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

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

europeanbusinessmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 1001 posts

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

#281

Post by LunaSea »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #243
V__ wrote: 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.

Your link counts all types of debt including mortgages which is the reason why Luxembourg comes up first.

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

#282

Post by victorbjorklund »

carlosjobim wrote: post #172
Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many countries where debit cards are the norm and credit cards are extremely rare. In France, people are so afraid of consumer credit that cards are renamed ‘deferred debit cards’ rather than credit cards, otherwise people do not want them.

Debit cards come with the same fraud protection as credit cards do, which is the most important benefit of Visa/MasterCard.

Not true. At least not in Sweden. There are different laws from credit cards and debit cards.

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

#283

Post by jimnotgym »

carlosjobim wrote: post #189
jimnotgym wrote: post #142

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…

What is Europe in this sense? In the Europe I know, every small business has accepted cards for decades. The exception if there are some children selling strawberries to tourists. As for your second paragraph, you seem to be dreaming. Americans are some of the best tourists to deal with, and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.

I haven't been to every country in Europe, it is true.

A few years ago I shut down a website in Poland for someone because people didn't want to pay with cards, they wanted COD. My colleague took a train regularly in the Netherlands a few years back that was cash only. Dutch websites also have to offer whatever the Dutch payment provider is (I forget). Another colleague in rural Spain found that the price they were charged was lower if they paid cash by the exact amount of VAT. In Germany I ran a website that had to allow bank transfer as a payment method because 'companies generally don't have credit cards' according to the locals. Up until Covid travellers from our office to France and Germany always needed to use a few Euros. Up until Covid it was an absolute taboo to buy drinks with a card in the UK and Ireland, unless it was with a meal. My local chip shop is cash only today, but none of them had a machine before Covid. My local Chinese restaurant tells everyone the card machine is dodgy to see if they will pay cash. They only installed it during Covid.

I think we will manage without Visa just fine.

> and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.

Of course they are! That is literally their job. It is everyone else that has a problem with them.

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

#284

Post by pennaMan »

fhdkweig wrote: post #233
severino wrote: post #135

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…

> Whatever they come up with, I hope it doesn't tie you to a Google or Apple smartphone. I would also hope so, that is the entire point. The reason they are scrambling right now is because Starlink just shut off all of Russia. Because Starlink was so cheap and easy (and stable for the last 4 years of the war), a lot of people in Russia stopped using any other form of internet access. And while all of Europe is happy…

> they are trying to quickly create alternatives to anything American

They're the same bright minds that ensured no alternatives could naturally come out of the European market trough relentless bureaucratic central planning. I have zero hopes of a good outcome

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

#285

Post by Anonyneko »

direwolf20 wrote: post #244
Anonyneko wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it worked, Russia prepared well in advance before the war (admittedly, after Crimea-related sanctions scared the hell out of them in 2014). When the 2022 sanctions dropped, transactions within Russian borders kept working seamlessly because the banks were already using the Mir network for those regardless of card types, i.e. you can still use your Russian-bank-issued Visa today for internal purchases.…

Nitpick: IBAN is a global identifier for a bank account. The transaction system where you enter an IBAN is called SEPA payment, or SEPA bank transfer, or something along those lines. Just like I access hacker news by the Internet, not by IP address.

Thank you for the correction, you're absolutely right.

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

#286

Post by tiffanyh »

autoexec wrote: post #207
tiffanyh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating Acceptance is super difficult. Hence why crypto hasn't taken off with merchants. Because who's going to pay for merchants to change their point-of-sale systems to accept a new payment method.

If the entirety of Europe comes up with a single system I think that'll be more than enough incentive for merchants to update their pos software to accept the new network. I hope that they are eventually so successful that merchants here in the US support them too. I'd love to stop using visa and mastercard.

You mean like Pix in Brazil, or UPI in India.

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

#287

Post by dboreham »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #179

Sigh The fact that EU sees dependence on American tech in the same way as Russian oil now is saddening and telling. Americans and American companies had it really good - our tech extracted money from the world, and they were mostly willing to pay for it. And it was an incredible advantage to the US. But now, it seems that we are happily throwing all that away, for what benefit I do not yet see. Regardless of whether…

Malignant Narcissists always self destruct.

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

#288

Post by createaccount99 »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #248
clawlrbot wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What does Belgium's capital has to do with this? Do you imply Brussels = European Union?

Brussels = location of EU headquarters, and in common lingo Brussels thus means "People running the EU and deciding things on everyone's behalf."

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

#289

Post by the_biot »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #248
clawlrbot wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What does Belgium's capital has to do with this? Do you imply Brussels = European Union?

"Brussels" is often used to mean the entire blob of EU and related institutions.

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

#290

Post by [deleted] »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN