91–100 of 106 posts
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Credit card company is generic term. In our case we are a PAT (we provide employees benefits). We never "touch" the money, your employer is, indirectly, who pays the merchants. We cannot provide loans (credit). For that, we need a lot of cash (FDIC insurances, etc)
FDIC? In Brazil?
Random idea: If I remember correctly, the US has extremely strict anti-bribery laws that apply to bribes made outside the US jurisdiction as well. These might only apply to government bribes (corruption), but if they apply here too, you could consider rattling the global Visa parent company's chain in the US in some way.
IANAL, but I think the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) only covers bribes to foreign government officials.
Transparency International have good references. http://www.transparency-usa.org/links/index.html
A quick search found this signed by Brazil and US in 1996.
B-58: INTER-AMERICAN CONVENTION AGAINST CORRUPTION
'(3) TRANSNATIONAL BRIBERY.--Current United States law provides criminal sanctions for transnational bribery. Therefore,it is the understanding of the United States of America that no additional legislation is needed for the United States to comply with the obligation imposed in article VIII of the Convention.'
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On an unrelated note: You don't provide any contact info in your profile and I don't really understand Portuguese either so I'll use this comment to inform you that your website renders horribly in my browser. It looks unreadable and unprofessional. Using Firefox 14.0.1 on Linux. Also: '©1998-2012' Props, that is quite a while.
The website is pretty readable in Chrome using the Google Translate feature. I don't think it's fair to quickly assume that a regional, small business' website would be published in both your language and their language.
(and it's not just because of the language--I modified the text to some English: http://imgur.com/8uss8)
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The website is pretty readable in Chrome using the Google Translate feature. I don't think it's fair to quickly assume that a regional, small business' website would be published in both your language and their language.
I think chmod775 was talking about actual readability, not the language. To be fair (Firefox 17, W7), it isn't perfect: http://imgur.com/WKoE8 (and it's not just because of the language--I modified the text to some English: http://imgur.com/8uss8 )
Winning at the startup game is fun and all, but standing up for what you believe in is far more important in the long run.
Am I wrong? Is there something I am missing?
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/27/visa-makes-a-strategic-inve...
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not anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
I'm not sure if it's a closed case quite yet. A few months ago the NY Times unearthed that Walmart's Mexico subsidiary was responsible for bribing lots of government officials, and that the home office in the US covered it up and promoted the people in charge. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/business/at-wal-mart-in-me... The case is still pending, AFAIK, but the law itself doesn't make the practice non-existent.
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21328339/oracle-pay-2...
Plenty of multinationals play "dirty" in Latin America, I've heard similar stories about several other companies here from people that work for smaller, local competitors. That said, I highly doubt that it's a policy of the home office, it's really just the end result of hiring people who get results in the region, in a situation where oversight is difficult to impossible.
How can one justify a fee of 50 euros for a 700 euros transaction except than greed? It's as if my actual banknotes are being transported, then in principle it takes a single press of a key.
It is also ironic how big social networks persuade us to disclose all we can about our private lives, while the banking system remains a secret society with black magic operations and fees formation.
I really look forward to the guys like Dwolla to disrupt the hell out of them. Time to move on.
It might be more accurate for the headline to read "This is how Brazil works." In the US we tend to take for granted how much a functioning regulatory system, far from retarding healthy growth, is essential for promoting it.
While this is preposterous behavior, I am very surprised it's even possible to operate your own payment card network. Visa/MasterCard is the one monopoly I thought was practically unbreakable. Even PayPal, who is supposed to be a Visa competitor, issues Visa cards.
This happened in Brazil. From the figures in the blog post it seems as though Visa isn't quite so entrenched there.
Visa is huge in Brazil, as is Mastercard - and while the stores offer very "flexible" options for payment (like 8 installments w/ no fees), the CC companies charge very high interest rates when the bill isn't payed on time. AMEX is kinda elite and not that widespread.
There are also smaller CC networks that are born with supermarkets, Walmart has something called Hipercard.