Good.
Now, what will happen in the UK.
Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
581–590 of 1001 posts
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then we could have an international standard to let the national networks work together, like for the phone network.
Yes, common standards would solve the technical problem. There are also business and regulatory problems with regard to international transactions.
Same with phone networks. Since India got serious about blocking spam, it has some strict requirements to call into the country.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 unemp…
> 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.
You don't have to imagine it.
Alina Lipp, Thomas Röper, Xavier Moreau, Col Jacques Baud, Nathalie Yamb. The last two are Swiss nationals. The Baud case is interesting because he's a Belgian resident who now can not even buy food or pay his bills while living in his own home.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
indeed. my credit card requires me to preload money from my bank account. it's like there is a second account that keeps a balance that i can spend using the credit card. whenever i use it, the balance is updated. how the credit is paid off i don't know. it could be either right away, or the amount is just hidden by my bank until it is time to pay off at the end of the month. either way, the credit limit is zero. so…
that is not a credit card :)
There is a point though - Mastercard and Visa treats them as "prepaid" credit cards, which are different from both true prepaid cards (as issued in the US), charge cards, and true debit cards (former Maestro and Visa Electron). Again, different regions have different lines for this, especially in Europe.
IIRC, bunq in the Netherlands issues Mastercard "credit cards" (with no "debit" annotation as on true Mastercard debit cards). They're treated as credit cards for Mastercard purposes but are backed by deposits.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#585The irony is that this new payment method has the exact same issue: it's deeply tied to US corporate. Their site claims that it can only be used on iOS or Android: https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240... Also: > It is not possible to use Wero via a web browser or on a computer. This seems an even worse situation than carrying around a Maestro (mastercard) with me.
> it's deeply tied to US corporate.
In what way specifically? Android and iOS are just the OS the banking apps that implement Wero happen to run on. There is nothing stopping them from releasing a Linux app. Or a web app.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use my credit and debit cards the same way today as I did before smartphones existed. I never invited the extra surveillance middleman of Google/Apple into my transactions. And the convenience of tapping or swiping a plastic card is simpler than using my phone anyway. Is this not possible in Spain?
> I never invited the extra surveillance middleman What's an extra layer of surveillance? Why accept the "credit and debit" surveillance middlemen but not the google/apple middlenmen? What the world needs are "cash cards". Something equivalent to cash not tied to your identity that you can use in the real and virtual world. I simply do not understand why governments or the private sector do not provide such options.
We used to have a "cash card" in Sweden in the 90's[0]. It flopped because nobody wants to keep manually re-filling it with value all the time. It's much more convenient to have a card that pulls from your bank account (either instantly via debit or monthly via credit). In the mass market, convenience always trumps privacy.
The places where a "cash card" have gained popularity have all been using the "backdoor" of public transit payments that are so ubiquitous they also get accepted by retail (e.g. Suica in Japan, Octopus in HK, EasyCard in Taiwan, etc)
[0] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_(betalsystem) based on the Belgian Proton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(debit_card)
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#587I'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…
> surprised that Canada doesn't seem to be talking about doing this
Canada could get the best of all worlds. Let Visa and Mastercard compete with Alipay and whatever the EU comes up with in the 2030s.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#588[flagged]
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#589I 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…
I'm a little shocked that of all the comments so far, no one has mentioned the financial risk borne by this whole value chain. OP is operating as if it's just a debit system moving money from one account to another but: - For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk i…
A debtless society probably wouldn't suffer as many catastrophic economic recessions/depressions though (usually a result of cascading liquidations/unpayable debts)
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#590[dead]