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Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

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Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#121

Post by jdashg »

greenavocado wrote: post #5
everyone wrote: post #3

The fucked up thing is how they are enforcing archaic puritan ideals on the whole world. Acting as self appointed global censors. (Eg. not allowing adult games on Steam or Itch.io) The most confusing thing for me is why. I have read a few theories, but nothing convincing. What could be a strong enough motivator to do such a bizarre thing? Also we need governments to keep them in line. We cant have private corps actin…

This is the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask is what is preventing other payment processors from seamlessly getting in front of the customer, at every retail location, and online? If other payment processors existed and were allowed to flourish, we would not give a damn if these two blocked 90% of transaction types. Instead, something is suffocating innovation and personal freedom.

Network effects and moats, sadly.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#122

Post by one-note »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #112
one-note wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t want to spend money you don’t have? Congrats, your credit score is trash and now you can’t rent a house (let alone buy).

Do you mean via credit cards, or on the whole, including a mortgage? We have a mortgage, but have made all but 1 or 2 credit card payments in 20+ years - we forgot to pay a $50 bill once, IIRC. Outside of the mortgage, we've never spent money that wasn't already in our bank account - not even "it's coming in our next paycheck". Our credit scores are fine.

I mean just credit cards generally. You have to play the MasterCard/Visa game or else lenders won’t rent to you. I’ve been denied many rental properties I could very easily afford because “oh someone else applied and their credit score was over 800”

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#123

Post by adfasofdjo »

one-note wrote: post #99
FpUser wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" the only thing that makes credit cards a better proposition is being able to pay without having enough money in the bank" I am not sure it is a better proposition if one looks at staggering amounts of debt caused by credit cards

You don’t want to spend money you don’t have? Congrats, your credit score is trash and now you can’t rent a house (let alone buy).

Only in the US, building Credit isn't as important in other countries AFAIK.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#124

Post by benced »

Jensson wrote: post #104
benced wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always cite the first-order benefits of this regulation but don't look into anything else. To be clear, I haven't either but what I would look for is: - are real prices cheaper for consumers? - is economic activity higher or lower (i.e. maybe credit cards encourage purchases?) - does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? - is lowering credit card penetration, particularly…

> does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? It doesn't, EU uses card payments much more than the US. So end of discussion there, it got cheaper with no negatives, just positives.

That's false. It's 66.7% in the US. Only Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway are higher.

https://genderdata.worldbank.org/en/indicator/fin7-t-a?gende...

(also, you answered - incorrectly - only one of the questions that I brought up)

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#125

Post by benced »

sophia01 wrote: post #98
benced wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always cite the first-order benefits of this regulation but don't look into anything else. To be clear, I haven't either but what I would look for is: - are real prices cheaper for consumers? - is economic activity higher or lower (i.e. maybe credit cards encourage purchases?) - does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? - is lowering credit card penetration, particularly…

Oh come on. You are going to debate whether a 3% parasitic tax is good or bad. Interchange is paid on debit card transactions too, it's not credit card specific.

Parasitic takes for granted that credit card companies do nothing. Anyone who works in finance could tell you that's very false.

(I'm open to the idea that this is a market inefficiency that needs government correction - but you need more than just saying "3%" to prove that)

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#126

Post by benced »

idiotsecant wrote: post #73
benced wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always cite the first-order benefits of this regulation but don't look into anything else. To be clear, I haven't either but what I would look for is: - are real prices cheaper for consumers? - is economic activity higher or lower (i.e. maybe credit cards encourage purchases?) - does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? - is lowering credit card penetration, particularly…

I think that there's very little reason to suspect that a rent-seeking middle man getting a bigger piece of the pie is in any way good for the efficiency of the value transfer system, first order or not. You're kind of crab-walking around making a point here.

If credit card networks disappeared today, would we want them back? If the answer is yes, then they deserve a fee. Unclear to me why a certain % is morally correct.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#127

Post by pzo »

Telemakhos wrote: post #26
topdan wrote: post #12

China is a footnote in the article, but their story here is interesting. China's WTO accession commitments in 2001 agreed to open its financial services sector, including payment card services, to foreign companies, except they never did. The US sued (presumably on behalf of VISA and MasterCard) and won in 2012: https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-... MasterCard just started being full offered…

Not only have they avoided the duopoly: they've avoided dependence on US tech and US financial surveillance/control. The EU depends on Visa/Mastercard for cross-border transactions especially, and they've never been able to get their act together well enough to establish a home-grown, EU-wide payment rails system that would give them independence from US processors should they need that independence. That's a lesson…

Too bad but good that Europe at least have SEPA for euro money transfer so not dependant on SWIFT and at least for mobile payment you have many systems in different European countries like e.g BLIK in Poland

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#128

Post by pzo »

lmm wrote: post #92
orangea wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury) My immediate instinct upon reading this is "of course those businesses wouldn't be interested". They are selling a brand and image first, and if it looked like they wanted people to download some new app and put in their bank details to make a purchase instead of swiping a credit card it would cheapen the brand. Luxury stores are all about a streamlined expe…

Yeah. High-margin, high-end businesses can afford the fees. If there's a space to compete it's low-margin businesses where 3% really stings, even if it's 3% of a smaller gross. I used to work with a company that served mainly immigrants and blue-collar workers, and something lower-fee than credit/debit was a constant conversation (we were partway through building an ACH backend by the time I left, but I don't know if…

Not only only low margin but even more low price products. If you sell ice cream for $1 there is not only 3% fee but also minimal transaction fee like 30cent.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#129

Post by Jensson »

benced wrote: post #124
Jensson wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? It doesn't, EU uses card payments much more than the US. So end of discussion there, it got cheaper with no negatives, just positives.

That's false. It's 66.7% in the US. Only Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway are higher. https://genderdata.worldbank.org/en/indicator/fin7-t-a?gende... (also, you answered - incorrectly - only one of the questions that I brought up)

That doesn't include debit cards, most people don't want nor need credit cards. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have seen people use cash the past year, basically everyone uses cards.

We have VISA and Mastercard with debit, not credit, so it works everywhere.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#130

Post by leonidasv »

Art9681 wrote: post #114
mzitelli wrote: post #17

Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…

Does the Central Bank of Brazil publish data on the cost of running the network and how it is funded? Or is there a hidden tax that eventually makes its way to the customer in order to keep it going? Nothing is totally free. Who pays for the infrastructure costs, not to mention the legion of humans that it surely takes to maintain the network? Pretty sure that no matter what is published publicly, someone is paying f…

It costs up to ~$9m per year, processing 63 billion transactions per year: https://oglobo.globo.com/economia/noticia/2024/10/03/bc-gast...

Banks pay a small fee (less than a cent) per batch of transactions.

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