Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

tautology.town

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 305 posts

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#91

Post by maelito »

thomasahle wrote: post #88
maelito wrote: post #72

Well I don't really know what they do, but what I know is that Visa transactions costs are 0,22 € out of a payment of 1 €, Mastercard's is 0,23 €, and the French CB network is 0,17 €. All of them do the same : ensure I get the money from the customer. Of course it's a larger project to run this in the whole world, but shouldn't it scale to less along with the number of billions of customers instead of the other way r…

They charge you 23%? I thought in the EU the maximum interchange fee for consumer credit cards is capped at 0.3% of the transaction value.

Plus fixed fees.

I don't want to put responsability on anyone, I don't know who takes what in the chain, but I see the fees in practice.

I took the cheapest PSP I could find in Europe... Stripe is way more expensive, taking 25 cents of fixed fee !

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#92

Post by riazrizvi »

losvedir wrote: post #44

I play the credit card "game" because I hate feeling like I'm leaving money on the table, but I really wish I didn't have to. Some degrees of fees make sense, to run the network, and handle fraud, but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation. Where I am it's increasingly common to see credit card fees when checking out. I get it, because merchants are being charged 3…

I don't get this. Use cash like me and a bunch of us if you don't want to play the game. Or a debit card. Otherwise it's just an extra game. Extra games are choice. Choice is good.

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#93

Post by bob1029 »

rednb wrote: post #85
bob1029 wrote: post #34

VisaNet & friends make the modern consumer world go round. The fees they extract are a drop in the bucket compared to the economic activity that they enable with their networks. Many businesses simply couldn't exist without something approximating this. https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2016/Visa-Commis...

You are literally linking to a page published by Visa's Investors Relations Department. The problem is that like all cartels, they hold progress back. Things could be even more efficient than the current state of affairs. For example we could have open standards with thousands of local players, much faster settlement times etc... There are also aspects such as the fact that due to this concentration of power, the who…

I like how providing an incredibly efficient payment network is framed as holding progress back.

I'd frame it as making the standards for competition very high.

I don't see people getting super ideological about their inability to create monocrystaline turbine blades or 2nm semiconductors in their garages. Why payment networks? Because computers? The overall network is way more complicated than a specific technological system or clever open standards document.

These networks would be usurped if someone could actually come up with a better system. The economy insists upon it constantly.

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#94

Post by amaccuish »

bob1029 wrote: post #34

VisaNet & friends make the modern consumer world go round. The fees they extract are a drop in the bucket compared to the economic activity that they enable with their networks. Many businesses simply couldn't exist without something approximating this. https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2016/Visa-Commis...

Well, in Germany the "girocard", the local card network, is the most popular form of payment. So I guess, citation needed?

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#95

Post by braiamp »

losvedir wrote: post #44

I play the credit card "game" because I hate feeling like I'm leaving money on the table, but I really wish I didn't have to. Some degrees of fees make sense, to run the network, and handle fraud, but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation. Where I am it's increasingly common to see credit card fees when checking out. I get it, because merchants are being charged 3…

That's what systems like Pix fixes. It's managed by the state, it's low cost and it's universal... which is why the US is against it so hard.

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#96

Post by zahlman »

qurren wrote: post #86
losvedir wrote: post #44

I play the credit card "game" because I hate feeling like I'm leaving money on the table, but I really wish I didn't have to. Some degrees of fees make sense, to run the network, and handle fraud, but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation. Where I am it's increasingly common to see credit card fees when checking out. I get it, because merchants are being charged 3…

I used to think "I should be nice to merchants" and pay everything in cash. That was 15 years ago. Now, living costs have gone up, I'm getting taxed to death by not just governments but increasingly more by businesses themselves ("benefits fees", "installation fee", "convenience fee", guilt-tip screens, sneaky price increases, etc.) so now I feel no guilt in playing the system to get at least some of my money back. N…

> If merchants across the world make a deal with me to charge exactly the listed/advertised number exactly, no more, no less, then I'll pay in cash again.

This seems to still be pretty reliable for most things in brick-and-mortar stores, FWIW.

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#97

Post by kazinator »

riazrizvi wrote: post #92
losvedir wrote: post #44

I play the credit card "game" because I hate feeling like I'm leaving money on the table, but I really wish I didn't have to. Some degrees of fees make sense, to run the network, and handle fraud, but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation. Where I am it's increasingly common to see credit card fees when checking out. I get it, because merchants are being charged 3…

I don't get this. Use cash like me and a bunch of us if you don't want to play the game. Or a debit card. Otherwise it's just an extra game. Extra games are choice. Choice is good.

I would only use cash in situations where I'm able to obtain a discount compared to using a credit card.

Even then, you have to think twice. If you get scammed of cash, it's gone. If you get scammed in a credit card transaction, there is a fighting chance you can dispute the charge and have it reversed in their face.

You know that credit card feature of providing some insurance coverage on things like vehicle rentals? It may look like small print, but I actually used that. By some amazing fluke, I damaged the bumper of a rental car; the credit card coverage took care of it. I filled out minor paperwork and never heard about the issue.

Speaking of rentals, in many rental situations (even simple power tools at your Home Depot or whatever) you get charged a deposit on the card which comes back when you return the thing. It's just a number in database. With cash, you'd have to fork that up over the counter; very unappealing.

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#98

Post by kazinator »

qurren wrote: post #86
losvedir wrote: post #44

I play the credit card "game" because I hate feeling like I'm leaving money on the table, but I really wish I didn't have to. Some degrees of fees make sense, to run the network, and handle fraud, but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation. Where I am it's increasingly common to see credit card fees when checking out. I get it, because merchants are being charged 3…

I used to think "I should be nice to merchants" and pay everything in cash. That was 15 years ago. Now, living costs have gone up, I'm getting taxed to death by not just governments but increasingly more by businesses themselves ("benefits fees", "installation fee", "convenience fee", guilt-tip screens, sneaky price increases, etc.) so now I feel no guilt in playing the system to get at least some of my money back. N…

> If merchants across the world make a deal with me to charge exactly the listed/advertised number exactly, no more, no less, then I'll pay in cash again.

Where are you not getting this? You mean taxes on top of the retail price? You would pay cash, if the merchants colluded with you in evading taxes?

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#99

Post by zahlman »

foobarian wrote: post #74
seri4l wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>5-10% loss at the register Where did you get this number from?

Clankers found me one study [1] that suggests total handling costs may actually be this bad, but are highly business dependent e.g. restaurants are worse than grocery stores [1] https://www.ihlservices.com/product/the-cost-of-cash-handlin...

I'm just seeing what looks like an attempt to sell me a PDF.

What actually is the source of such costs? The cashier still has to be paid even if the customer is using a card. Presumably there isn't anywhere near that much theft from registers, or people messing up giving change?

Re: What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

#100

Post by ranguna »

shevy-java wrote: post #37

Europeans really need to stop handing their money over to Trump-Visa and Trump-Card here. Canadians learned that lesson already. Why do european politicians not learn anything? Leyen even signed a surrender treaty where european taxpayers lose money that goes into the USA. I say stop it with the proxy-control from Washington.

As someone from an EU country: the only place where I use visa/MasterCard is at Amazon. Everything else I use my country's payment system, which is now joining with Italy's own and probably more in the coming years.
Post reply on HN