881–890 of 1001 posts
Even putting aside issue of geopolitics, it's quite baffling to me that every country besides China and Russia are paying ~0.2% "sales tax" to corporate America.
I only took a credit card for a bit when I went traveling, then canceled it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They who and what?
They’ll give you a small handful of examples, of which a number occurred in the UK (famously not a member of the EU), most of which were actually arrests for incitement, and of the remainder the majority were thrown out before ever going to trial, or subsequently on appeal. Very few of the cases they present will have involved citizens being murdered in the streets by the government for exercising their absolute righ…
Bitcoin. Swish (Sweden) sees quite a lot of downtime. Why not settle for something that doesn't have these inherent issues that closed, proprietary systems have?
so something that is a horrible store of value, has monumental transaction fees, non-instant confirmation and is associated by laypersons mostly with speculation, fraud & illegal transactions will solve those?
Terrible store of value(worse than bitcoin) Horrible International transaction fees(swift much worse than bitcoin) Most money laundering and criminal activities happen in the current banking system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm with you. Low-tech works just fine. I hate the idea of having to depend on a working phone just to pay for things. But isn't the promise of Apple Pay that you never expose your real credit card # to the merchant? So they can't track you? I know Walmart in Canada really resisted Apple Pay for a few years because it would mean no more ability to track people by their payment methods.
> But isn't the promise of Apple Pay that you never expose your real credit card # to the merchant? So they can't track you? I know Walmart in Canada really resisted Apple Pay for a few years because it would mean no more ability to track people by their payment methods. Yes, this is exactly what Walmart does in the US since they still don't accept Apple Pay/Google Pay. When I go in and make a purchase using my credi…
Why wouldn't they be able to do that with at least Google Pay?
I pay with my phone using Google Pay at a Swedish grocery store chain and it's connected to my loyalty account there.
(Since I don't use Apple Pay I don't know if the same works there.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used "value chain" euphemistically because you can get really complex on this and I wanted to spare the casual reader. I meant your credit card as an end-user product in your pocket and not meaning the card networks in isolation, but the value chain is roughly: 1. Merchant (bears little fraud risk but a lot of chargeback risk) 2. Payment Gateway (little direct risk but some liability risk) 3. Merchant Acquirer (mor…
Sadly I’ve noticed that comments on this topic usually devolve into tribal comments about how ‘things are done in the EU’ which always seem to not be actually that representative of the 27 different countries of the EU, but of course must be better than the US.
This is so true, the EU countries are super diverse, and yet EU citizens tend to believe that whatever happens in their country is common across the Union.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a little shocked that of all the comments so far, no one has mentioned the financial risk borne by this whole value chain. OP is operating as if it's just a debit system moving money from one account to another but: - For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk i…
In Europe, credit cards for individual use are extremely rare. I've only had one to manage a company expenses account.
I always find it entertaining to hear people try to argue that what these companies do is soooooo difficult and that's why they're valuable. It's just multiple computers keeping a balance. It's not complicated. No, these companies keep themselves in power not because they've solved such a difficult problem that nobody else can, but because they have a moat which they protect. Time to do away with these foreign entiti…
I'm a little shocked that of all the comments so far, no one has mentioned the financial risk borne by this whole value chain. OP is operating as if it's just a debit system moving money from one account to another but: - For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> like chat control. That has never been passed in any form. > the opposite of how it works here in the US. It appears that you have conveniently forgotten about FISA, EARN IT, CLOUD act, PATRIOT act, LAED, etc, etc.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
If the government is going to act irrationally and (through visa/mc) prevent legitimate transactions then people will just deal with fraud.
Even if Europeans agree with the DLsite ban they see the writing on the wall for European eCommerce sites.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So... there once was a company called First data. Founded by some JPMC execs who got chased out of the bank after being caught performing espionage for Palantir. They sold their transaction platform as a service to Apple Pay. And funneled all your transaction data to palantir. Financial networks are side channels for intelligence gathering. And that makes the folks doing them outside of your nation an adversary. With…
How has the US become an enemy of western democracy in Europe?