Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

quartr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 317 posts

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#111

Post by habinero »

everyone wrote: post #3

The fucked up thing is how they are enforcing archaic puritan ideals on the whole world. Acting as self appointed global censors. (Eg. not allowing adult games on Steam or Itch.io) The most confusing thing for me is why. I have read a few theories, but nothing convincing. What could be a strong enough motivator to do such a bizarre thing? Also we need governments to keep them in line. We cant have private corps actin…

Really? It's not difficult.

Visa doesn't give a single shit about porn, porn generates a lot of fraud and chargebacks that cost them money.

Most people I see complaining about how "unethical" it is are the ones who got kicked off the card networks for very good reasons like fraud or money laundering, or they got themselves on the MATCH list.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#112

Post by hn_acc1 »

one-note wrote: post #99
FpUser wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" the only thing that makes credit cards a better proposition is being able to pay without having enough money in the bank" I am not sure it is a better proposition if one looks at staggering amounts of debt caused by credit cards

You don’t want to spend money you don’t have? Congrats, your credit score is trash and now you can’t rent a house (let alone buy).

Do you mean via credit cards, or on the whole, including a mortgage? We have a mortgage, but have made all but 1 or 2 credit card payments in 20+ years - we forgot to pay a $50 bill once, IIRC. Outside of the mortgage, we've never spent money that wasn't already in our bank account - not even "it's coming in our next paycheck". Our credit scores are fine.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#113

Post by habinero »

skissane wrote: post #8
everyone wrote: post #3

The fucked up thing is how they are enforcing archaic puritan ideals on the whole world. Acting as self appointed global censors. (Eg. not allowing adult games on Steam or Itch.io) The most confusing thing for me is why. I have read a few theories, but nothing convincing. What could be a strong enough motivator to do such a bizarre thing? Also we need governments to keep them in line. We cant have private corps actin…

> Acting as self appointed global censors. (Eg. not allowing adult games on Steam or Itch.io) It seems extra illogical when you think of how much money they make from subscription adult websites, even brothels-in countries that have legal brothels, I think you’ll find many of them accept credit cards, and Visa and Mastercard don’t appear to have a problem with that

Yeah, it's almost like porn isn't the problem, it's crime and chargebacks.

All of those sites use high risk payment processors if they go through the major card networks.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#114

Post by Art9681 »

mzitelli wrote: post #17

Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…

Does the Central Bank of Brazil publish data on the cost of running the network and how it is funded? Or is there a hidden tax that eventually makes its way to the customer in order to keep it going? Nothing is totally free. Who pays for the infrastructure costs, not to mention the legion of humans that it surely takes to maintain the network? Pretty sure that no matter what is published publicly, someone is paying for it, and that cost is being passed around the logistics chain and ends up on the prices of the products you buy. Sure, it may be much cheaper, but it's not totally free.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#115

Post by hn_acc1 »

throwaway328 wrote: post #38

Reading Barrett Brown's "My Glorious Defeats" at the moment, being reminded of that time Anonymous went after Visa, Mastercard, and others, in retaliation for them blocking payments to Wikileaks. An action the payment companies took extrajudicially at the behest of the US government because the US gov was't happy with Wikileaks. Wikileaks' crime was that they'd been very successful at getting true information to the…

Blocking payments to wikileaks is on a totally different level than deporting citizens to random countries because they said something mean about you.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#116

Post by pzo »

pavlov wrote: post #13

The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, but everyone just takes it for granted until they’re reminded how much worse the rest of the world has it. In the EU, card payment fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. In the US, these interchange fees are about 2%. US businesses pay over $100 billion annually in these fees to card networks. If…

Unfortunately this only applies for physical transactions. For online payments this is still around 3% - reason why stripe cannot be cheaper. Wish we had something like transferwise is a wrapper around those QRCide payments so can pay cheap internationally as well

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#117

Post by Anarch157a »

Art9681 wrote: post #114
mzitelli wrote: post #17

Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…

Does the Central Bank of Brazil publish data on the cost of running the network and how it is funded? Or is there a hidden tax that eventually makes its way to the customer in order to keep it going? Nothing is totally free. Who pays for the infrastructure costs, not to mention the legion of humans that it surely takes to maintain the network? Pretty sure that no matter what is published publicly, someone is paying f…

Pix is free for natural persons and individual entrepreneurs. For businesses, receiving is free, but they pay a fee to send money[0], this can vary from one institution to another.

[0] https://www.contabilizei.com.br/contabilizei-responde/taxa-p...

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#118

Post by Anarch157a »

forinti wrote: post #37
kyrra wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Pix took over because the Brazilian gov did transfer payments during covid and the (only?) way to get those payments was via Pix. So it forced everyone to start using it. And once people had more familiarity with Pix, merchants started pushing for it because it charges ACH level fees. The chargeback system (MED) is only so-so right now, but expected to get better. There is a lot to like about…

I started using Pix, because it's the best way to do business with Chinese ecommerce sites. You don't have to give your credit card details and refunds go straight back to your account. In fact, it really impressed me that Aliexpress got it working before many Brazilian sites.

There are plenty of companies in Brazil that offer PIX payments to foreign e-shops. Valve has been accepting PIX for some time now, for example.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#119

Post by pzo »

867-5309 wrote: post #29
pavlov wrote: post #13

The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, but everyone just takes it for granted until they’re reminded how much worse the rest of the world has it. In the EU, card payment fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. In the US, these interchange fees are about 2%. US businesses pay over $100 billion annually in these fees to card networks. If…

that's only a very recent change, and not universally rolled out. for decades shops charged ~£3 "connection fee" for paying by credit card, no matter the purchase amount, and many still (probably illegally) enforce a minimum spend if paying by credit or debit card. like when paying or withdrawing money abroad, it's just a lottery as to the "fees" you'll be charged not because there are such fees, but because someone…

Better words is: against terms of visa/Mastercard rather than illegal. Businesses have valid reason for minimum payment. There is minimum fee in visa or master card like 30cents or so. If shop selling candy bar for $0.5 they are loosing money if someone pay with card.
Post reply on HN