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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

#421

Post by port11 »

margana wrote: post #187
pjmlp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Portugal we have the Multibanco network, which already provided Internet like services for buying stuff on the terminals and eventually graduated to have online payments as well, however only in Portugal. Likewise, in Germany we can have SEPA for most stuff. And in Greece there is Viva. Problem is getting something that actually works across all European countries.

The problem isn't just getting something that works across all European countries. It's getting something that works globally. While we may make most of our payments within EU, basically everyone still occasionally pays for something outside of EU, either online or when they travel. This means if the new thing only works in EU, every European will still need and have a MasterCard/Visa even if they use it less often t…

Many (most? all?) of the payment systems I’ve used over the years can interop with Visa or Maestro. Case in point: my Bancontact cards can pay in any Belgian business even if they can’t afford the better machines that do VISA, but my card also has the VISA logo. Same in Portugal and Germany.

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

#422

Post by tremon »

punnerud wrote: post #410

“Has begun” as in recent? BankAxept has been in use in Norway since 1991 to avoid the VISA/Mastercard “tax” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept Biggest banks here refused to support Apple Pay and worked hard on legislations to open NFC access. Now we can pay with no fees to Visa/Mastercard or Apple even from our phones.

There's implementations for this in most European countries (iDeal/Wero, Bizum, MultiBanco, BanContact have been mentioned). What's missing is a unified standard that works across all European webshops and banks.

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

#423

Post by sharklasers123 »

The use of a phone number rather than a username seems like a BIG downside. I’ve moved countries several times and as a result been forced to change my number several times. This causes a huge headache with any service that relies on phone numbers, especially two-factor etc. Phone numbers should be thought of as ephemeral while usernames can persist.

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

#424

Post by skywal_l »

port11 wrote: post #420
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…

I don’t see why they can’t just piggyback on existing, proven solutions such as Bancontact, Carte Bleu, etc., which are all based on a card running on its own network. If it’s app-based, we’re excluding quite some citizens from it.

Visa bought Carte Bleue in 2011. Yep.

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

#425

Post by varjag »

fhdkweig wrote: post #233
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…

> 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…

Starlink was never available in Russia due to the sanctions regime. It's only use by Russians was via grey import terminals on the frontline in Ukraine (made possible due to complications of geofencing).

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

#426

Post by bob1029 »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

I always find it entertaining to hear people try to argue that what these companies do is soooooo difficult and that's why they're valuable. It's just multiple computers keeping a balance. It's not complicated. No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect. Time to do away with these foreign entiti…

The #1 thing you're paying for with Visa and the others is uptime.

Knowing the card will always work 24/7/365 with such a high degree of assurance is a non-zero factor in how well a consumer economy performs.

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

#427

Post by stoneforger »

joe_mamba wrote: post #399
Cyph0n wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive. In some areas, sure - like GDPR. In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control. As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.

>it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK Once you give people an outside boogieman(Putin, Trump, Covids, etc) or a self inflicted false flag crisis(surge in violent crime rates for example) to shake them up to their core and put the fear in them, you can then easily sell your intrusion of privacy in their lives and extension of the police state, as the necessary solution that protects them. When yo…

Amen to that.

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

#428

Post by einpoklum »

> Creating a viable alternative to Visa and Mastercard requires “several billion euros” in investment

Just the transaction processing fees going to VISA and Mastercard now would probably pay that back within a few years. Also, we're talking about all or almost-all European countries. So it doesn't sound like that much.

> Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult.

Mandating that businesses which accept US credit cards must accept the European payment card would take care of that. Actually, maybe that's not necessary, it's probably enough to mandate that companies making card processing tech which supports US credit cards must also include support for this card; and businesses would just get it with their next system upgrade / terminal replacement or something.

> Consumer habits are deeply entrenched

I 'like' how people are described as "consumers", as though every payment is for consumption.

Anyway, habits are not that deeply entrenched. Didn't people adopt those country-level payment cards? Don't people occasionally change credit cards? It's not even a change of tech, it's just yet another card.

> and neither Visa nor Mastercard will sit idle while Europe tries to dismantle their most profitable market.

Now this may be a significant factor... they could influence politicians, tech solutions makers (with sweetheart deals if they don't support the new payment tech, or whatever), they can get the US government to make some kind of threat (we've already seen the threat to invade Greenland). So, yeah, there's that.

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

#429

Post by ncruces »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #198
ncruces wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Even if it does, Google won't be taking a cut from it. Also, it's then much easier to provide a mobile web version, or something else. My country's internal system also sells a bracelet for contactless payments, and there are obviously payment cards. Once there's a mandatory standard, it's much more likely competition will show u…

What would Google prevent from taking a similar cut as Apple is taking?

What's being discussed isn't Google or Apple Pay.

It's an app that uses NFC or, if needed, reads a QR code and does a web request (i.e. needs internet).

Neither Google nor Apple will block that, or take a cut; and it's already available in multiple markets.

This is about taking stuff that already works in one or two countries, design a similar system that works across countries, and mandate that all banks under ECB supervision implement it.

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

#430

Post by tremon »

phoronixrly wrote: post #347
carlosjobim wrote: post #247

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. But the more concerning fraud is when you purchase something and don't receive what you should have received from the merchant. Whether it is due to outright fraud or not. In these cases you will also have your m…

You guys use the debit card linked to your primary bank account??? There's been virtual cards for online shopping for 10+ years now. They're meant to be linked to an empty or low amount bank account. Now with Revolut you can schedule auto top-up to keep this low amount up to date. Not to mention the per-purchase (online/in-person) limits, mandatory PIN entry, and daily maximums...

We don't use any cards for online shopping, what do you mean? In most European countries online shopping uses a payment API that takes you to your bank's payment portal where you can review the transaction amount before confirming. It's no longer the 20th century, we're not handing out any card details to online merchants.
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