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Credit-Card Backlash Mounts as Kroger Weighs Expanding Visa Ban
- asebold 8y agoKroger is the shit. I get so many cheap steaks. I also only have Visa though...
- cagenut 8y agoGood? I hate the asinine secondary market of "points". Just don't take the money in the first place and then we don't have to sort out how I can reclaim it somehow.
- cycrutchfield 8y agoI love points. I get to fly first or business class internationally all the time, and it's all pretty much paid for by rubes that subsidize my travels.
- linuxftw 8y agoI love the points as well, though I typically fly economy. Combine the credit cards with airline shopping portals which give you bonus points for things you were going to buy anyway, and the points go so much farther.
- Marsymars 8y agoI've found it very difficult to try to explain this well to people who aren't financially/numerically-inclined. The latest fad in Canada seems to be Paytm, which lets you pay (among various bills), your property taxes with your credit card.
- koolba 8y agoThat’s available in many places in USA as well though everywhere I’ve seen charges a transaction fee which nets it negative for the consumer.
- anoncoward111 8y agoThe only way to salvage this as a positive is to pay it with a new credit card and reap a very large signing bonus
- mehrdadn 8y agoWhat's the fee? Is it higher than the 2% cash back Citi gives you?
- anamexis 8y agoThey're typically 2.5 - 3.5%.
- cycrutchfield 8y agoYou can pay your federal income taxes via credit card for 1.87%
- mehrdadn 8y agoWait, seriously? I only ever saw a bank account option. I'd totally do this.
- cycrutchfield 8y agoThere are a bunch of different sites, but I have used this one: https://www.pay1040.com/ https://www.pay1040.com/
- mehrdadn 8y agoOh wow, so I have to give them my name, address, phone, and SSN just to process a credit card payment? That's not worth it...
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
- Bramble 8y agoSo you hate getting something back for choosing one payment method over another when there's no indication that retail stores would lower their prices if credit cards (and their transaction fees) were wiped out?
- nothrabannosir 8y ago> there's no indication that retail stores would lower their prices Competition will lead to that. It doesn't happen immediately, it happens in waves. These are called price wars. When that happens, they try to undercut competition at every possible turn, and having lower payment processing fees allows them to go lower. Who wins a price war? The consumer. Yes: points are ridiculous. The fact that credit card fees are passed on to cash payers is ridiculous. Visa and Mastercard are absolutely minted. Where does that money come from? You and I. (and: why does competition not work for Visa and Mastercard as well as it does for retailers? Because the feedback loop is much longer. Intractable, in practice. Choosing one retailer or the other is a clear signal we can send. But are we going to choose merchants based on payment processor support? As for merchants, they're stuck in an oligopoly. Competition is gone, leading to this unhealthy market.)
- ardit33 8y agoAt least those "$5.00 or $20.00 minimum for credit cards" signs that you see often in coffee places and bars will go away. They are probably illegal (or against contracts) in most states, but you see them very often.
- Marsymars 8y ago> They are probably illegal (or against contracts) in most states, but you see them very often. Minimum purchase requirements for credit cards were explicitly legalized in the US in 2010 as part of Dodd-Frank. Merchant agreements are not legally allowed to prohibit them.
- myrandomcomment 8y agoThanks for share this. It is news to me as that used to be prohibited by the CC. "2010 law: up to $10 minimum OK. The law says that merchants can set a credit card minimum purchase of up to $10, as long as they treat all cards the same. It also allows the Federal Reserve to review and increase the minimum payment amount."
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoThe economics of it isn't just handing you your own money with a couple arbitrary hoops in the way. There's a portion of cross-subsidy from cash, debit, and low-rewards credit card payers, along with capturing some of the merchant's efficiency gains of using cards over cash (harder for employees to steal, no need for armored cars for cash pickups, etc).
- oasisbob 8y agoUnless a retailer doesn't accept any cash, the marginal cost of accepting another cash transaction is low.
- pathseeker 8y agoI think you would be surprised at how little cash many places need to operate with in the presence of credit cards. Consider a front desk at a hotel. Thousands of dollars a day in transactions occur via card, which would warrant frequent drops into an expensive safe if they happened with cash. With cards they pretty much only hold a trivial amount to deal with sundries that isn't worth protecting beyond a simple envelope to a back-office. Credit cards dominate many industries in the US to a point where cash management is now trivial because the daily amounts aren't worth any employee losing their job over or a criminal risking robbery punishment for.
- oasisbob 8y agoThat hotel is still doing cash accounting though. If there isn't much at the front desk, how about the bar? The restaurant? A business that has any type of daily cash accounting is still going to need to balance the register at the end of the day, reestablish change to open with, have arrangements for transport, &c. Bad employees can still pocket a tenner on occasion. Sure, some smaller places with barely any cash probably just lock the drawer and call it a night. I can't find the figures now, but estimates of cost of cash handling is far far lower than the 2-3% of swipe fees.
