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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)

#281

Post by notpushkin »

yawaramin wrote: post #280
notpushkin wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia. Also Vietnam (Napas247), Singapore (PayNow), Philippines (QR Ph), Japan (lots different systems), China (WeChat/Alipay, I think?), Russia (SBP), Belarus (ERIP, in a sense), and the whole of EU (SEPA transfers). One problem is, most of them don’t really work for you if you’re a foreigner. Moreta (YC S24) is doing something in SEA, and I’ve seen another s…

India has UPI (Universal Payment Interface) for instant free transfers. They are working with Singapore to integrate their payment systems so that people will be able to send remittances instantly across the countries.

Yeah, and some of SEA payment modes already do cross-accept each other actually.

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

#282

Post by Telemakhos »

pzo wrote: post #127
Telemakhos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SEPA/SWIFT are not anything like the Visa/Mastercard duopoly: the former are bank-facing, while the latter are retail cusotmer-facing at point-of-sale.

You do indeed have many systems in different countries in the EU. The problem is that they don't interoperate, and the rebooted EPI has had to scale back its goals. Its goal now is to offer a digital wallet and P2P transactions, with a card scheme only in the distant future.

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

#283

Post by backscratches »

TMWNN wrote: post #89
pseudo0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a card with a $800 annual fee... And the Amazon Amex requires a Prime membership, so you are paying at least $140/year for that card. Credit card companies aren't stupid, they offer a few loss leaders but they make it annoying and time-consuming to come out ahead. And most of the big perks are one-time only, they have gotten much better at banning "churners".

> That's a card with a $800 annual fee Not my Sapphire. $95. Undecided on whether to keep it or change to another type (I'm not a churner, so 5/24 is not relevant). Also undecided on whether to keep the 100,000 points sitting in the rewards balance for the time being, or cash it out to the aforementioned $1000 now.

they can (and do) change the value of points vhenever they want, so better to cash out asap

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

#284

Post by rprend »

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…

it's important to note that Pix took over Brazil because it was mandatory. The US Federal Reserve built equivalent infra: FedNow, as of 2023, is the rails for instant settling, $.04 bank transfers. But adoption is meh

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

#285

Post by rprend »

thimabi wrote: post #49
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 got in this thread with the expectation of seeing a comment like yours, so thank you for that. I think what worries the U.S. more is the likelihood of Pix spreading around the world. It’s such a great public program that I believe many countries will eventually adopt it, or adopt some version of it. In fact, AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia. Consumers like it because it is widely availa…

Pix, UPI, etc are nationally silo'd and have little risk of spreading around the world. They took over their respective countries because they were government backed and mandatory.

The US has its own version of this: government backed, 24/7 instant settlement payment rails (called FedNow). It released in 2023 but adoption is slow because it's not mandatory. Banks are especially slow to support "Requests for payments", which might compete with card networks for retail purchases.

It's the banks, not Visa / Mastercard, that make the most off credit card fees. Visa / Mastercard take .1-.2%, the bank takes ~2%.

The other unique bit about the US is we have uniquely strong consumer protection laws and a uniquely large amount of fraud. Irreversible payment rails are a nightmare for consumers who are used to chargebacks being built in to the payment rail, and banks are skeptical of exposing such rails to consumers because most of the time the banks are required to make good when the customer is defrauded.

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

#286

Post by righthand »

rprend wrote: post #272
righthand wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think a FOSS version of this would be possible? Or is the infra too complex or require working with regulator bodies? I have been thinking how to empower individuals to collect payments without relying on Visa, Mastercard or Venmo necessarily and putting a pretty wrapper around ACH sounds nice.

I’ll talk to my cofounder about open sourcing. In payments, though, the code isn’t the hard part. The hard part is the licensing/regulation and most of all the risk analysis. You need a partnership with someone with an MTL to move money; you need anti money laundering policies and sanctions screenings and to do KYB checks. These days that’s not that hard because there’s vendors for all that, but it’ll cost you low fi…

Yea and it’s everything else you listed that makes me think integrating with Venmo/Square Cash is the closest one could get.

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

#288

Post by BobaFloutist »

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).

You can pretty trivially set credit cards to auto-pay and use them as debit cards, with the only difference being a delay in any overdraft penalty.

Sure, if you overspend you get heavily penalized, and that's not great, but you don't have to spend a dime of interest to build a respectable credit score.

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

#289

Post by insane_dreamer »

DevX101 wrote: post #50
pavlov wrote: post #13

The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, but everyone just takes it for granted until they’re reminded how much worse the rest of the world has it. In the EU, card payment fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. In the US, these interchange fees are about 2%. US businesses pay over $100 billion annually in these fees to card networks. If…

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.

What are UnionPay's fees? That's the correct comparison, not WeChat.

PayPal/CashApp have zero transaction fee as well for person-to-person transfers.

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

#290

Post by theshackleford »

sofixa wrote: post #249
theshackleford wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the question was specifically regarding credit cards, not debit cards. In which case, they would be correct in that penetration is appears lower for credit cards in the EU no? Note, I am not suggesting that is a bad thing, I fail to see largely how its a bad think but perhaps I lack enough understanding to see why people not loading up on credit cards is a negative.

> Sure, but the question was specifically regarding credit cards, not debit cards. In which case, they would be correct in that penetration is appears lower for credit cards in the EU no? Yes, but that's because credit cards aren't needed in the EU (you don't need to build credit, and you get the same protections on both). So it's useless to try to focus on credit cards in particular, it only makes sense to consider…

Ah fair enough. Thank you, makes sense. It’s much the same in my country honestly.
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