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Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

reuters.com

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Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#201

Post by CatsOnHats »

Brex literally came to us one day in 2022, and notified us that "We have 6 weeks to move everything off their service" they told us boldly they are refocusing on the enterprise market and we were only a "SMB". The guy who literally told us this framed it as a good thing for us like it was some sort of weird break up.

At the time we had signed a large enterprise agreement not long before that, and we even were advertised as a enterprise customer testimonial. When we mentioned that he said it was final. They ghosted us apparently and from what i heard a bunch of companies were the same somehow no longer acceptable for their services. I had a friend who worked for a very large F500 company who also got a similar treatment.

Ironically i had a friend a tiny crypto startup that somehow was allowed to stay despite not meeting their requirements.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#202

Post by hvb2 »

silisili wrote: post #127
xp84 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Frame of reference: US only) That's a shame, given 18-25 is just the age where a credit card skimmer or online card fraud causing a big fraudulent withdrawal from your checking account, and weeks of waiting to get it back, could be devastating. This has happened to people in my family (likely from gas stations) but we only use credit cards except to pull cash from ATMs, so we only suffer a temporary dip in our avail…

I wish I could scream this from the rooftops. People should keep their debit cards locked/frozen, and only use them to get money from ATMs when needed. All other spending should go onto credit cards, for numerous reasons that have been bought up throughout this thread.

Stay on your own rooftop please. That is a very US only view.

There's nothing wrong with debit cards being used.

If I can shout one thing back up to your rooftop:

Why on earth do your transactions cost 2 or 3 percent. For what? For basically verifying an RFID chip and adding a single entry to a ledger?

Don't say you're getting it back with points or whatever because we all know that the credit card company won't be going broke so that cut is coming from somewhere. And in the end that's always the consumer

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#203

Post by gtowey »

tstrimple wrote: post #193
al_borland wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was pretty unhappy about this. They are already really annoying to use, with a bunch of “offers” popping up every time I open the app.

From ING Direct to Capital One Discover. From fuck Wellsfargo, I'll never do business with them again to two of my subsequent mortgages being sold to them over the last 20 years without my consent. This entire world is designed explicitly to fuck people over at literally every turn as long as someone in the chain somewhere can pocket an extra buck.

It turns out "vote with your dollars" doesn't work when the same 3 companies own everything.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#205

Post by hvb2 »

vl wrote: post #151
maest wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With credit, it's the merchant who loses out. They get bullied by the credit card provider to eat losses. Relatedly, the credit card system is truly a tragedy of the commons situation. It's a ~2% drag on the economy for what? For some silly points with constrained value and an excuse to not build better financial infrastructure. The frustrating thing is that, given the current equilibrium, you're a sucker for not usi…

What 2% drag? Aren't you using credit card with 2% bonus? Just see it as 2% reduction in prices.

My friend, as a rule of thumb, every additional player im a transaction takes a cut.

So assuming the rest is all the same, you just paid exactly what you would've paid with a debit card. Because the merchant had to raise prices to accommodate the fee. And that's with the credit card company not taking a cut and we all know that's not true.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#206

Post by hvb2 »

anonymars wrote: post #126
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key with debit cards is the incentive misalignment. With credit, it’s the bank that loses out, not you. With debit, it’s you. Until the consequences are equaled by legislation, there’s no world where they get equal treatment by the bank

To add on to that: if someone fraudulently uses your credit card, it's the issuer's money that's now missing and they need to get it back. If someone fraudulently uses your debit card, it's your money that's now missing that you need to get back. Hopefully things don't start overdrawing your account in the meantime.

My experience with disputes isn't that....

Yes we'll open a dispute. Yes we'll give you a credit immediately. But then we just take the sellers word for it that they're trying to make it right and charge you anyway.

This is my one singular experience with a dispute but that's with a big bank getting almost all of my transactions over the course of years....

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#207

Post by hvb2 »

yonaguska wrote: post #121
reaperducer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fraudulent withdrawal from your checking account, and weeks of waiting to get it back I've had this happen to me twice in about 25 years. Neither bank made me wait weeks. The most recent one (with a giant megabank) issued a provisional credit in under an hour. There seem to be a lot of people in this thread who have never actually been through this and are just apeing what other people say online. U.S. banks largely…

I have a friend that got a call/notification that her card was being used suspiciously. It may not have been from the bank. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but then very shortly after, someone else got her newly issued debit card and then used it at an atm in her area. The bank didn't believe that she wasn't involved. And despite filing a police report and giving them all the information that she could, she was o…

Every atm has a camera... So they could just check that.

Also, that means the person had the PIN too? That becomes harder to defend

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#208

Post by tstrimple »

gtowey wrote: post #203
tstrimple wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From ING Direct to Capital One Discover. From fuck Wellsfargo, I'll never do business with them again to two of my subsequent mortgages being sold to them over the last 20 years without my consent. This entire world is designed explicitly to fuck people over at literally every turn as long as someone in the chain somewhere can pocket an extra buck.

It turns out "vote with your dollars" doesn't work when the same 3 companies own everything.

But surely if we demonstrate just how evil Nestle is just one more time, the rest of humanity will wake up and boycott them and it will be the end of suffering! Crazy to think I was libertarian minded when I was nineteen. Then again, who could actually maintain it much older? We're talking believing in the tooth fairy levels of delusion wrt to its interactions with the real world.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#209

Post by disillusioned »

CatsOnHats wrote: post #201

Brex literally came to us one day in 2022, and notified us that "We have 6 weeks to move everything off their service" they told us boldly they are refocusing on the enterprise market and we were only a "SMB". The guy who literally told us this framed it as a good thing for us like it was some sort of weird break up. At the time we had signed a large enterprise agreement not long before that, and we even were adverti…

That's weird. I remember the great SMB cleavering, where they spiked anyone that was, say, a small brick & mortar, preferring to focus on firms that were more pure tech and higher average balances. I've banked with Brex for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years now, and somehow dodged that, but it was concerning at the time since migrating operating accounts is an enormous pain in my ass.

This was made a bit more annoying when they lost their magical single operating cash sweep account and forced you to split to a separate Treasury account in order to earn interest. Even with auto balance shifting rules, I've had a few transactions fail because of bad timing. (And ACH is scheduled at the same time an intra-bank transfer is scheduled, but the ACH processes overnight and intra-bank has to wait until market open.) Super obnoxious.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#210

Post by silisili »

hvb2 wrote: post #202
silisili wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could scream this from the rooftops. People should keep their debit cards locked/frozen, and only use them to get money from ATMs when needed. All other spending should go onto credit cards, for numerous reasons that have been bought up throughout this thread.

Stay on your own rooftop please. That is a very US only view. There's nothing wrong with debit cards being used. If I can shout one thing back up to your rooftop: Why on earth do your transactions cost 2 or 3 percent. For what? For basically verifying an RFID chip and adding a single entry to a ledger? Don't say you're getting it back with points or whatever because we all know that the credit card company won't be g…

Of course it's a US view. It's a US site and the OP even prefaced it as such. Does every reply need to do the same?

Retailers(in the US) typically eat the cost. Some industries(in the US), like gun shops, are up front about charging more for credit card payments. Most companies(in the US) just see it as cost of doing business.

Points have next to nothing to do with why you should always use credit cards(in the US). There are legal consumer protection reasons. The points are just an optional perk.

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