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Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

reuters.com

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Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#361

Post by elzbardico »

vel0city wrote: post #337
lotsofpulp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a non existent problem in the US, too. The internet likes to blow things out of proportion, but not only are pretty much all payments made with tap to pay for many years now, even when it was magnetic strip, the incidence rate was miniscule.

> It's a non existent problem in the US Dead wrong. Its still a big problem in the US. https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/payments-system-resea... > In 2023, 21 percent of U.S. consumers experienced financial fraud: 17 percent of all consumers (or 18 percent of consumers who own credit cards) experienced credit card fraud, and 8 percent of all consumers experienced non-credit card fraud (with some consumers exper…

Wireless POS card terminals are incredibly cheap, why people need to hand their cards to someone?

Waiter presents me the machine, I insert my card or wave it over the NFC reader of the machine, if I insert the card, machine always ask for pin, if I use NFC, it will ask sometimes based on some obscure criteria.

For really expensive transactions, eventually, I may get a notification on my bank app in the phone, asking me if I am really, really doing this, I authenticate with biometrics and click ok.

it is not that hard.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#362

Post by elzbardico »

vel0city wrote: post #348
xp84 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are moving towards it... if every site accepted both Apple Pay and Google Pay we'd be there. If we got there, you could make the case that we ought to all be able to file all the numbers off of our cards and never need to give them to anyone. But the problem is that even with 99% adoption, those secrets still have to be printed on the cards and used some percentage of the time to support the laggards -- and it onl…

> if every site accepted both Apple Pay and Google Pay we'd be there. So add another layer of duopoly and middlemen to the way I pay for things. No thanks! What happens when Google permabans me because I failed to pay a $0.50 cloud bill a few months ago and I got forever locked out of my iCloud account? Guess I can't buy anything online again ever. Don't get me wrong I've used these for payment processing before, but…

I use Apple Pay a lot, but because I am already carrying a phone and in my country my driver license can be government app in my phone, thus, I don't even carry a wallet most of the time.

But I would hate not to have the option of using my bank card by itself. When I travel, I always carry my wallet and a couple of card, because your phone can die, be stolen, you can be out of charge, etc...

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#363

Post by komali2 »

solarkraft wrote: post #243
pinnochio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. No company has ever overpaid for another company. No fraud or FOMO-driven overvaluation has ever occurred in an acquisition. And all acquisitions have always turned out for the best. It's all 100% pure value creation.

Your statement is true on average because the world’s economy is continuing to function.

> Your statement is true on average because the world’s economy is continuing to function.

The entire field of economics depends on post ipso facto statements like this.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#364

Post by Intermernet »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #355
phil21 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have a car without going into debt just like how you can have a credit card without debt. Technically this is actually impossible. You have debt the moment you swipe/dip/tap that card and make a transaction with it. That you settle the debt before it incurs interest is absolutely not relevant to the types of folks who do not want to carry debt as a matter of principle. I was one for some time while I figure…

"well ackchyually"

As a rule, I don't down-vote, so I'll reply instead. You're being obnoxious. Please stop it.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#365

Post by catlover76 »

baumy wrote: post #177
rahimnathwani wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely that regular employees would be issued RSUs. Tax is due at vest, and you can't liquidate to fund the tax bill.

I was a regular SDE at brex for a couple years and my various documents about comp say I have RSUs, and carta says so as well. I've never bothered to understand the details since none of the private companies I've worked for have had the non-cash portion of their comp be worth anything but $0 before.

[dead]

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#366

Post by vel0city »

elzbardico wrote: post #361
vel0city wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a non existent problem in the US Dead wrong. Its still a big problem in the US. https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/payments-system-resea... > In 2023, 21 percent of U.S. consumers experienced financial fraud: 17 percent of all consumers (or 18 percent of consumers who own credit cards) experienced credit card fraud, and 8 percent of all consumers experienced non-credit card fraud (with some consumers exper…

Wireless POS card terminals are incredibly cheap, why people need to hand their cards to someone? Waiter presents me the machine, I insert my card or wave it over the NFC reader of the machine, if I insert the card, machine always ask for pin, if I use NFC, it will ask sometimes based on some obscure criteria. For really expensive transactions, eventually, I may get a notification on my bank app in the phone, asking…

> Wireless POS card terminals are incredibly cheap, why people need to hand their cards to someone?

Lots of restaurants and bars have been slow to adopt new systems. While many have moved towards waiters having portable machines and can process the payments table-side, probably half the restaurants and bars I go to expect the waiter/bartender to handle the card.

Few banks/merchants actually require a PIN for transactions most of the time. I couldn't even tell you what the PIN is on most of my credit cards, its never come up on a lot of them even with $1,000+ purchases.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#367

Post by realaaa »

CatsOnHats wrote: post #201

Brex literally came to us one day in 2022, and notified us that "We have 6 weeks to move everything off their service" they told us boldly they are refocusing on the enterprise market and we were only a "SMB". The guy who literally told us this framed it as a good thing for us like it was some sort of weird break up. At the time we had signed a large enterprise agreement not long before that, and we even were adverti…

same story as always I guess? start with obsession with customers, no size is too small !

nek minute - focus on Enterprise, dawg eat dawg :)

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#368

Post by BenjiWiebe »

consp wrote: post #215
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully the US is very slowly catching up. We actually have NFC at most payment terminals already. Even better, our small town (pop. 100) gas station upgraded their pumps a while back, and they have NFC! Finally my normal fill-up location is skimmer-resistant. Or is it skimmer-proof?

> Or is it skimmer-proof? Put a reader with a shield on the pad and a new pad on top and a small terminal in somewhere out of sight. You won't know the difference. Requires infrastructure though so it is a bit more complicated and a lot more noticeable. Likely used the non-pin entry limit which is always reset after you payed a large amount and had to enter your pin. Not like the strip readers of olden days. Anecdote…

Wouldn't that only be able to steal money one time though? Whereas a traditional skimmer captures the card number, and can charge the card indefinitely until the card is reported stolen and replaced.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#370

Post by phil21 »

hvb2 wrote: post #358
phil21 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In such transactions you're basically just inviting a company to take a cut for 0 added benefit Simply not true. Every transaction with a card carries some risk of those cards details being leaked or even an innocent error being made by a cashier or clerk fat-fingering things. Some more than others, and you could maybe argue the risk is minimal - but it's there. Especially in the US where card transactions are less…

> If you're a "valued customer" you tend to get a few freebies before they start to really demand evidence of fraud for such things. Just saying, your 'few freebies' is where you rip off a merchant. That's pretty much theft at that point

By “freebies” I meant a chargeback with few questions asked. As in they trust my side of the story and immediately refund the money. I’ve done it maybe three times in my life for exceptional circumstances where vendors either made a billing mistake they refused to correct, or engaged in outright fraud.

Other folks might have just as legitimate reasons to make a chargeback, but due to a low internal “customer value score” they will need to jump through a bunch of hoops a more “valuable” customer would not for the exact same situation.

I tend to agree chargebacks are taken advantage of far more than they should be - but my point is that the chargeback experience is going to vary drastically by demographic.

I was originally interested in Bitcoin 15 years ago because of the fraudulent chargeback problem. It’s interesting how times have slowly changed and chargebacks are starting to shift towards a benefit for the privileged due to the sheer amount of abuse from so many people. Basically we decided to tie them to a hidden credit score.

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