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Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

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Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#361

Post by cferry »

Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #252
consp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a major difference as I understand it. They need to be resolved at the end of a certain period. There is a legal difference from Credit cards as in there is no continual liability and thus no continued line of credit. Getting a true credit card is also a lot harder here (not France) than a deferred payment card (usually 1 month) and has stricter credit checks.

It's more taboo to talk about revolving credit card than crack addiction for a french. I don't know a bank that offer them, even the shady online bank.

Historically, these have been issued by "consumer credit" specialized banks like Sofinco; and retail chains ("carte Aurore"); traditional banks would seldom advertise them, if offered at all.

Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance).

My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit. At a US gas pump, a Frenchie needs to select "credit" even though the card has "debit" written on it. Still, should the clerk refuse the card because it reads "debit" without running it... better have this "credit"-labeled one.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#362

Post by sethhochberg »

xquce wrote: post #345
aydyn wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your debit card is stolen, your bank has to return all money that was used or withdrawn to you. Since it is unauthorized use of your funds. Same for credit cards of course. Such money is returned swiftly. This may be what the letter of the law says but this isn't reality. Using debit puts you at greater financial risk.

“Using debit puts you at a greater financial risk.” What how? Surely the US populations credit card debt dorf even the global populations debit card fraud numbers. So while my whole family in a combined 200 years of adulthood have indeed lost some 1000 euro total in fraud, it's not thing compared to the average Americans credit card bills. I'd rather risk the street criminals with my debit than the suit wearing ones…

My debit card is a direct line to my primary bank account. If something goes wrong there and an attacker gains access, my cash is simply gone. Yes, the bank will perform an investigation and yes they may issue some provisional credits as a bridge, but there's a window of time between the theft and that investigation concluding where my actual cash is not in my account.

With a credit card, if the card is compromised, its not my money being stolen - its the card issuer's money from my line of credit, and they were planning on settling up with me when my monthly statement closes. I still have to launch a fraud case with the issuer, but critically, _all of my money is still in my bank account_ and I can continue to pay my other bills and obligations as normal.

I think its reasonable to consider giving up that buffer to be additional risk for the debit card approach, setting aside any other advantages or disadvantages between the two.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#363

Post by joe_mamba »

scythe wrote: post #358
joe_mamba wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one should be required to carry an attacker-controlled tracking device What about being required to carry a your-own-government-controlled tracking device? Because the US or Chine government can't harm me in Europe via the data they collect from me, But the EU authorities can if they want to, so naturally I fear them more if they were the ones hoovering my data. What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech…

Tracking device might be the wrong thing to focus on. The US has other ways of messing with foreigners who depend on services provided by US companies, like suddenly cutting off those services in the case of ICC judges.

IIRC, ICC judges lost access to their O365 work email accounts. Worst the US can do to me is turn off my Steam, and Gmail but I can easily live without those.

Now imagine being debanked by your own government because they don't like what you're saying and becoming unemployed, homeless and dead. I don't think they're remotely comparable.

For example, a few years ago, a power tripping gov bureaucrat turned off my unemployment payments over a technicality. Luckily, I had enough money to pay a lawyer to sue them and won, but it was tight. What if I hadn't had the money to hire a lawyer? Since I was in a foreign country, with no family or close friends to fall back on. I was exclusively relying on the welfare state I paid into for years, that then turn its back on me for shits and giggles.

So I don't think you understand just how bad it can be for you if your government decides to turn on you and fuck with you, if you're comparing this to losing access to your work email account.

See the famous case of UK postal workers that got fucked by their government trying to hide their mistakes.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#365

Post by maigret »

pennaMan wrote: post #284
fhdkweig wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. I would also hope so, that is the entire point. The reason they are scrambling right now is because Starlink just shut off all of Russia. Because Starlink was so cheap and easy (and stable for the last 4 years of the war), a lot of people in Russia stopped using any other form of internet access. And while all of Europe is happy…

> they are trying to quickly create alternatives to anything American They're the same bright minds that ensured no alternatives could naturally come out of the European market trough relentless bureaucratic central planning. I have zero hopes of a good outcome

Actually European integration the last 30 years has been pretty remarkable. In the past, not even electric plugs were compatible. But the EU is not a country. A lot of the inefficiencies are actually features sought by key members to protect their own local incumbents.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#366

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

hahn-kev wrote: post #335
severino wrote: post #135

Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from the…

It's true that it's a problem, but it can be easily fixed in the future. For example they could just change the app to work on any old android fork. You still get the benefit of no longer having transaction data run through the US.

But right now many of us are concerned with not being able to run e.g. GrapheneOS without locking ourselves out of all basic digital infrastructure. We shouldn't wait until it gets untenable for the EU to lock us into Google and Apple, we want independence from the start.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#367

Post by Pooge »

Coeur wrote: post #165

Not sure Wero will succeed, but European country-specific mobile payment systems like Swish (Sweden), Vipps (rest of Scandinavia), Bizum (Spain), iDeal (Netherlands), Bluecode (Germany and Austria), Twint (Switzerland), BLIK (Poland) etc. are also working on interconnectivity under the EMPSA association. Combined they already have 110+ million users. Wero is like a monolith, while EMPSA is more like mobile phone roam…

We wouldn't even need these services if instant payments were the norm. I guess we have to thank the Visa and MasterCard lobbies for this to happen at least 10 years too late.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#368

Post by rkomorn »

pjmlp wrote: post #330
rkomorn wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm French and living in Portugal and I do not get the Minitel comparison. Minitel was basically a Telnet device to various services' servers. That said, I love MB and MB Way. What an upgrade it's been over paying for stuff in the US (where I lived before moving to Portugal).

From what I know from Minitel, the same Internet before the Internet applies. I was buying tickets on MB, before it became common place in the Internet.

Could you search for tickets and such on MB?

All the stuff I'm familiar with is only payments (with entity and reference).

Now that I think about it, you could search for things on Minitel but I don't remember if payments were made as phone charges or if they could also be done with transfers.

Minitel was so prohibitively expensive to use (just about every service cost multiple francs per minute), I didn't do much with it.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#369

Post by digiown »

ignoramous wrote: post #307
digiown wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a human right issue. No one should be required to carry an attacker-controlled tracking device, especially not for interacting with the government. It's funny that the EU uses all this mobile attestation BS more than the US does. So much for sovereignty and consumer protection. No monopoly Google can build is as good as the government forcing you to accept their terms.

> It's funny that the EU uses all this mobile attestation BS more than the US does Attestation in on itself isn't unwarranted which (to me) is an important security measure. Attestation as commonly implemented on Android via Play Integrity (the way banking apps are known to do) is restrictive, sure: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu... / https://archive.is/snGEu

> important security measure

It's a security measure against the owner of the device, in other words, an attack. Would you be okay with me using a remote control to forcibly slow down your car so I can merge? Using attestation this way is fundamentally incompatible with ownership. If the bank wants some assurance about a device, they need to sell or issue one to me, like credit cards or point of sale machines, which are explicitly not your property.

The fact that the assurance is provided by a third party you have little recourse against just adds insult to injury.

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