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Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

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Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#581

Post by selectodude »

mnd999 wrote: post #577
actionablefiber wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen posts on Reddit[1] that say that cashless establishments in NYC will just give you your food for free if you try to pay with cash. Never tried it though. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/vcebns/im_an_ex_employ...

I dunno about US law but in the UK the law of legal tender requires you to accept payment of a debt in (exact) cash and if you've already eaten the food then a debt would certainly exist. This would not apply in a shop of course as they could just refuse to sell you the goods.

It's the same in the United States. You have to accept cash to settle a debt but if you haven't received anything, the concept of "legal tender" doesn't really exist yet. That's why laws that require accepting cash are generally done at a municipality level.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#582

Post by serial_dev »

gsibble wrote: post #561

I actually designed software that could integrate with existing POS systems (the really hard part) that allowed for interchange free commerce using a card or Apple Pay integration. I showed it to an investor. His only response was, "This is a very fast way to end up dead." You don't fuck with monopolies that bring in hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in profit a year. People get killed for way less. On a s…

When I read "fast way to end up dead", I naively though as a company, meaning that you have no chance of getting traction and breaking into the market...

I am still actually wondering if this would get you killed or you would face simply an uphill battle in the market and never get traction.

In a sense it is similar to the two party system in the US. I wonder if there isn't a viable third party still today because people are so used to voting Republican or Democrat, and because all the institutions (including media) are set up in a way that makes it very hard to start a third party or because third parties that actually want to change the game are infiltrated and threatened behind the scenes.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#583

Post by nephanth »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #368
GekkePrutser wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Europe it's the complete opposite. They're hard to sign up for (banks don't like giving them) and you get registered for the loan which means you will have a harder time getting a mortgage or car loan. The more loans you already have the harder it gets. I heard in the US it works the opposite way. And the pin is required here on both (and rightly so IMO to protect against skimming). Only for minor contactless…

> pin is required here on both (and rightly so IMO to protect against skimming). Only for minor contactless payments it isn't. Across Italy, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal, over the last thirty days, I never had to provide a PIN over contactless. This was true for minor purchases to €5,000+.

In France, contactless has a legal limit of 50€. (It used to be 25€ before covid, but they tried to incentivize contactless to reduce well... contacts)

There's also generally a limit over the volume and the amount of consecutive payments, so that if someone steals your card, they won't be able to spend huge sums with contactless. It is set by your bank though

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#584

Post by Tijdreiziger »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #521
physicsguy wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give you the comparable situation - in the UK we have two numbers associated with every bank account (historically one identified the branch of the bank the account was held with, and the other identified the account, but nowadays there’s no real link between a branch anymore). For me to send money to another person or company’s bank account, I just those two numbers, and I can send up to £25k and it will be in th…

Yes, that is much better. I was always envious of my British family’s ability to use teletext and get weather, sports, and even airport arrival/departure info on their TV instantly before the internet was mainstream. Meanwhile, in the US, I was stuck listening to radio trying to figure out if my school was closed or had a delayed opening on any inclement weather day.

Wait until you hear about France's Minitel!

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18610692

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#585

Post by andrewaylett »

mbesto wrote: post #439
lotsofpulp wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)…

The UK equivalent to Zelle isn't BACS/Faster Payments, but https://paym.co.uk/

As I understand things, the US equivalent to BACS would be ACH. Which is also sort code and account number, but allows pulling money without further authorisation as well as pushing money. Obviously doing that when you're not supposed to would be very illegal, but unfortunately that's not enough to stop everyone.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#586

Post by GekkePrutser »

nephanth wrote: post #583
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pin is required here on both (and rightly so IMO to protect against skimming). Only for minor contactless payments it isn't. Across Italy, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal, over the last thirty days, I never had to provide a PIN over contactless. This was true for minor purchases to €5,000+.

In France, contactless has a legal limit of 50€. (It used to be 25€ before covid, but they tried to incentivize contactless to reduce well... contacts) There's also generally a limit over the volume and the amount of consecutive payments, so that if someone steals your card, they won't be able to spend huge sums with contactless. It is set by your bank though

Even when paying with a phone though? Here there is a similar limit with cards but with my phone it works (Samsung Pay). And I never have to enter a PIN either, I assume this is because I have to authenticate on the phone for every payment (biometric or separate PIN).

