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Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

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Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#221

Post by sofixa »

izacus wrote: post #205
Lutger wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the underlying payments network isn't necessarily Visa/Mastercard's. In the case of France, there's Cartes Bancaires https://www.cartes-bancaires.com/, which you can pay through regardless of your card type (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) as an alternative over paying through the Visa/Mastercard/Amex networks.

And of course with GDPR, there are actual restrictions on how Visa/Mastercard can monetise your transaction history, and with banking regulations, how much of a cut they can take.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#222

Post by sofixa »

wkat4242 wrote: post #219
kevincox wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This whole rewards thing we don't really have in Europe. At all.

Yep, because we're not getting scammed on transactions fees (capped by the ECB to 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit card transactions). I have an Amex card that has some cashback, but it's not a lot.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#223

Post by lxgr »

kccqzy wrote: post #148
lxgr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what do they do if you drive off with the car and they have your credit card? Your issuer is only liable for the few hundreds of dollars that the rental car company has authorized; beyond that, it's still their (or their insurance's) loss. The only practical difference is that you're not out that money on your checking account for a few days, which can indeed be inconvenient – but arguably that's not really the…

Couldn't the rental car company keep charging the card and the issuer remains liable for further amounts?

Not if the issuer declines the authorization, and just closing the card (or even just temporarily locking it in the app for many cards!) would do that.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#224

Post by lxgr »

wayfinder wrote: post #172
lxgr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what do they do if you drive off with the car and they have your credit card? Your issuer is only liable for the few hundreds of dollars that the rental car company has authorized; beyond that, it's still their (or their insurance's) loss. The only practical difference is that you're not out that money on your checking account for a few days, which can indeed be inconvenient – but arguably that's not really the…

It probably has nothing to do with getting the car back. It’s probably to avoid lending the car to higher risk demographics. It’s a test. The rental car company basically loses fewer cars overall and thus has lower insurance premiums, and thus can offer cars cheaper than other rental companies that do not require a credit card (if any even still exist?) that have higher premiums to pay.

That’s the most likely theory as far as I can tell: While a credit card doesn’t make it more likely to get the money back in case the customer does run away with the car, it’s probably less likely for high-risk customers to even have a credit card.

Which unfortunately creates all kinds of false-positives, like making it very hard for tourists from countries where credit cards are not commonly used to rent a car…

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#225

Post by landgenoot »

jimbob45 wrote: post #69
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? You create a publicly-funded option.

> A digital euro would be an electronic means of payment. It would be a digital version of cash, available to the general public and backed by the European Central Bank (ECB) the same way your physical banknotes and coins are. You could use it anywhere that you already use physical euro cash.

https://finance.ec.europa.eu/digital-finance/digital-euro_en

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#226

Post by landgenoot »

em500 wrote: post #210
BrandonS113 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The actual problem is that merchants are not allowed to charge payment fees to their customers.

If you had to pay the fees as a customer, free market forces would do its job.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#227

Post by hansvm »

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.

Yeah, prepaid phone numbers. I assume it's also likely a US thing as well. If you drop down to the store and buy a TracPhone or Cricket Wireless product or whatever and load it up with a few pre-paid minutes, that'll fail a lot of the identity verification steps happening behind the scenes when you try to create accounts with it. Generally post-paid plans (or "contracts" as they're often called, since we love overloading words) will work for that sort of thing day one.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#228

Post by faeriechangling »

People use separate “loyalty cards” which are a pure data for discounts play happily enough. The only reason such cards have become less popular over time is Mastercard, Visa, and Amex have rendered such products redundant.

At this point you can also 99% of the time pay cash and efforts to change this face significant political resistance as being discriminatory to the poor/unbanked. I think the argument “why don’t you just not use their products if you don’t like the deal” is a shockingly good argument… for now.

We can revisit this issue when society truly goes cashless, but for now, not the hill I’d die on. Mastercard will cry bloody MURDER before they let go of this gold mine. If anything I find the interchange fees and the virtual monopsony the credit card companies have to be more scandalous.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#229

Post by quesera »

jdofaz wrote: post #131
wolverine876 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work? Do you tell them it's a credit card?

Sometimes the terminal will ask Debit or Credit, sometimes it will just prompt for a PIN (meaning it wants to run it as debit) and you can just hit OK and it will run it as credit instead.

Annoyingly, Home Depot makes you press "Cancel" at the PIN prompt, and then it automatically runs it as credit.

Of course if you do that anywhere else, you have to restart the flow.

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