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Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

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121–130 of 237 posts

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#121
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

> you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. this seems like a false statement. here is an article from 2021 that highlights some of the numerous cashback offers: https://medium.com/@danminea/best-cashback-cards-with-reward... and Amex usually has cashback cards as well. disclaimer: i have used some of these cashback cards both in the EU and outside of it.

Key part of the phrase "high value". Some US cards give back ~2% on all purchases.

The best of those appears to be 1% on purchases at six specific retailers or 0.1% on purchases in the EU/1% outside of the EU. Many of them don't even give cash back, they give their own cryptocurrency that they made up out of thin air.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#122
post #114
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants? I can see low interchange rates for debit cards like the US the interchange for debit card for major banks is capped at 0.05%.

There is often a small annual fee connected with having a credit card (I think I pay on the order of $25 a year). Also effective interest rates are in the 15-25% range for most cards if you don't pay it off in full, which I'm sure quickly adds up.

Zero-fee credit cards exist: https://www.advanzia.com/en-gb/customers

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#123
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

> you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. this seems like a false statement. here is an article from 2021 that highlights some of the numerous cashback offers: https://medium.com/@danminea/best-cashback-cards-with-reward... and Amex usually has cashback cards as well. disclaimer: i have used some of these cashback cards both in the EU and outside of it.

> and Amex usually has cashback cards as well.

The cap applies on 4-party schemes, not Amex (nor Diners, Discovery).

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#124
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just about third parties. I still need to consent to any PII you gather for your analytics, even if it’s completely first-party.

Would have assumed that anonymous logging is fine? Generating usage data? Error logs? As long as it’s not sold, private data or used to identify the user? Highly doubt that kind of gathering is a problem. If it were you could close 95% of the web.

As I said, PII. So if your only PII is storing the IP one-way hashed and salted, keeping the salt only for a day as like (I think) Plausible does, it’s probably/possibly okay.

Besides that, intent also matters. For example, we had to start logging IPs for every newsletter change, or you can log IPs in your access log for security reasons without consent. Logging the same IP into your analytics tool becomes an issue.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#125
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disputes are not always fraud on customer side and it’s really not the job of the bank to figure out who is wrong. Imagine two wallets disputing the fate of a coin on a bazaar - does it really make sense? E.g. if content of the package is stolen at warehouse or something else happens, where you think you sent the product and customer got nothing, customer may dispute your point of view and request chargeback. There’s…

>Disputes are not always fraud on customer side Agreed, though the other 3 parties know a lot more about the customer, past disputes, and so on. Also, the argument applies for any kind of chargeback. Again, the other three parties combined see all transactions and have lots of context. And, if they required things like ip address, shipping address (they only ask for billing), they could really improve fraud detection…

This is convenient for merchants to offload fraud prevention to banks by sharing more data, but then this should be a service for which you pay and a section in your privacy policy, so that your customers know which data is shared with the bank and why (I‘d say that would be too much data). Fraud levels are different for different merchants, so bundling this service with core product would be unnecessary tax for those businesses which rarely deal with fraud.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#126
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants? I can see low interchange rates for debit cards like the US the interchange for debit card for major banks is capped at 0.05%.

0.3% over 60 days (in practice more like 15 to 45, only commercial cards have longer billing cycles) was really not that bad during a decade of near zero interest rates.

And now that banks will finally make a bit more money on mortgages and other kinds of loans, I assume they don't mind the increasing cost of their customers' credit balance.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#127
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU introduced price caps on interchange in 2015 capping interchange on credit cards at 0.3% and debit cards at 0.2%. That’s almost an order-of-magnitude lower than interchange fees in the US, which are usually around the 1%-2% level. This is big part of the reason you don’t see high value reward cards or cashback program in the EU. There simply isn’t the interchange revenue to fund them, which is good thing, beca…

How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants? I can see low interchange rates for debit cards like the US the interchange for debit card for major banks is capped at 0.05%.

> How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants

They don't. They're rare, only do 30 days, and are often paid (you pay monthly/yearly for the pleasure).

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#128

I have been pondering transaction costs lately. Seems like this is an area where intervention could have massive impact: these costs are effectively a tax that incurs deadweight loss so according to prevailing economic theory if we can reduce it the whole economy should be catalysed. IIUC governments already introduce price caps for certain elements of this market but I think we could be doing more? Like mandating in…

Stripe provides value-added 'premium' service which competes with merchant banking solutions offered by most EU banks, and Stripe does not have a dominant position. But in general, yes, EU does place a LOT of attention to these deadweight transaction costs, and has had large interventions - for example, if you look at the price listed in this very article, the reason why 'international cards' have 3.25% fee and 'stan…

Is there a list of competitors out there?

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#129
post #127
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants? I can see low interchange rates for debit cards like the US the interchange for debit card for major banks is capped at 0.05%.

> How do credit cards provide 60 day interest free loan with only 0.3% charge to the merchants They don't. They're rare, only do 30 days, and are often paid (you pay monthly/yearly for the pleasure).

30 day billing cycle with 30 days to pay. Between 30 days and 60 days before payment.

Re: Stripe increases price for business in the European Economic Area

#130

the beginning of the end of stripe. Instead of attracting more customers and building the ground for a healthy startup ecosystem, stripe chose the shortsighted 'let's just charge more'. this immediately makes other alternatives like adyen more attractive...bad move and I don't get how patrick collison who roams around here let this happen. the 2.9%+0.25 was already allowing for healthy margins, and was higher than co…

Is Aden the only competitor here?
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