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

Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

quartr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 317 posts

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

#251

Post by netfortius »

Detrytus wrote: post #52
TMWNN wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there information on EU vs US credit limits? I would be very interested in this as well. My understanding is that cashback cards of the type we have everywhere in the US (e.g. Amazon Amex = 5% back on Amazon purchases, Wells Fargo Active Cash = 2% back on everything) don't exist elsewhere. Another example: I just earned $1000 from Chase Sapphire as a new customer bonus for diverting $5K of the spending I would do…

That's just your bank giving back some (but not all) of those 2+% interchange fees. Basically, in EU you have low fees, so credit cards are boring, they offer almost zero perks (because there's no money to finance those). No one really cares about what brand of card they get, only about their credit limit. In the US you are charged high fees on every purchase, and then the bank uses your own money to bribe you, or en…

I have been using US credit cards for years, all over Europe, taking advantage of points/rewards/car rental insurance/money back on challenged purchases, and I pay no more than the Europeans with their debit cards, be it services or products. And I pay the entire balance once a month, from a HYSA US account, thus making a little interest on that part, also, rather than debiting at the time of each purchase, from my non interest bearing European account

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

#252

Post by vee-kay »

devnonymous wrote: post #32

The last section in the article speaks about RuPay but isn't this just one of the many implementations of UPI[1] ? In any case, imo, it is the start of the end for the duopoly and it is my hope that an truly open standard and protocol (unlike UPI) emerges (and no, the blockchain is not it -- crypto would just be accidental complexity in any potential solution). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Inter…

RuPay is debit/credit card as domestic alternative to Visa and MasterCard, while UPI is the digital payments platform. Both technology stacks are owned and managed by NCPI (National Payments Corporation of India is an Umbrella Organisation that facilitates services like UPI Payments, Bharat BillPay, RuPay Cards, FASTag, NACH, etc.).

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

#253

Post by crossroadsguy »

vee-kay wrote: post #238
crossroadsguy wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First things first — this is correct. As a matter of fact, the Brazillian Pix - which gets much more “eyeballs” on places like HN, are much newer than UPI and UPI was one of the inspirations, if I may say so, behind it; and it dwarves in scale. Not to mention UPI is designed to be decentralised (almost decentralised). Fair warning (pc, please know that I am not targeting you) about the URL pc has shared - it’s litera…

You really need to up your game if you think the world's most awarded and most popular Premier (PM Modi) and the most hard working political party (BJP) India has ever got, can be tarnished by someone snidely taking political potshots at Modi+BJP's most famous and incredible achievement yet: UPI. It is poor manners to deride the visionary leaders of modern India as "authoritarian" when they ensured India remains worl…

Goodness :D

You (all; I see couple of fledgling hners) just proved me correct in a way :/

> the world's most awarded and most popular Premier (PM Modi) and the most hard working political party (BJP) India has ever got

You forget to mention "Most UNESCO certified Best PM".

> It is poor manners to deride the visionary leaders of modern India as "authoritarian"

Hawww. You make me sad. I am sad now. Sorry?

But please answer me first - why are you addressing Him as just "Modi"? Wouldn't it be "Hon'ble Modi Ji" or at the least something like "Respected Modi Ji". You bad!

> Their vicious stranglehold has been broken, and how!

Hail!!!!! Hail!!!!

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

#254

Post by Hilift »

leg100 wrote: post #218
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #94

India has had UPI since 2016 now and recently overtook Visa and Mastercards global transaction volume with 650 million transactions per day [1]. These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax on a nations entire GDP and enforcing their own ideas of what transactions should or shouldn't be allowed. With UPI and Pix etc. paving the way and showing its possible, it actually sounds insane to give so muc…

> These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax on a nations entire GDP You're exaggerating for effect. GDP is the total value of all goods and services sold or bought; only a fraction of which is paid for with a credit card. I doubt an F35 is purchased with a Visa.

> These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax for the convenience of using their service, and we are willingly paying it.

Fixed.

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

#255

Post by notpushkin »

sofixa wrote: post #241
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that (and its predecessor iDEAL) basically a layer on top of SEPA transfers though? (not that that's a bad thing)

Kind of, but with easier UX - because a SEPA transfer, which is free and instantaneous, still requires the sharing of a bank account number, while Wero works with QR codes, phone numbers, etc. They're also planning to expand it to NFC payments and online payments.

