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

Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 703 posts

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#431

Post by eek2121 »

brewdad wrote: post #406
GekkePrutser wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here in Europe. I've not signed my card for more than a decade because I've never been asked to provide a signature.

You at least have a PIN with your cc. In the US, it's signature or...nothing. Almost everywhere it's a tap or insert the chip. Still a mag stripe swipe in a few places but that's becoming more rare.

You described the US (regarding not signing, you are mistaken about the signature aspect). Most places stopped accepting signatures several years ago. Card readers are almost always 'insert' except in the very rare case where a card doesn't have a chip. Tap and pay is not common, however tap and pay is more common than signing something (in the US companies have been resisting tap and pay due to higher transactional rates). I haven't signed for a transaction outside of a restaurant across 17 states and 4 years. As I mentioned above, the last place I did sign for a transaction was in Canada.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#432

Post by vimy »

Silhouette wrote: post #417
brewdad wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

u/vimy was talking about European banks. There is no "pull" there. People freely share their account info because one can only push money in with that info.

That's still not true. Pull-based schemes are widely used across the SEPA region and in national schemes such as the UK's Direct Debits. A notorious celebrity in the UK famously revealed his bank details as a stunt to show that a large-scale data loss incident wasn't a big deal and he ended up making an unexpected payment to a healthcare charity shortly afterwards.

I don’t know about the UK but in my SEPA country only companies can create pull-based schemes and they can’t do it without authorization of the bank account owner. Mostly used for things like utility bills. So there’s zero danger in sharing your bank account number with someone.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#433

Post by blackoil »

searchableguy wrote: post #209
nixass wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I use credit card at all? Sure it does help when traveling but not much use for it otherwise

Predictability in cash flow and free rewards in India. Most places do not charge extra for credit cards and nor do you pay annual credit card fee in most cases. It's an interest free loan for upto 45 days. Many banks will provide 3.5 - 6% interest without risk. If you spend a lot monthly, it's a free nice dinner every month without doing anything. If you can use the capital, it can be worth more. They provide free lo…

> Chargeback protection is necessary in India.

Why?? Practically all transactions using debit card/UPI require PIN/OTP.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#434

Post by _carbyau_ »

jen729w wrote: post #346
_carbyau_ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EFTPOS got kicked to the curb when paywave-with-no-pin started. And then the pandemic reinforced that idea for a lot of people. I don't know when I last used EFTPOS.

Aah so am I not actually using it? Like I said, no idea. Most consumers don't. There's a terminal, I wave my [phone|watch|card] at it, it beeps, I walk away. Happy days. In that case if it's a Visa card, is Visa the processing entity?

I am wishywashy on details too sorry. There is a combination of your card (debit/credit[visa/mastercard]) and the merchants setup. I am not sure who processes the payment on the merchant/supplier side for EFTPOS vs credit.

So, if you have a Visa credit card, and the money comes from your credit account, like many, then it is clearly using Visa Paywave.

But historically, it was Visa and Mastercard that started it with "no pin required" as an opt-out thing(IE it was enabled for you by default), and their main market is credit. Most people just rolled with it.

Using the phone NFC however should give you more control I would think. But I honestly have never set it up.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#435

Post by dudus »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #397
giovannibonetti wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central bank can do that. That's how it works for instant payments in my country (Pix payments in Brazil).

That seems even less appealing than the sideways system we have in the U.S. Is there any percent chance that the government doesn't wiretap all those transactions?

Tap on what sense?

The government doesn't hide the fact that all this data can and will be used by the IRF equivalent in Brazil (Receita Federal)

I would assume the same for any credit card payment in the US

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#437

Post by blackoil »

echelon wrote: post #57
10g1k wrote: post #6

1.4 billion people in China use WeChat to pay for everything. They don't even bother with credit cards.

A single point of failure, leverage, unilateral negotiation, and control. Horrifying for all people and businesses (especially competitors). Real Standard Oil situation there. Not that our own duopolies aren't also problematic.

They have advantage of a functional govt. If Tencent/Alibaba abuse there market position, they'll be hit swift and hard.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#438

Post by deepGem »

philip1209 wrote: post #49

Fraud protection of credit cards is the root of modern e-commerce. In some ways, Visa and Mastercard are the privatized court systems of the internet. If I end up on a random, self-hosted ecommerce site and decide to make a purchase - what guarantee do I have that the item will show up or be as-described? If I bought something through a bank transfer, reversing that purchase would be incredibly difficult. And, suing…

The fraud protection aspect is spot on, but I think most people are not risky buyers. Like most of my purchases happen on Amazon or other high trust merchants. I have never ever raised a dispute and the only time I did it was when I accidentally bought a powerball ticket online with recurring option. So for most single time purchases, the fraud protection on a CC is an overkill IMO.

The recurring option, yes I wouldn't give out a bank account or a debit card for recurring payments even with high trust SaaS merchants, even if they accepted one ( most don't ).

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#439

Post by mbesto »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #165
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, absolutely. It is totally embarrassing to watch my UK family or EU friends interact with their banking systems and compare it with the US. To be fair, things are improving a little bit. But we're still so very far behind the EU banking system. Instant, cost-free transfers between any two accounts, completed faster than you can lift your finger off your smartphone.

> Instant, cost-free transfers between any two accounts, completed faster than you can lift your finger off your smartphone. This is available to most people in the US via Zelle. I have been using it for nearly 10 years I think. https://www.zellepay.com/get-started Ideally, the federal government would have already made it a utility available to all, but for now the functionality is there for those who can get a bank…

I like Zelle, but this is not comparable to the system I've used in the UK.

- Limits how much you can send

- Identity is based on email or phone number (what?!) that then needs to be managed/tied to the bank account. If you switch banks or whatever, you need to re-active with the new bank.

- For awhile, I could only associated one email with one account in Chase (despite having 4 checking accounts for business, etc.)

- Recipient also needs a Zelle account setup.

UK system is simple: give me your sort code + account #. Done.

Post reply on HN