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

201–210 of 308 posts

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

#201

Post by lxgr »

seabre wrote: post #106
jimbob45 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to wait for the investigation to complete to receive compensation if you’re hit by fraud on a debit card. Credit cards don’t share that issue. If you’re poor or living paycheck-to-paycheck, debit cards are potentially a risk to your livelihood.

As someone who has been hit with fraud on a debit card and a credit card, the process to recover money from fraud on a credit card is so much easier and more hassle-free than a debit card. The big difference is that with a debit card, it's your money that is hit by fraud. The debit card is basically just a proxy. You have to go file a police report. You have to hope the bank will give you the money back. When the cre…

I don’t thing Regulation E allows banks to require a police report before processing an unauthorized payment, nor can they outright refuse to do so.

Practically, Reg E is essentially as strong as Reg Z.

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

#202

Post by asdff »

supertrope wrote: post #175
asdff wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know they count the till against the reciepts right? And frequently have cameras over the register drawer pointed at the employee? And send people to jail who try to do this?

My point is you cannot entirely eliminate insider theft just suppress it. Cash payments are a lot "leakier."

Not my problem as the customer.

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

#203

Post by lxgr »

Hardwired8976 wrote: post #187
thechao wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big difference is that with a debit card, it's your money that is hit by fraud. I kind of disagree. I think what's happened is the bank would prefer you to believe that . Imagine I kept my money at the bank, and deposited $10000 with the teller. Immediately afterward a robber follows in and steals that $10000 from the teller. Does the bank say "oh no Mr. TheChao! A robber stole your $10000!". I mean, no? The ba…

Eh when you deposit money with a teller, it gets added to your account, which is in physical terms probably just a big storage and a database who has how much. But in the case of debit card, the card ties the money to your account. It is actually that. It's as if someone would steal from a personal safe at the bank.

Except that you have strong statutory rights and commercial agreements between your bank and the card networks making it very likely that you’ll be made whole.

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

#204

Post by throwup238 »

nsvd2 wrote: post #128
asdfasvea wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles my mind that the government has privatized currency to these people. Crazy-person-but-actually-really practical-idea: Nationalize one if these networks. Maybe Discover. The US government should provide us digital currency. The simplest way is to force the current systems to do that. All that rent they collect in terms of transactions fees shouldn't be profit for a private business but fees of the governmen…

Yes, let's bring the experience of waiting at the DMV or dealing with the IRS to payment systems. Great idea

I’ve never had a problem with the IRS or DMV, because unlike Visa or Mastercard they are government agencies with accountability to the people.

Visa and Mastercard are a cancer.

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

#205

Post by bob1029 »

klabb3 wrote: post #159
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...

> VisaNet & friends make the modern consumer world go round. I mean, as opposed to what? You could apply this to any infrastructure cartel like with AT&T in the 90s or Comcast or 100s of historical examples. The alternative to a bridge troll is not ”no bridge”.

The alternative to a bridge troll is "no bridge" if the bridge troll is the only party who has the capability to construct it in the first place.

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

#206

Post by lxgr »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #166
jimbob45 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to wait for the investigation to complete to receive compensation if you’re hit by fraud on a debit card. Credit cards don’t share that issue. If you’re poor or living paycheck-to-paycheck, debit cards are potentially a risk to your livelihood.

The underlying problem is that the whole concept of cards is insane. Basically, you go around telling every shopkeeper the code for your safe, and ask them to take however much cash you owe them out of the safe. Sane ways to organize payments: - Merchant gives you a bill-id. You input it into your bank website - where you see the bill amount being charged. You accept, and bank pays merchant. - You give merchant your…

Cards have supported strong, positive cardholder authentication at the POS (chip and PIN) and online (3DS) since the 90s.

It’s entirely the US credit card industry and its regulating bodies’ fault that it has made neither mandatory in the way that e.g. the EU did, and is in fact fighting any attempt to do so tooth and nail (please think of the conversion rate!!)

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

#207

Post by Onavo »

dylan604 wrote: post #43
Onavo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACH is still the best https://gocardless.com/

Great, so it is immediately deducted from my account and swiftly deposited into the recipient's account in 3-5 business days.

For B2B transactions that's actually decent. And any disputes can be sorted out in court.

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

#209

Post by lxgr »

asdff wrote: post #65
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…

Another thing to consider is your credit card rewards cash back etc are really trading your privacy for a little rounding error worth of discount in comparison to using cash. You may also save far more money going cash only. E.g. some local restaurants near me give you like 5% off paying in cash. Gas is generally cheaper cash price vs card price or debit fee. You have a big job with a contractor, tell them you might…

Many more restaurants and grocery stores don’t, and then it’s 2-5% of cashback vs. 0% cash discount. Doesn’t sound like a rounding error to me.

There are a lot of good reasons to dislike the market structure and game theory of card payments in the US, but please don’t accuse consumers of being short-sighted or irrational.

The only way to break the cycle of self-reinforcing incentives would be swift regulatory action. Absent that, playing the game is the rational move at the individual level for both merchants and consumers.

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

#210

Post by sanjeevverma1 »

this article doesn’t do a good job of simplifying. the vast majority of Visa’s revenue comes from one thing called the ISO 8601 / ISO 20022 message, which is the name for a Visa’s authorization. the core service is transmitting this message between an issuer (cardholder bank) and an acquirer (merchant bank). all other revenue streams are basically a microservice on top of this core message transmission service.
Post reply on HN