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

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

471–480 of 1001 posts

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

#471
post #351
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So Wero is not a credit card Neither are visa/MC for the most part. Mostly debit. ;) this isn’t really about the card anyway but the network behind it. This is likely to be similar to the existing European payment systems just wider in scope. There are a bunch already it’s just fragmented and country specific. Sepa wero ideal girocard crates bancaires

I have always wondered what kind of shenanigans Mastercard or Visa did to convince so many banks to use their networks for debit cards. When did banks actually make that switch? It must be relatively recent, because I remember not that long ago my credit union ATM card was not part of Mastercard. Now I have a new one and it suddenly has a Mastercard logo.

They discontinued their debit networks Maestro and V-Pay, so they can get 0.1% more commission

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of a physical card is obsolete. That North Americans and western Europeans for a good part still use them is just stickiness of the infrastructure, and habits. Developing countries have mostly leapfrogged to total contactless payments. In South Aast Asia, you typically scan a QR code and approve a payment from your own phone. Far less fraud as a result. Nobody is able to touch your card, you don't have on…

> Far less fraud as a result. Who returns your money to you if you purchased something on mail order with this, and it turned out to be fraud?

Third party escrow, if you explicitly used one. There's no free lunch.

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

#474
post #236

People here don’t understand that Visa and Mastercard get only a small part of the fee. Most of it goes to the issuer and the acquiring banks.

I suspect they aren’t doing this (just) to avoid fees - it’s more about national security in a world where the US might stop being a reliable ally, and in a world where the US has used withdrawing Visa / Mastercard as a strategy to weaken enemy economies.

I think the recent stories of the International Criminal Court judge being forbidden to use VISA and Mastercard, making his life somewhat more challenging, did make some politicians aware of the risks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Guillou

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

#475

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…

Canada has had the INTERAC payment system for over 20 years now. It is privately run by Canadian banks, universally accepted and runs on a cost recovery basis.

So there are 3 kinds of "debit cards" in Canada:

1. Debit Mastercard/VISA. These are Debit Cards that use the Mastercard/VISA communication system to process transactions. While they are not "Credit" cards because you are using cash in an account that is your money, they rely upon the VISA/Mastercard system and merchants will be charged the Mastercard/VISA fee like a Credit Card.

2. Interac Debit Card. Interac was the first company to offer a debit card type system in Canada, and they are the traditional bank card. These cards use the Interac system (so does eTransfer) and Merchants are charged by Interac for using the system. Its typically less than Mastercard/VISA, which is why you see these "Debit Card only" signs.

3. Mastercard/VISA and Interac hybrid cards. These are newer and combine both Mastercard/VISA and Interac cards in one. The merchant can choose how they want to proceed.

Most of these "Debit" only signs are really saying "Interac only", but because for 30 years Interac was the only provider of Debit cards in Canada, it became the common vernacular to say "Debit" when you mean "Interac".

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

#476
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have said "true", or at least - I would have said "I do, but never incurring a charge on next month's bill", but with services like Flex from Monzo, you can actually get credit over 3 months with 0% interest rates, which not only makes buying stuff more likely, but spreads out the costs. It doesn't solve over spending though.

How much is it? You could draw all of it and put in a a 2x leveraged SP500 ETF :-D for 3 month and then return the money :-D

"Credit limit: £1200"

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

#477
post #227

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…

Sounds like you should build a competitor if that's literally all it is... I suspect there's quite a few other things you have to consider when you're managing trillions of dollars of transactions a year. Fraud, settlement times, up times, security, customer service, debt collection, interest rate calculation, reach, KYC, record keeping, legal inquiries. But I'm sure we're just a couple grok comments away from a comp…

Very good examples. I'd add that Trust and connections are also huge in payments. Even if your technology is perfect, you need to integrate with tons of different systems to get full coverage, and the people who run those systems don't sign contacts with just anyone.

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

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bank (like most European ones) requires you to pass attestation to use their services. If you don't accept Google/Apple's terms, you can't access it without extreme difficulty.

I can always access my bank via a web browser or even in person at the teller at a branch somewhere, or as a last resort via snail mail from attorney, but most importantly even if I get locked out somehow by google, the account still runs and I won't be homeless as my salary and rent auto-payments keep going regardless if you can access it or not. How is this comparable to your government debanking you meaning that n…

I... don't think you understand debanked. There is no movement OUT of your account. Deposits will be processed all day long. The intent is to tie up access to as many of your assets as possible. If you think anything of yours will just keep on going if you end up debanked, you're sadly mistaken. In addition, based on the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act as amended by the PATRIOT act, covered entities are forbidden from disclosing to you anything about why your account is frozen.

It's as close as you get to a complete shunning from modern society. You're reset to the cash you hold on you and keep custody of. And yes. In the U.S., the list that manages who can and cannot transact is centralized under OFAC. So it is at the whims of Executive whether or not any financial activity can be done with you.

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

#480

I'm surprised that Canada doesn't seem to be talking about doing this. We've already got a strong payment processing brand with Interac, it's used daily for millions of debit transactions, and supports all the features you'd expect (in Canada) from a payment card (tap, chip&pin). There's also the MasterCard Debit and Visa Debit branding which seem to bridge debit transactions to the MasterCard and Visa networks. And…

The Canadian government has been trying for about 4-5 years now to get Canadian banks to embrace Open Banking, which will allow these sorts of products to be built quickly. The banks have consistently refused to do anything, because they don't want any change that threatens their oligopoly. Canadian bank services are more or less the same as they were a decade ago. The current government will have to show that it can…

Canadian banks still live in 2006. They can't even make EMT transfers more convenient, so people could request a payment or pay with QR.

Sometimes I feel like they don't actually refuse to do things, maybe they are not capable to improve. Something in their chain of command is broken and doesn't let them change.

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