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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

#661

Post by anticodon »

Anonyneko wrote: post #59
seydor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seamlessly It's not seamless if it includes a war, global isolation, exodus of all business and disconnection of the banks. This means they were left with no alternative, in which case, sure, it's 'seamless' to use the only alternative method. Europe will have a lot of friction with consumer habits and Visa will always be relevant for buying things from outside EU. These are all competing entities which hate anythi…

That's not how it worked, Russia prepared well in advance before the war (admittedly, after Crimea-related sanctions scared the hell out of them in 2014). When the 2022 sanctions dropped, transactions within Russian borders kept working seamlessly because the banks were already using the Mir network for those regardless of card types, i.e. you can still use your Russian-bank-issued Visa today for internal purchases.…

> Of course, right now nothing can dethrone Visa/MC for international payments

UnionPay can. They are accepted in many parts of the world, and they are free from US restrictions.

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

#662

Post by raincole »

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…

It's obviously very difficult. Just not necessarily difficult in technological sense.

Convincing your neighbors to build a refugee shelter in your neighborhood is difficult, and it's not like we have a shortage of house-building knowledge.

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

#663

Post by globular-toast »

codethief wrote: post #585
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #520

The 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.

But they won't though, will they? Or maybe we can look forward to that in another 30 years when they realise they are, once again, dependent on American tech.

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

#664

Post by pezezin »

Saline9515 wrote: post #404
maigret wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your best example of European integration is electric plugs?

Free cellphone roaming is a big plus.

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

#665

Post by littlecranky67 »

pyrolistical wrote: post #443
littlecranky67 wrote: post #353

Whenever people say Bitcoin has no usecase, this is exactly my usecase. Of course, only in conjunction with Lightning (a layer 2 solution building on Bitcoin with anonymity and instant transaction settlement). Censorship-free, no relying on third parties, free and open source software to make and receive payments. Yes, I know, bitcoin is too volatile. The reason that it is volatile, is because it has almost no adopti…

What about the fraud protection offered by credit cards?

What about it? Once you have a decentralized digital payment system (no matter if its Bitcoin, Lightning, Stablecoins) any corporate entity can offer trusted escrow services for online purchases. As in, merchant verification, chargebacks etc. No need for the government here.

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

#666

Post by anticodon »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #353

Whenever people say Bitcoin has no usecase, this is exactly my usecase. Of course, only in conjunction with Lightning (a layer 2 solution building on Bitcoin with anonymity and instant transaction settlement). Censorship-free, no relying on third parties, free and open source software to make and receive payments. Yes, I know, bitcoin is too volatile. The reason that it is volatile, is because it has almost no adopti…

Crypto was and is inconvenient to use. So many years passed and almost nobody uses crypto daily. It's too inconvenient.

And it's not secure or anonymous at all. At some point you need to buy crypto or sell crypto, or buy some goods with crypto, and at that point you can be easily identified. Happened so many times.

Even here in Russia, under all US sanctions, only a few use crypto. It's so inconvenient that even under pressure of US sanctions it hadn't become more popular.

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

#667

Post by microtonal »

pimterry wrote: post #254
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…

> 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 I don't know about Huawei, but actually most (all?) of the banking apps in Spain should work on a non-Google-certified Android builds. There's an community list tracking GrapheneOS compatibility at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa…

Same here, I'm using Dutch banking and credit card apps (and iDEAL/Wero) without issues on a GrapheneOS phone (/e/OS works as well).

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

#668

Post by anon7000 »

havaloc wrote: post #46
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…

I think it's probably a little bit harder than you think with all the rules and regulations out there. I would highly encourage anybody who's remotely interested, listen to the Acquired podcast episode regarding Visa. It's actually quite fascinating how it was started. You may balk at the length, but the whole thing had me interested. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/visa

Sure, it’s hard, but a duopoly is skimming LITERALLY 1-3% off the entire consumer economy for a service that is not that expensive to operate. Additionally, interchange rates are higher for premium credit cards, to pay for the benefits (not to pay for the cost of operating the network.) This cost is shared among all consumers, not just the well-off who can get premium credit cards.

It’s a captive market, which means Visa & MC really don’t have a ton of incentive to compete. How do you get new payment networks to integrate? Banks typically only offer a single network on their cards, and businesses use whatever their PoS systems accept. For a new network to compete, it’d need to be available everywhere.

It’s the textbook definition of core infrastructure for society and frankly should be operated like a utility. It’s not like Visa & MC are innovating - just look at the lethargic rollout of contactless in the US until COVID forced everyone’s hands.

The sole purpose of visa & MC is to grow profit each year. That’s it. I’m not a fan of that being in the middle of practically all consumer spending

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

#669

Post by MrDresden »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #50
hirako2000 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 0.2% Visa: 1.3% to 2.3% Mastercard: 1.5% to 2.6% Mastercard: 2.3% to 3.5% Nothing precise as it depends on whether that's debit vs credit cards, and the type of card. Also volume related and what the bank may subsidize, or take on top.

Not in EU. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-... > Specifically, the regulation: > caps interchange fees at 0.2% of the transaction value for consumer debit cards and at 0.3% for consumer credit cards;

These regulations were the reason that American Express pulled out of various European markets (but not all) as it became less/not profitable for them to issue their cards in those markets.

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

#670

Post by globular-toast »

fmajid wrote: post #274

Europe had a payment processor in Europay, the E in EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa), but stupidly allowed MasterCard to acquire it.

Hilarious. Someone would have got a nice retirement out of that. It's amazing that some people have the power to sell a slice of the entire population's financial transactions for the next 25 years.
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