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Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

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Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#211
post #167

Actually all current card payment providers should be put out of business altogether. Two companies(master/visa) hold complete control over the entire customer spending in the whole world.- They also prevented banks from catching up to the 21st century, technology-wise, and we still do not have instant online payments. There is so many things bad with banking and many causes can be traced back to these card payment p…

> Two companies(master/visa) hold complete control over the entire customer spending in the whole world.- They also prevented banks from catching up to the 21st century, technology-wise, and we still do not have instant online payments.

India has UPI, China has WeChat Pay and AliPay, Russia has MIR, and forced Visa/MC out of business for domestic payments like five years ago. Adding insult to injury, all these systems do have instant online payments.

Oh, and Japan has JCB, heard African and Latin American countries have their own systems too. The "world" you're talking about is a small one.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#212
post #200

Imagine you go to a market notorious for haggling and the company that sold you your wallet monitors all your transactions and reports them to whomever of the market sellers pays most. You are now the fat chicken, ready to be plucked: You just bought a hammer, now you need nails. From your social media trail sellers can also infer you are somewhat of a dimwit. Hurry, nails are in high demand in your area. But no worr…

Better yet, they now have those e-ink price labels. They could literally update as you walk towards them to show the price they will sell to you. If you walk off and don't pick something up, they could then change the offer a little. It's no longer '2 for 1', it's now '3 for 2 with a free X'. Disgusting. > I just can't understand how people have come to accept such erosion of their privacy, ultimately their very own…

Even better - criminals will get the data a way or another and find out your purchasing power, when and where you go leaving your house unattended and what they can tell you or your relatives to effortlessly manipulate into just giving them something valuable.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#213

Imagine you go to a market notorious for haggling and the company that sold you your wallet monitors all your transactions and reports them to whomever of the market sellers pays most. You are now the fat chicken, ready to be plucked: You just bought a hammer, now you need nails. From your social media trail sellers can also infer you are somewhat of a dimwit. Hurry, nails are in high demand in your area. But no worr…

Yes, it always was like this, all the way back to snake oil salesmen and probably even further back. Now we have 'legit' companies that know the exact snake oil you'd want. There will always be a battle between the wants and want nots.

Now however, the consequences are on a truly global scale, so it becomes more important than ever before, while at the same time becoming less understandable than ever before for normal people. So instead of downtalking the issue, we should highlight it more than ever before and we should inform and educate people more than ever before.

'cept that education sector is struggling to even get financed in places. We even have people seriously thinking schools should finance themselves, because they are too short-sighted, to see the net benefit for a society, that a good education system brings with it. This in the face of ever more things to learn about the digital world. And I live in a country, where there isn't even an official school subject about interacting with this digital world.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#214
post #167

Actually all current card payment providers should be put out of business altogether. Two companies(master/visa) hold complete control over the entire customer spending in the whole world.- They also prevented banks from catching up to the 21st century, technology-wise, and we still do not have instant online payments. There is so many things bad with banking and many causes can be traced back to these card payment p…

Do something about it then?

Any alternatives to current payment processors is immediately called a scam with no real world use cases.

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#215
post #205
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the whole world, this is mostly in the United States. In Europe its more like what you describe, banks are the card payment provider and we have (near) instant online transfers. Credit cards are relatively unimportant here.

What are you going on about? Pretty much all European banks issue Visa/Mastercard credit and debit cards (sometimes under their subbrands Maestro and VPay) by default to pretty much all customers. Most in-store payment processing goes directly over those two companies still.

Plus, if you want to buy anything online outside of your own country (in Europe), you will likely have to use a credit card or something like PayPal. Or some other third party, that is connected to your credit card.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting ride of the Visa/Mastercard duopoly would mean that all banks must connect to all other banks, which they do not want to do, believe me. That would be an administrative hell for them. What would be so strange about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

Aren't most SEPA transfers not settled directly bank-to-bank but through STEP2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBA_Clearing#STEP2 That said, in a system replacing VISA/MasterCard (which I personally believe is a goal worth working toward), it seems like the easiest way would be to connect all the existing national clearing systems (many of these already have instant payments on their own - Fedwire in the US, STEP2 in…

Oh, my point was not confirming the premise of the parent in that all banks would need to connect to all other banks, but that it would not be such a hard feat to get rid of VISA/Mastercard for this kind of processing.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#218

Imagine you go to a market notorious for haggling and the company that sold you your wallet monitors all your transactions and reports them to whomever of the market sellers pays most. You are now the fat chicken, ready to be plucked: You just bought a hammer, now you need nails. From your social media trail sellers can also infer you are somewhat of a dimwit. Hurry, nails are in high demand in your area. But no worr…

> You just bought a hammer, now you need nails. The standard response from someone working in ad-tech: "But isn't it great that an advertisement informs you that you need nails too? Nothing would ever be built without the help from ad-tech!"

As someone said in another thread: the problem with ad-tech is that they think that you need another hamner.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#219
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But how do you break up such a duopoly? Start buying things with cash again.

Ignoring the convenience aspect one problem with this is that you are now paying an ~2% "tax" as most stores include credit card fees in their prices. If you use a credit card you get ~2% back in "rewards" but if you don't you are still paying the same prices (in most businesses). It's a pretty clever scheme by the card companies where the have raised the price for people not using their services.

This whole rewards thing we don't really have in Europe. At all.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#220
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just bought a hammer, now you need nails. The standard response from someone working in ad-tech: "But isn't it great that an advertisement informs you that you need nails too? Nothing would ever be built without the help from ad-tech!"

As someone said in another thread: the problem with ad-tech is that they think that you need another hamner.

Yes, adding insult to injury.
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