of Dutch vendor only accept Dutch mastercards and not foreign. The fee s the same. WHY? And foreigners can't get IDEAL or Dutch mastercards. I have gotten used to carry a lot of cash when there. Fortunately, Holland is safe. Someone looked at me very funny when I payed them EUR 500 in cash last week.

But we also know why a European home grown payments system is not happening. The incumbent banks hate it and have enough power to block such solutions.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#203

Post by kevincox »

ssl232 wrote: post #14
wkat4242 wrote: post #5

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?

> But how do you break up such a duopoly? Start buying things with cash again.

Ignoring the convenience aspect one problem with this is that you are now paying an ~2% "tax" as most stores include credit card fees in their prices. If you use a credit card you get ~2% back in "rewards" but if you don't you are still paying the same prices (in most businesses).

It's a pretty clever scheme by the card companies where the have raised the price for people not using their services.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#204

Post by SenAnder »

squokko wrote: post #184
nologic01 wrote: post #153

Imagine 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…

The average person simply has no hope of understanding the flows of modern global capital, data, weapons, etc. Back in the day, if the local leather tanner was polluting the town water supply... you'd just go tell him to stop, and if he didn't... Nowadays the only people who have any idea what's actually going on are the ones who are profiting the most from it and have no incentive to shut it down.

> The average person simply has no hope of understanding

If Mastercard used a private detective to follow you when shopping, and he wrote everything you bought and where you bought it into a notebook, which he later delivers to Mastercard, the average person would understand very quickly.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#205

Post by izacus »

Lutger wrote: post #197
hknmtt wrote: post #167

Actually 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 p…

Not the whole world, this is mostly in the United States. In Europe its more like what you describe, banks are the card payment provider and we have (near) instant online transfers. Credit cards are relatively unimportant here.

What are you going on about? Pretty much all European banks issue Visa/Mastercard credit and debit cards (sometimes under their subbrands Maestro and VPay) by default to pretty much all customers.

Most in-store payment processing goes directly over those two companies still.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#206

Post by dantyti »

skywal_l wrote: post #174
hknmtt wrote: post #167

Actually 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 p…

Banks are already processing payments. When you put your credit card in your bank's ATM, the ATM is managed by the bank. It connects to your bank server and all the authorisation and processing is being done by the bank. Visa and mastercard provide connection to other banks. When you put your card in another bank's ATM or buy something in a business associated with another bank. Getting ride of the Visa/Mastercard du…

> would mean that all banks must connect to all other banks

I think the EU's getting there with open banking directives like the PSD2:

"the provision of a standardised and reliable access interface to payment accounts (i.e. an application programming interface, API)" https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/intro/mip-online/2018/html/18...

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#207

Post by quantum_magpie »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #157
hansvm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa vanilla is fairly practical for most threat models. I know some orgs are trying to do more ad targeting via security cameras across multiple stores, but afaik you'll have no problem paying cash for a visa vanilla gift card, activating it online (through a vpn or something if you're worried about that level of tracking), and then using it like a credit card at nearly any brick-and-mortar store and many online ret…

>You can't use prepaid phones to sign up to many online accounts Presumably this is meaning prepaid phone numbers? Also assuming this is likely a US thing? Or I'm misreading it somehow. Because otherwise, I've always bought my phone cash and buy my airtime and data prepaid (no contract) in both EU and Africa and have never come across a service that restricted my phone number for being prepaid.

My number in EU (LTU) is not prepaid, but likely on some bullshit outdated prefix blacklist, so US companies (microsoft and blizzard so far) do not allow to use it for authenticators and such for being a prepaid number. MS simply refused to send the SMS, blizzard explicitly mentioned the prepaid reason.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#208

Post by genevra »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #157
hansvm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa vanilla is fairly practical for most threat models. I know some orgs are trying to do more ad targeting via security cameras across multiple stores, but afaik you'll have no problem paying cash for a visa vanilla gift card, activating it online (through a vpn or something if you're worried about that level of tracking), and then using it like a credit card at nearly any brick-and-mortar store and many online ret…

>You can't use prepaid phones to sign up to many online accounts Presumably this is meaning prepaid phone numbers? Also assuming this is likely a US thing? Or I'm misreading it somehow. Because otherwise, I've always bought my phone cash and buy my airtime and data prepaid (no contract) in both EU and Africa and have never come across a service that restricted my phone number for being prepaid.

I think they are referring to VOIP numbers which are blocked from usage for the vast majority of sign ups requiring a phone number

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#209

Post by kalleboo »

generic92034 wrote: post #193
skywal_l wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are already processing payments. When you put your credit card in your bank's ATM, the ATM is managed by the bank. It connects to your bank server and all the authorisation and processing is being done by the bank. Visa and mastercard provide connection to other banks. When you put your card in another bank's ATM or buy something in a business associated with another bank. Getting ride of the Visa/Mastercard du…

> Getting ride of the Visa/Mastercard duopoly would mean that all banks must connect to all other banks, which they do not want to do, believe me. That would be an administrative hell for them. What would be so strange about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

Aren't most SEPA transfers not settled directly bank-to-bank but through STEP2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBA_Clearing#STEP2

That said, in a system replacing VISA/MasterCard (which I personally believe is a goal worth working toward), it seems like the easiest way would be to connect all the existing national clearing systems (many of these already have instant payments on their own - Fedwire in the US, STEP2 in the Eurozone, Zengin in Japan, etc etc) in a two-tier system.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#210

Post by em500 »

BrandonS113 wrote: post #202
em500 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as you just discovered, they don't work everywhere. Plenty of Dutch and German stores don't accept them. Visa and Mastercard interchange fees are nowadays capped to 0.3% by law, but they used to be 2%+ (and still are in the USA AFAICT), that's why historically Dutch and German retailers shunned them. Why pay 2% to accept a few more cards from foreigners and tourists when 99% of your customers already have a 0.3%…

I agree. But plenty of Dutch vendor only accept Dutch mastercards and not foreign. The fee s the same. WHY? And foreigners can't get IDEAL or Dutch mastercards. I have gotten used to carry a lot of cash when there. Fortunately, Holland is safe. Someone looked at me very funny when I payed them EUR 500 in cash last week. But we also know why a European home grown payments system is not happening. The incumbent banks h…

Here are the transaction costs for a retailer at the largest Dutch bank:

- Maestro, V PAY, Debit Mastercard en VISA Debit issued in Europe: €0.047-€0.06 per transaction

- iDEAL: €0.35

- Mastercard en VISA creditcards issued in Europe: 1.70%

- Mastercard en VISA creditcards and debitcards issued outside of Europe: 2.50%

https://www.ing.nl/zakelijk/betalen/tarieven/betalingen-binn...

For a €100 payment, we're looking at €0.06 debitcard transaction vs €1.70-€2.50 creditcard. If I were a Dutch retailer outside of areas/sectors with a lot of foreign/tourist business I probably wouldn't bother with credit cards either, as probably 99%+ of the Dutch have Maestro, VPAY or cash.

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