Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Hmm, maybe for countries with strong consumer protection, yes. I lost 3 credit cards INSIDE an airplane (hello AirAsia!). I only realized it when I turned on my phone while queuing at immigration and was bombarded with dozens of "Successful transaction" messages. That's ~30min from stepping off the airplane. When I checked my statements, I saw dozens of physical transactions (swipes/taps) with different merchants in…
Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
621–630 of 1001 posts
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
Third party escrow, if you explicitly used one. There's no free lunch.
And now you have invented Visa and MasterCard again.
When you go to your local restaurant, do groceries you are paying a few percentage in tax for using you card.
Platforms online already act as escrow anyway. PayPal, Stripe, act as escrow..yes they take a percentage, but that's more granted for these cases.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#623Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends if we are talking credit or debt cards The low fees are for debt and high for credit cards and VISA/MC won't allow you to accebt only the debt cards
The fees for those are still often comparatively lower to the US rates posted above. Credit cards are also not popular here, so while I do own one, I suspect average % of a merchant still remains low. Amex also offers pretty good rates to low-volume merchants here to have more acceptance to my understanding.
You suspect average percentage is low but try to get a payment processor agreement and see within two years what you actually pay overall. It may get even above the rates I mentioned with fix costs the jeopardy to your business when a fraud does occur and the issuer blocks you from accepting any payment, or worse, accuses you of being the fraudster.
We are well educated by the financial system and VISA/Mastercard to believe this technology is for our own good. Many in the financial industry denounces their predatory practice, that of a cartel of 2 or 3 that imposed a dictate for decades. Things are finally changing, resistance will continue but you will see QR or some alternative will settle in.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today. Disagree. Credit has its uses, but debit is superior for the vast majority consumer transactions: lower fees, lower risk, instant settlement, easy P2P transfers, and broader accessibility. That we've become used to cr…
Instant settlement is an anti-feature. I don't want some asshole to be able to instantly drain my bank account. If I did, I'd be carrying a suitcase of cash around with me.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean that the 2% something visa/Mastercard demand, is far more digestible by merchants when it doesn't represent the majority of their revenue?
If previously 3 merchants had visa / Mastercard out of 10 who only accepted cash or cheques, then with UPI all 10 now accept UPI but 7 or 8 accept a universal POS which allows more type of payments. If previously 10% payments were via cards that costed them 2%, then now if sales are 2-3x because of UPI and online payments, letting go of that 2% for even 20% share of cards is fine because they captured a larger market…
That doordash makes local eateries more prosperous.
It would elevate the debate if we acknowledge the dark patterns these business came up with to extract rents from the economy. That a category actor greatly benefits that's the outcome of any disrupting tech.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#627Earlier 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.
SEPA would be a decent solution with instant QR code generation and app payments, but the transfer fees are ludicrous for daily use (~1-2€ per wire). Or maybe it's just my bank being greedy fucks as usual.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#628Earlier 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…
And how do you do this without a phone?
Also to say, cash remains. That's more radical and effective as a fall back than a card which one can lose. When abroad I remember the anxiety of losing my wallet when abroad. With a phone, it's actually less problematic to walk into a shop, get the cheapest android in there and set up all my banking on it. Half a day of a holiday wasted, that's an acceptable inconvenience given the risk. Losing a card, not really.
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#629Whatever 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…
Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
#630I 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…