301–310 of 317 posts
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I was really surprised that it was normal to have account fees in the US. In the UK banking is free, at least until you hit an overdraft charge. They even made Bank ATMs fee free whatever bank you are with around 2000 (non bank ATMs still have a charge.)
If you pick the right bank, you can get the same deal in the US. Actually, you can get no fees at any ATM
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I'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…
So like Circle's USDC Circle Payments Network?
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I'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…
Because highly secure coin wouldn't allow the government to track money. I firmly believe that the Federal Agencies do not fight bitcoin exactly because it is so easily tracked.
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I'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…
You're describing a CBDC, not a coin. Why isn't it being done? Because commercial banks are vehemently against that. The current administration in particular will never go against the big banks.
As for the government, I'm sorry, I thought I acknowledged that point. Though I also don't think we should just take it and give up.
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I'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…
Because nobody needs a cryptocurrency when you have a centralized trusted broker.
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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"…
I'd certainly dispute the former part. Strong, in a subset of cases. But chargebacks are still, ultimately, a he-said-she-said a lot of the time, and it's very easy to find abuses of it. Not to mention, merchants who blanket ban and revoke access to purchases because of even legitimate chargebacks. There's little recourse for that other than arbitration, generally, if that.
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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.
Again, you’re being forced into playing the Visa/MC game.
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I think that there's very little reason to suspect that a rent-seeking middle man getting a bigger piece of the pie is in any way good for the efficiency of the value transfer system, first order or not. You're kind of crab-walking around making a point here.
If credit card networks disappeared today, would we want them back? If the answer is yes, then they deserve a fee. Unclear to me why a certain % is morally correct.
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> online shopping still requires us to enter 16-digit easily-stolen numbers into websites, and so fraud is enormously higher than it needs to be EU partially solved this with PSD2 enforcing two factor authentication for online card purchases. https://finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/strong-customer-au...
I've noticed that I'm getting fewer and fewer 2FA requests with my 3DSEcure enabled VISA card of late. Places I frequently order from no longer trigger 3DS. Sometimes new shops don't either. From what I understand, whether or not the second factor triggers depends on a variety of factors including amount and retailer reputation.
I think some interpretations of the PSD regulations call for specific "after X euros of spend/Y transactions you have to explicitly challenge" but it may vary by country.
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I've noticed that I'm getting fewer and fewer 2FA requests with my 3DSEcure enabled VISA card of late. Places I frequently order from no longer trigger 3DS. Sometimes new shops don't either. From what I understand, whether or not the second factor triggers depends on a variety of factors including amount and retailer reputation.
They added a "frictionless" flow in 3-D Secure v2, so probably for situations like "we recognize this combination of device and payment card and the transaction is pretty small" it can slide you through without a direct interaction. I think some interpretations of the PSD regulations call for specific "after X euros of spend/Y transactions you have to explicitly challenge" but it may vary by country.