But I haven't been to France since I got Samsung Pay so I haven't had the chance to try it out. Here in Spain it works with any amount. Well, up to a few hundred anyway, I haven't bought anything over 1000 in ages :)

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#587

Post by bcrescimanno »

mcv wrote: post #249
bcrescimanno wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That fear isn't irrational at all (at least, it wasn't). About 20 years ago, I had a debit card number stolen and my account was cleared out. It took about a month to get resolved an, in that time, I had some very unpleasant conversations with quite a few people including my landlord about my inability to pay my bills. In the grand scheme, I suppose it didn't harm me--but it was an extremely unpleasant situation to d…

How can someone clean out your account with just the card number? Was there no 2FA?

A couple of things. First, I used the phrase "debit card number" to basically mean, "they didn't have my physical card--but they did have the information to be able to use it."

Second, this happened circa 2004-2005. In the US, at the time, all card use was magnetic strip swipes. Debit cards occasionally used a pin at terminals equipped to do so; but, it wasn't a requirement and most use didn't involve the pin. As an example: a grocery store terminal at the cash register might require your pin; but, if you paid the bill at a restaurant, it would get swiped like any Visa/MC.

At the time, in an online setting, asking for additional information like CVV or using address for AVS wasn't standardized so not all merchants required anything beyond a card number and expiration date.

In that era, nearly everyone I knew had experienced a debit card or credit card stolen and used in this manner--and those with debit cards paid the extra price of actually losing our money for a time.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#588

Post by Tijdreiziger »

mcv wrote: post #495
martijnvds wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most SEPA transfers (even between countries) are now instant, I've noticed.

Same here. I've got accounts at two different banks, and when I transfer money from one to the other, it's usually there literally the moment I approve the transaction. Within a second. I don't know if it's just as smooth across (internal EU) borders, but I don't see why it wouldn't be. It's possible that it does require both banks to have implemented these instant payments. Both side have the ability to delay the tr…

IIUC, banks can choose which other banks to interface with, provided that both banks are connected to the same clearinghouse. For example, I think some Netherlands banks still choose to limit instant payments only to other NL banks.

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#589

Post by geph2021 »

leesalminen wrote: post #250
moffkalast wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that it's only useful for meaningless amounts? Sounds pretty pointless.

Something that is a meaningless amount for you surely isn’t meaningless for the person receiving it. To extrapolate the idea some, I’d be comfortable using an irreversible payment method for various B2B SaaS subscriptions. Those can reach perhaps more meaningful amounts to you. It seems that you’re rather dismissive of this conversation, so I’ll wish you a pleasant day/evening.

I think you make an interesting point about micro payments. Micro payments could be an avenue for crypto to actually achieve some legitimacy and usefulness.

Not only is the irreversibility less important, but potentially some of the usability/security issues for users (hacked/stolen wallets etc...) become less important as well (assuming users keep only smallish balances in crypto wallets).

Re: Can the Visa-Mastercard duopoly be broken?

#590

Post by googlryas »

dfxm12 wrote: post #567
apeace wrote: post #558

Living in New York City, I've noticed that there are a whole lot of businesses that are either cash-only or card-only. I always understood the cash-only ones. If you can get plenty of customers who are willing to pay in cash, why would you want to pay credit card fees? The card-only ones were harder for me to understand, until I realized that handling cash costs money, too. Somebody needs to count it all at least onc…

The other side of this is that card only businesses de facto discriminate (not in an illegal way, of course) against people who don't have/can't get cards. Not being able to buy a cup of coffee from one particular coffee shop might not seem like a big deal, but it sends a signal as to who is/isn't wanted in the shop. Further, if it becomes a trend and all coffee shops go card only, spreading to other business like gr…

What's wrong with that? All sorts of things discriminate against certain buyers. Primarily the location, the signage, the prices, the languages the staff speak, etc. And, in fact, not everyone is comfortable using cash, so even cash-only locations discriminate against people who don't want to carry cash, or people who don't believe in cash and want to do business through bartering.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta did a study showing 97% of consumers had some kind of payment card(debit, credit, prepaid), and 99% of consumers used cash. So there is probably still some consumer that is not being satisfied by either payment cards or cash. If I was running a business, I don't think I would particularly care about that small of a slice of users to base my decision on it - it would probably come down to other things like overall cost of supporting cards or cash.

https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/documents/banking/consume...

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