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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)

#231

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

I really wish of some decent way of getting money as a teenager without doing some insane kyc or having people buy crypto just to buy my stuff I guess. I know that anonymous money could be used for funding of bad stuff like terrorism and tax evasion but its just a mess that I can't get money but there are loopholes too :/

KYC should be made easier for teens and also I must admit, from what I see, remittances/cross country payments are just so much of an hassle but crypto sucks as a currency too in many aspects mainly on how to convert crypto cash non kyc way

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

#232

Post by throwaway473825 »

godelski wrote: post #215
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'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…

You're describing a CBDC, not a coin. Why isn't it being done? Because commercial banks are vehemently against that. The current administration in particular will never go against the big banks.

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

#233

Post by whatevaa »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #188
toomuchtodo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t create a moat to skim 3% of the economy as a for profit venture.

The brazilian government can choose to start taxing every single pix transaction at any time. Due to the electronic and centralized nature of the system, such taxes would be utterly inescapable. The only thing stopping them is the sheer unpopularity of such an action. It's already being used for data cross referencing, tax collection and investigation purposes. There are plans to implement into these payment systems…

Nothing stops US government from doing the same to Visa/MasterCard networks.

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

#234

Post by vee-kay »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #224
gsky wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disgusting. Calling the biggest democratic party as authoritarian is nothing but disgusting. Why do you people think you and your opinions are better than majority?

https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/in... https://thediplomat.com/2025/04/modis-india-is-a-dangerous-p... https://theprint.in/opinion/authoritarian-streak-among-india... https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/07/04/m... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00167... This isn’t a fringe view or “disgusting”

So you counter a politically leaning site link, by sharing politically leaning site links, duh.

The Diplomat and ThePrint are infamous for fake news and skewed stories, and for anti-India Hinduphobic content.

I guess you found it hard to find any pro-India site to link on a sub-topic about India's most popular payments system?

And oh by the way, you should search for UPI on those sites you linked. They praise it too!

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

#235

Post by aledue »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #188
toomuchtodo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t create a moat to skim 3% of the economy as a for profit venture.

The brazilian government can choose to start taxing every single pix transaction at any time. Due to the electronic and centralized nature of the system, such taxes would be utterly inescapable. The only thing stopping them is the sheer unpopularity of such an action. It's already being used for data cross referencing, tax collection and investigation purposes. There are plans to implement into these payment systems…

This argument works against all payment systems that are conceivably bannable (likely all of them). If a payment system doesn't collaborate, the government can ban it.

> The only thing stopping them is the sheer unpopularity of such an action.

This is the intended functioning of democracies I guess.

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

#237

Post by mrisoli »

Detrytus wrote: post #59
TMWNN wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just your bank giving back some (but not all) of those 2% interchange fees. On the contrary, for someone like me who pays off my balances each month, if I get 2% back for every transaction, I am breaking even on those fees if assuming that I pay 100% of the fees, which of course isn't true; the merchant pays some of that. So really, I come out slightly ahead. For something like the Amex I mentioned with its 5…

> So EU credit card companies don't do this? No, as I said, they don't because of the interchange fees limit: they simply don't have money to finance any perks. Sometimes you get travel insurance, with the card that charges 200 EUR annual fee, sometimes you get some rewards program, where you collect the points, but those points are typically valued at 0.0001 cent, so no one really bothers earning them. Credit cards…

Varies by country, but yeah, in general Credit Card options in Europe are pretty bad, here's my research on options in Spain:

Sabadell: No fees no perks for CC

Bankinter: No fees no perks for CC

Ing: No Fees no perks for CC

BBVA/Santander: Offer an Iberia cobranded card, 9k avios on 2k EUR spent on first 4 months, Iberia Silver Status, 1 point per 3 euros spent, 90 EUR annual fees

Caixa: Vueling card, slightly better avios earnings than Iberia card, some minor vueling perks, fast track at airports 90 EUR annual fee, also a Lufthansa card that offers 7k bonus miles, 95 euros annual fee, no info on miles per euro spent

Amex: Only worthy option, 1 mile per euro, 80k welcome bonus, unlimited lounge access, 400-500 euro credit welcome bonus, 250 travel bonus(used to be flights/hotels, now just hotels), fast track at airports, 780 euro annual fee, network in Europe is growing but I'd say still not accepted at places 50% of the time in Spain.

Revolut: Ultra could be the only comparable option to Amex that it offers unlimited lounge access and 1 point per euro at 660 euros annual fee

So yeah, the only option that actually gives you something is Amex, as the Iberia/Vueling options are laughable and the only reason why you'd have the free CC from other banks is because they are free.

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

#238

Post by vee-kay »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #185
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…

First things first — this is correct. As a matter of fact, the Brazillian Pix - which gets much more “eyeballs” on places like HN, are much newer than UPI and UPI was one of the inspirations, if I may say so, behind it; and it dwarves in scale. Not to mention UPI is designed to be decentralised (almost decentralised). Fair warning (pc, please know that I am not targeting you) about the URL pc has shared - it’s litera…

You really need to up your game if you think the world's most awarded and most popular Premier (PM Modi) and the most hard working political party (BJP) India has ever got, can be tarnished by someone snidely taking political potshots at Modi+BJP's most famous and incredible achievement yet: UPI.

It is poor manners to deride the visionary leaders of modern India as "authoritarian" when they ensured India remains world's biggest & most vibrant democracy and swiftly scaled the nation to a $5Trillion economy! That's why Modi has been democratically elected as PM for third time in a row!

Now back to the main topic at hand..

First and foremost, UPI is India's most popular real-time unified payments system and it is completely dominating the digital payments scene in India, because it is instantaneous, free for consumers (marginal fees applicable only for high value transactions, and where Interchange conversion is involved). UPI is so good and versatile, that its managing organisation NCPI is able to license the technology stack to other nations, who are then able to promptly launch their own branding of this versatile and powerful digital payments system.

Secondly, sheer scale of UPI is mind-boggling indeed.

In June 2025, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) recorded 18.39 billion transactions, with a transaction value of ₹24.03 lakh crore. The daily average for June 2025 was 613 million transactions and ₹80,131 crore. UPI has shown strong year-on-year growth of 32% in volume and 20% in value compared to June 2024.

Thanks to UPI, the payments situation has changed so drastically in India, that most banks are accounting for 85%+ payment transactions volumes through UPI itself!

Even the poorest people in India are using UPI ubiquitously and safely, it is that trustworthy, instantaneous and seamlessly easy to use.

No wonder Visa, MasterCard, and their ilk are terrified and desperate in India. Their vicious stranglehold has been broken, and how!

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

#239

Post by arccy »

godelski wrote: post #215
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'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…

So like Circle's USDC Circle Payments Network?

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

#240

Post by arccy »

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…

If the central bank offers it, it would be the equivalent to cash. Cash is also expensive to maintain and issue. Do you ask all the same questions as who pays for cash?
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