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Even putting aside issue of geopolitics, it's quite baffling to me that every country besides China and Russia are paying ~0.2% "sales tax" to corporate America.
Visa: 1.3% to 2.3% Mastercard: 1.5% to 2.6% Mastercard: 2.3% to 3.5%
Nothing precise as it depends on whether that's debit vs credit cards, and the type of card. Also volume related and what the bank may subsidize, or take on top.
Even putting aside issue of geopolitics, it's quite baffling to me that every country besides China and Russia are paying ~0.2% "sales tax" to corporate America.
Nothing in France takes Discover, and my bank decided to go with Discover about 6 months ago. "Great" decision, thanks.
My wife found out her new card was Discover debit card right before her trip to France. Her bank sent her a new card unrequested. In an abundance of caution she activated the new card which automatically cancelled her debit Mastercard. Then when she landed in CDG found the new card didn't work anywhere.
Even putting aside issue of geopolitics, it's quite baffling to me that every country besides China and Russia are paying ~0.2% "sales tax" to corporate America.
There was a recent case of one Serbian company being sanctioned by the USA, and Visa and Master refused to process payments. No big deal, since even a small country like Serbia has its payment system called Dina that kept the company afloat.
There's not a single technical reason for bigger and richer countries to develop their own card payment system. It's not rocket science. The only reason they didn't is their regulators wanted a dependency on the USA payment processors.
Nothing in France takes Discover, and my bank decided to go with Discover about 6 months ago. "Great" decision, thanks.
So Wero is not a credit card, but something more like Venmo? How is it supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard?
Easy when shops start supporting them. I've paid numerous time using the swiss counterpart, Twint, in small shops. For some like the farm I used to buy vegetables to it was their only supported payment besides cash because they deemed the card systems too expensive. The same way chinese tourists can already pay with alipay in many retatail outlets in europe, you can already pay with such european systems on Aliexpres…
So Wero is not a credit card, but something more like Venmo? How is it supposed to replace Visa and Mastercard?
It's for online payments only. You click on the wero button on a website/app, if on mobile takes you to your banking app (on desktop, you scan a QR code), you do MFA on your banking app and confirm, and the payment is done. Wero are not in the business of issuing cards, though obviously they could get into that business - just like UnionPay did in China. I suspect there would be a lot of inertia there, as card paymen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia switched 100% of its payments seamlessly, no reason for the EU not to do the same. Build up the network and tell banks to use that network even for transactions initiated with Visa/MC cards. At that point cards are still usable, but effectively a piece of identification plastic not directly controlled by Visa/MC anymore.
> seamlessly It's not seamless if it includes a war, global isolation, exodus of all business and disconnection of the banks. This means they were left with no alternative, in which case, sure, it's 'seamless' to use the only alternative method. Europe will have a lot of friction with consumer habits and Visa will always be relevant for buying things from outside EU. These are all competing entities which hate anythi…
When India moved to UPI in the last few years something very interesting happened. The same devices that accept UPI (usually some android based POS) also accepted a plethora of cards. Previously merchants would be hesitant to take anything other than cash or charge 2% for visa/mastercard. But with wide adoption of digital payments they now just accept any payment with the goal that they don't want bad reviews and/or…
My experience is opposite, Now with UPI which 99% of people have access to there is no incentive for people to accept Credit Cards.