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Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

261–270 of 1001 posts

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard. Hard disagree. Until Covid, many small shops didn't take cards in Europe. Taxis, restaurants, market stalls, even trains were often cash only not that long ago. I in the UK ran accounts in companies that had people travel extensively in Europe. We used to issue travellers with EUR200 for the things that cards couldn't buy. Mo…

Its not just American tourists. Its everyone from everywhere. If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people, people from your own country living abroad) either. > I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them. Xenophobic or anti…

> Xenophobic or anti-tourism?

Opposed to what America has become.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With debit cards or cash like everyone else?

Then instant bank transfers didn't really help you with this use case, did they?

True, thanks for reminding me that this is about CC replacements :)

But I honestly don't know many people with a CC here, and those who do (myself included), we don't have the same advantages/disadvantages of a CC: no points, no "free" miles, no interest and no possibility to rack up debt like in the US since Visa automatically deducts the full amount from my bank account at the end of the monthly billing period.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#263

Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from the…

With my bank (bankinter) you can bizum from a browser (just checked).

Sorry: This is Spain (to clarify).

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#264

I always find it entertaining to hear people try to argue that what these companies do is soooooo difficult and that's why they're valuable. It's just multiple computers keeping a balance. It's not complicated. No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect. Time to do away with these foreign entiti…

I'm a little shocked that of all the comments so far, no one has mentioned the financial risk borne by this whole value chain. OP is operating as if it's just a debit system moving money from one account to another but: - For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk i…

Isn’t that financial risk of credit cards borne by the banks doing the lending? It’s not really any different to a debit card transaction on a bank account with an overdraft facility.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This last summer, I couldn’t use my US-issued Visa or Mastercard credit card in most places in the Netherlands. Had to use debit.

Literally just got back from a trip there and didn't find a single business or transaction that I couldn't pay for with various US-issued (Chase + BoA) Visa credit cards via tap. Even more surprisingly to me - a pretty decent chunk of businesses even would accept AmEx. By no means all, but I recall it being basically nonexistent not that long ago. And to be clear - much of my time was not in areas that get a ton of f…

On a recent trip I skipped most the fees and got a good exchange rate with a Wise Card/account.

I was slow to try it and it’s great.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#266

Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. Can't we have cards for this? In Spain, for example, to use Bizum, you need either an Android/iOS smartphone (and for the Android case, as you use it from your bank's app, it would typically require some Google security assurances - so no Huawei phones allowed, for example) or logging into your bank's website and use Bizum from the…

I think absolutely Europe needs it's own mobile OS. And thankfully they can "just" fork Android - or better still, adopt one of the existing forks.

I suspect simply stating that it must be a supported standard will do most of the work, much like standardising phone chargers.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard. Hard disagree. Until Covid, many small shops didn't take cards in Europe. Taxis, restaurants, market stalls, even trains were often cash only not that long ago. I in the UK ran accounts in companies that had people travel extensively in Europe. We used to issue travellers with EUR200 for the things that cards couldn't buy. Mo…

Its not just American tourists. Its everyone from everywhere. If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people, people from your own country living abroad) either. > I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them. Xenophobic or anti…

> If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people

Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring.

> Xenophobic or anti-tourism?

Anti-American tourism. I would say it is a mainstream opinion in Europe that American tourists are very annoying. Each country has its stereotypes about each other, usually stemming from WW2, but the feelings against American tourists have the wonderful effect of uniting Europe. Then America elected a president that threatened us first with economic sanctions, then war. Perhaps it is a fault in our characters, but we tend to take against people that threaten us with military action.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#269
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for This is a uniquely American viewpoint. In most of Europe you don't buy anything on credit ever.

It is not. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/private-debt-to-gd... The widespread use with "buy now pay later" also counters your wildly baseless claim. Klarna, PayPal 30 days etc.

Just because you have to use Klarna doesn't mean you pay later as you can just select your debit card or even bank account directly.

Re: Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

#270

I'm surprised that Canada doesn't seem to be talking about doing this. We've already got a strong payment processing brand with Interac, it's used daily for millions of debit transactions, and supports all the features you'd expect (in Canada) from a payment card (tap, chip&pin). There's also the MasterCard Debit and Visa Debit branding which seem to bridge debit transactions to the MasterCard and Visa networks. And…

This would still rely on Visa/MasterCard allowing dual-branded credit cards for overseas transactions, which isn't a very common arrangement. The only market that has this is in Asia where there are UnionPay + Visa/MasterCard dual branded cards and I suspect that the reason they allow this is because the market is huge, especially compared to Canada. Also Interac does not do online transactions outside of some very s…

You can do this in multiple steps. Start with a credit card usable only with Canadian merchants, which will cover a great majority of transactions of a great majority of Canadians. I'll have an MC for travel and the ordering from non-Canadian merchants, and this Canadian credit card for the other 95% of my expenses. If a significant percentage of Canadians have such a card, major non-Canadian services will add it as a payment option (e.g. ChatGPT or Claude). Then you branch out by either joining or co-branding with the EU credit card company if such a company succeeds.

A world with a patchwork of payments processing options will look different for travel and business, in some ways worse, but such is life in a "multipolar world" which the Americans elected their leadership to conjure up.

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