You can make a QR code for SEPA transfers: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/guid...

(One of many generators you can try: https://qrcode.tec-it.com/en/SEPA)

Doesn’t seem to be supported too widely though :(

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

#256

Post by xyzzy123 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #226
mirzap wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a bad idea. This is how it is supposed to be. My bank offers this even with Mastercard. I have to approve transactions when paying online. It's instant, I finish checkout, and then I receive the push notification asking me to confirm the transaction. I don't know if I would ever use CC in a country where banks don't allow this.

That is authorising the transaction and it makes sense for the card issuer to handle that. It's proving that it's "you" using the card and you really intended to pay for that thing. Maybe they SMS 2FA you, maybe they have a biometric check, etc. All cool. The case where you have a dispute with the merchant (i.e transaction is authorised but problem is 1 layer up - you feel that reality doesn't match up with the payme…

P.S. There are a LOT of details in this specific idea, some consumers are bad actors and are never happy, some merchants likewise are bad actors. Resolving these issues without disclosing sensitive information is extremely difficult. But largely processors are sort of punting on it in various ways when common sense resolutions seem possible. Like if a consumer has 50k transactions with 0 chargebacks and they initiate a chargeback, it's probably a merchant problem. This argues for collapsing the layers but channel-specific resolutions have the advantage of being able to look for delivery signals and other specific mechanisms of performance. Figuring who is right in the world is a hard problem in general. Possibly the Stripe Elite will correct me here since this is the Hard Problem of payments. Which can be solved well enough with statistics. Payments has a whole lot of Hard Problems which seem easy at first, it's a great area.

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

#257

Post by geokon »

geokon wrote: post #158
DevX101 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.2% should be about the correct rate. WeChat in China has zero transaction fee in the system and a 0.1% fee on withdrawals. Visa/MasterCard amounts to a private tax on the economy. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon, since the US allows rent-seeking middlemen like Visa/MC, TurboTax, and PBMs (pharmacy drugs), to continue their operation as long as they keep funding the right politicians.

As far as I understand with WeChat you can't disputes purchases and do things like chargebacks. If your phone is somehow stolen and account drained (they'd need to know your pin..) then you're probably be screwed? So there isn't the concept of insurance as far as I understand. Not to defend the credit card companies in the slightest.. but its a bit apples to oranges

EDIT: Arguably "insurance" is actually an artificial problem creates to justify the cards' fees. The intentionally didn't implement CC chips for the longest time, insisted on signatures, and now support insecure things like contactless payment - thereby ensuring theft/fraud still exists and necessitating insurance (for a very marginal increase in user convenience)

The only plus side I can see is that you can buy stuff from shady ass websites and sleep comfortably knowing you can do a chargeback later.

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

#258

Post by Anarch157a »

plumeria wrote: post #170
Anarch157a wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of companies in Brazil that offer PIX payments to foreign e-shops. Valve has been accepting PIX for some time now, for example.

Can you suggest some?

Many banks and Fintechs here offer this, the trick is that you need to open a local office, so you have a Brazilian subsidiary with a CNPJ number in order to open a bank account and receive the money.

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

#259

Post by whatevaa »

laurencerowe wrote: post #96
867-5309 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's only a very recent change, and not universally rolled out. for decades shops charged ~£3 "connection fee" for paying by credit card, no matter the purchase amount, and many still (probably illegally) enforce a minimum spend if paying by credit or debit card. like when paying or withdrawing money abroad, it's just a lottery as to the "fees" you'll be charged not because there are such fees, but because someone…

As I remember it credit card minimums were only a thing at smaller shops but usually didn’t apply to debit cards.

Credit card chargebacks are very expensive for a vendor, you don't want credit card purchases for 1$ items.

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

#260

Post by belter »

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…

> I wonder how impactful a public digital infrastructure for the dollar would be.

The future digital dollar is being quietly sabotaged as the current administration realizes that crypto isn't just capable of anonymous bribery, it's the ideal medium for it.

Post reply on HN