371–380 of 445 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Charging less for cash is identical to charging more for credit, is it not?
>Charging less for cash is identical to charging more for credit, is it not? It is not. It's the converse. And the effect is likely quite different -- discounts for cash are usually significantly less than surcharges for credit cards.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Merchants WANT people to use credit cards. There is nothing stopping merchants from offering a cash/debit price and a credit price since 10 years ago. The frank dodd legislation made illegal for card networks to ban offering discounts for debit card payments, and in Mar 2017, the Supreme Court said merchants cannot be barred from advertising higher prices for credit cards. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-cen…
> Merchants WANT people to use credit cards. There is nothing stopping merchants from offering a cash/debit price and a credit price since 10 years ago. The frank dodd legislation made illegal for card networks to ban offering discounts for debit card payments, and in Mar 2017, the Supreme Court said merchants cannot be barred from advertising higher prices for credit cards. Many small retail stores in my area (delis…
> Note that my above post specified “most merchants”, not all merchants. Obviously, some merchants do benefit from dissuading credit card use, such as the examples I gave, or many gas stations and small restaurants or convenience stores.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can save your debit/credit card, just don't save the CVV (if it is static). My debit card provider also has a feature to randomizes CVV every 5 minutes ie. for every purchase (I can enable or disable the feature). CVV is mandatory for online usage of debit/credit card. The same provider also give 25 IBANs per account. I could, for free, put 25 virtual debit cards on them, and have the IBANs empty unless I put mon…
> My debit card provider also has a feature to randomizes CVV every 5 minutes What's name of your debit card provider?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Merchants WANT people to use credit cards. There is nothing stopping merchants from offering a cash/debit price and a credit price since 10 years ago. The frank dodd legislation made illegal for card networks to ban offering discounts for debit card payments, and in Mar 2017, the Supreme Court said merchants cannot be barred from advertising higher prices for credit cards. Many small retail stores in my area (delis…
I specifically noted it at end of my comment: > Note that my above post specified “most merchants”, not all merchants. Obviously, some merchants do benefit from dissuading credit card use, such as the examples I gave, or many gas stations and small restaurants or convenience stores.
Is my comment unwelcome because you said something similar?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Merchants WANT people to use credit cards. There is nothing stopping merchants from offering a cash/debit price and a credit price since 10 years ago. The frank dodd legislation made illegal for card networks to ban offering discounts for debit card payments, and in Mar 2017, the Supreme Court said merchants cannot be barred from advertising higher prices for credit cards. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-cen…
I'm confused. Your comment seems to directly contradict the top comment in this thread. You say the Supreme Court ruled merchants cannot be barred from charging higher prices to card users, whereas treyfitty[1] says the Supreme Court ruled merchants can be barred from charging higher prices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29126521
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-1454
> The antisteering provisions do not, however, prevent merchants from steering customers toward debit cards, checks, or cash.
So Ohio v Amex is about having different prices for AmEx compared to Visa/MC/Discover, whereas Expressions Hair design was about having different prices for cash/debit compared to credit cards.
I think what happened was due to Dodd Frank in 2010 explicitly allowing cash/debit card discounts, and political focus on credit card processors from states to drop their requirements that merchants not have different prices for cash/debit/credit card purchases, all the processors backed off from preventing merchants to not give lower pricing to cash/debit card users. However, Visa/MC even backed off from preventing merchants from giving lower pricing for any other card processor, since they wanted to avoid anti trust scrutiny since they are already so prominent. However, AmEx decided to fight it, and won big not just for AmEx but other two sided markets.
It definitely leads to a logically inconsistent result where merchants can display different prices, but the route taken to get to each decision was wildly different. Amex could have maintained in its contracts that merchants could not offer lower pricing for cash/debit cards, but I think AmEx wanted to avoid the way that would make them look (Amex versus Visa/MC is a David v Goliath case, whereas AmEx vs cash/debit is rich people versus poor people).
Here is a good comparison of both rulings:
https://jobs.luc.edu/media/lucedu/law/centers/antitrust/pdfs...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But when people has to pay the real costs of credit cards then basically nobody wants one. I believe there is an opportunity cost for not using a credit card in US: you don't build your credit history. This might leave you disadvantaged in the future because... the finance industry (as an extension, the society) is structured in a way that you must have a good credit history.
I interpret your tone as suggesting the justification is circular and arbitrary, that finance doesn't serve a human need.
But you have a point with circularity and arbitrarity. Credit is basically about trust, and the thing with trust is that you already need trust to build more trust. When do you start trusting people to take loans is just as arbitrary as when a person attains the age of majority.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I specifically noted it at end of my comment: > Note that my above post specified “most merchants”, not all merchants. Obviously, some merchants do benefit from dissuading credit card use, such as the examples I gave, or many gas stations and small restaurants or convenience stores.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Is my comment unwelcome because you said something similar?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Is my comment unwelcome because you said something similar?
It is welcome, I had just assumed you had not read to the bottom of my comment.
I went back and re-read your comment, and yes I did read the bottom of it.
The stores I'm talking about aren't large retailers (like Target and Aldi) as you mentioned.
Most of the small stores I'm talking about pay 3-5% on CC transactions, unlike those chain stores who likely pay 1.5% or less.
What's more, the volume/revenue of such small stores makes such fees prohibitively expensive, unlike Target or Aldi, who already pay less and whose customers are more likely to spend larger sums.
The profit on a sandwich and a beer ($10-12) for such a small store might be a couple dollars. Having to pay 1/3 of that in CC processing fees isn't viable.
Which is why those stores have credit card surcharges.
That was my point, which is, at least AFAICT, a much different one than you made.
Apologies if I misunderstood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Charging less for cash is identical to charging more for credit, is it not? It is not. It's the converse. And the effect is likely quite different -- discounts for cash are usually significantly less than surcharges for credit cards.
It is the same thing if the end result is prices differing by the same amount.
Perhaps, but as I said:
...discounts for cash are usually significantly
less than surcharges for credit cards.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Most Americans don't have the option to vote for AOC or Joe Manchin (nor for their ideological equivalents). Neither for congress, nor for the President. But Americans do usually have a wide variety of choices in the primaries. It's the primaries where the actual policy ideological positions are fought out. There would be no AOC - or MTG, for that matter - but for some highly motivated sets of voters with various…
> how close France was recently, to Marine Le Pen and genuine fascism. Or how quickly Venezuela turned into a one-party state under Chavez. People who have strong opinions against proportional representation invariably seem to be completely uninformed about its particulars, and love nothing more than to bring up random countries that they know nothing about and that have little to do with proportional representation,…
That's a fair point, and a meaningful one too.
> The primaries only serve to choose a candidate who will be "electable" under a broken FPTP system come election time – it is a losing proposition from the very start. Americans are only given the illusion of choice, with all the fanfare to keep them happy.
Well there's clearly some evidence this isn't the case. 2 out of the last 3 presidents (Obama and Trump) were not the pre-ordained establishment candidate, and it was broad popularity by primary voters that caused them to become the candidate.