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Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

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

#141

Post by 55555 »

thimabi wrote: post #49
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…

I got in this thread with the expectation of seeing a comment like yours, so thank you for that. I think what worries the U.S. more is the likelihood of Pix spreading around the world. It’s such a great public program that I believe many countries will eventually adopt it, or adopt some version of it. In fact, AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia. Consumers like it because it is widely availa…

I am in Thailand. Fraud is a much smaller issue because it’s a push-based system. You cannot withdrawal from someone else’s account just by knowing the number, unlike with credit cards.

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

#142

Post by aworks »

lmm wrote: post #92
orangea wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury) My immediate instinct upon reading this is "of course those businesses wouldn't be interested". They are selling a brand and image first, and if it looked like they wanted people to download some new app and put in their bank details to make a purchase instead of swiping a credit card it would cheapen the brand. Luxury stores are all about a streamlined expe…

Yeah. High-margin, high-end businesses can afford the fees. If there's a space to compete it's low-margin businesses where 3% really stings, even if it's 3% of a smaller gross. I used to work with a company that served mainly immigrants and blue-collar workers, and something lower-fee than credit/debit was a constant conversation (we were partway through building an ACH backend by the time I left, but I don't know if…

I recently made a purchase in an Ontario used book store that only took debit cards and cash (and the clerk was behind a COVID shield). Today I went to a used book store in Buffalo, NY that took credit cards (and the clerk was roaming around the store). Somehow that openness and lack of friction got me to buy more books for much more money. And I would gladly return...

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

#143

Post by seattle_spring »

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).

You're not forced to use credit cards irresponsibility to benefit from the credit score boost they provide.

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

#144

Post by AdieuToLogic »

thimabi wrote: post #49
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…

I got in this thread with the expectation of seeing a comment like yours, so thank you for that. I think what worries the U.S. more is the likelihood of Pix spreading around the world. It’s such a great public program that I believe many countries will eventually adopt it, or adopt some version of it. In fact, AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia. Consumers like it because it is widely availa…

> Right now, the only thing that makes credit cards a better proposition is being able to pay without having enough money in the bank, and maybe enjoying greater protection from fraudulent merchants.

This is the entire value proposition of credit cards and is what undergirds the issuer (bank) justification for interest rates assessed. To be able to defer card-holder immediate payment for some period of time and/or to put the onus of proof-of-purchase on the merchant instead of the card holder.

The last point is non-trivial when considering debit or debit-like networks result in funds being transferred during settlement (often performed daily), thus making the customer responsible for proving they did not perform the transaction post hoc.

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

#145

Post by akvadrako »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #94

India has had UPI since 2016 now and recently overtook Visa and Mastercards global transaction volume with 650 million transactions per day [1]. These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax on a nations entire GDP and enforcing their own ideas of what transactions should or shouldn't be allowed. With UPI and Pix etc. paving the way and showing its possible, it actually sounds insane to give so muc…

The fees are capped at 0.3% in EU and most countries have their own systems that are more popular.

The reason the credit card monopolies exist is they work globally.

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

#146

Post by matthewdgreen »

qskousen wrote: post #135
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…

FedNow is still a thing, at least for now.

How do I use FedNow to buy things from merchants?

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

#147

Post by isodev »

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…

The EU (the ECB) is actively working towards a system similar to SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) but for cards [0]. This would enable card transfers to also become faster (SEPA is instantaneous even cross-border within the EU) also allow for operations not depending on Visa or Mastercard.

There is a major EU effort to develop an alternative 'instant payment' system that doesn't depend on Visa or Mastercard called Wero [1].

[0] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pubbydate/2019/html/ecb.card...

[1] https://wero-wallet.eu

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

#148

Post by one-note »

seattle_spring wrote: post #143
one-note wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You're not forced to use credit cards irresponsibility to benefit from the credit score boost they provide.

Sure, but you have to play the Visa/MasterCard game. We allow them to rule the country so much that if you’re not an active customer of theirs you can’t get a roof over your head. I don’t think any other company in the world has that much power.

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

#149

Post by AdieuToLogic »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #67
benced wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always cite the first-order benefits of this regulation but don't look into anything else. To be clear, I haven't either but what I would look for is: - are real prices cheaper for consumers? - is economic activity higher or lower (i.e. maybe credit cards encourage purchases?) - does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? - is lowering credit card penetration, particularly…

They're set at whatever the payment networks can get away with. There's nothing that says that's good for anyone else, although it is very good for Mastercard and Visa.

> They're set at whatever the payment networks can get away with. There's nothing that says that's good for anyone else, although it is very good for Mastercard and Visa.

MasterCard and Visa are more like clearinghouses. The decision makers are their members having "access to the rails", issuers and processors, which are either banks, subsidiaries owned by banks, or companies sponsored by the aforementioned two (which very often includes one or more banks getting an ownership percentage).

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

#150

Post by h4kunamata »

I have gone full on cash-only mode, people would freak out with the amount of fees they pay without knowing it.

I only have debit card, no credit card at all, in many places AUD$0.30-$0.50c is added to the goods price on debit cards. With cash, many places are offering 5-15% off when buying with cash only which is awesome.

If you are a gamer, you most have heard within the last 3-4 days now that Steam, Itch.io and others removed +18 games from their store because of a psycho Australian activists group called Collective Shout, who used words like rpe, child prngrphy forcing Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and a Japanese payment system to force those games stores to remove the games or they wouldn't have a processing payment.

Thanks to Visa/MasterCard monopoly, everybody was forced to do it. Many players don't even have +18 games filter enabled, for us in general this isn't about the +18 games but about US payment systems telling us what we can buy or not. Visa is getting its ass busted in Japan already with a Japanese politician joining the fight with gamers.

Dedollarisation has never been this strong, countries are already doing international trades using their own currency over the US dollar. I am not even getting into BRICS.

It is not a surprise that the US isn't happy with PIX in Brazil, it is a huge country, imagine all the money Visa/MasterCard are no longer making. Based on market data, it suggest an ESTIMATE around USD2.5-USD4B in 2024-2025 revenue lost lmao

The US is encountering the perfect storm!

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