- 8y ago
- rosege 8y agoOr just work the system - I made around $6000AUD from points in the last 12 months. Its pretty minimal work. Sign up for card. Fulfil requirements to get sign-on points then cancel and move onto the next card. Your credit rating takes a bit of a hit but recovers over time.
- cycrutchfield 8y agoYou credit rating can actually in some cases get better, believe it or not.
- rosege 8y agoYeah mine dropped but over time (around a year) has come back higher than it was so I could definitely believe that.
- cycrutchfield 8y agoIf you don't cancel and instead just downgrade to a no-annual fee card it should help your score. I am not sure how it works in Australia, but average age of accounts plays a large role in US credit rating calculations.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- devoply 8y ago> over the $90 billion they pay in swipe fees every year. > Kroger's revenue was 122.7 billion USD in 2017 That makes little sense and makes me wonder why Kroger does not issue its own credit card. Credit cards are a rent-seeking racket that eat lots of profit. Everyone knows it but no one knows what to do about it.
- entee 8y agoI wonder if Apple and others that can generate "soft" credit cards could make this (essentially 1 card per merchant) work pretty easily and seamlessly for consumers. I don't know what underlying infrastructure they have though, are they still heavily dependent on Visa/Mastercard/Amex networks under the hood to do the dirty work or do they have a parallel system?
- smileysteve 8y agoYour summoning of Apple is funny because one reason many merchants disabled NFC is because Apple tacked on an additional fee for those purchases.
- jeffwilcox 8y agoApple gets a cut of the intercharge fees that the banks charge (much higher in the US than overseas), but it is not an additional fee to the merchant last I researched. A lot of the NFC issues were either competing tech, payment networks not being ready, people not understanding their system configuration, _or_ intercharge fees being different for that whole category of fees (not specifically Apple Pay).
- freeopinion 8y agoWhen you take things out of context they often don't make sense. The "they" in the first quote was "retailers." It was not qualified at all, so that should be all retailers around the world combined, from Alibaba to Mom's Bait Shop. They don't provide any source for that figure, so trust it at your own risk.
- jlarocco 8y agoI'm not sure I understand why this is a big deal all of the sudden. Don't retailers already account for these costs when they're choosing prices?
- oasisbob 8y agoThey do, but different cards on different networks have vastly different fees. The consumer using Visa SuperRewardsPlatinum probably doesn't know that it's costing the retailer more than other cards when they use it. The originating bank does though, which is exactly why they chose that network in the first place. The market is opaque and doesn't lead towards lower fees and greater efficiency. It reminds me of super-expensive "we'll pay your insurance deductible" auto glass places which used to advertise on TV all the time. Inflate the cost, and give the consumer a kickback.
- mehrdadn 8y ago> The consumer using Visa SuperRewardsPlatinum probably doesn't know that it's costing the retailer more than other cards when they use it. You mean the merchant pays a higher fee when you use one Visa card vs. another Visa card? Or you mean compared to Mastercard etc.?
- oasisbob 8y agoCorrect. The fee will vary within a network based on all sorts of things. There are low-rate carve outs for low-margin products (eg gasoline), discounts for "card-in-hand" transactions, and higher fees for premium cards. https://www.helcim.com/us/visa-interchange-rates/ https://www.helcim.com/us/visa-interchange-rates/ https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/documents/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees-april-2018.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/documents...
- mehrdadn 8y agoOhh.. so it's saying Visa CPS Retail vs. Visa Rewards Traditional vs. Visa Rewards Signature vs. etc. are different. Interesting, thanks, I didn't know that. But if I'm buying two of the same product (obviously -- I'm not talking about two gas vs. groceries here) with two different cards, both of which are from the same network and the same "kind" (by which I mean the categorizations listed above, like two that are both "Visa Rewards Signature"), then the merchant will pay the same fee, right? i.e. it's not like the mere fact that one pays 1% cash back and one pays 2% cash back could possibly result in a different charge to the merchant by itself if they're both (say) lumped together as Rewards Traditional?
- sorenbs 8y agoIn Denmark we have a national payment system called Dankort. All issued Visa cards also work as Dankort. Transaction fees on Dankort is one tenth of visa, and all payment terminals default to Dankort. This saves Danish retail a lot of money while still ensuring they we can buy stuff online and when traveling using visa.
- kasey_junk 8y agoTo be clear that’s due to laws in Denmark that require its acceptance and granting it a particular monopoly status? I’d be curious what the issue rate between the Dankort & the Kroger Plus Card. It’s conceivable that Kroger has the market heft to do with selling power what Denmark did with law. As context Kroger employees about the same number of people as 1/10th of Denmark though I have no idea how that translates to ability to change card usage.
- adventured 8y agoYou can't safely inconvenience all your customers even if you're at Kroger's scale. Walmart is extremely eager to kill you if you're Kroger, to gain market share in groceries. It leaves no safe opening to upset a large share of your customers: many will go across the street to Walmart.
- Marsymars 8y agoWalmart has had similar spates in the past. They stopped accepting Visa at various Canadian stores last year when negotiating rates with Visa.
- sitharus 8y agoIn New Zealand we have a similar network, EFTPOS. It’s not mandated by law and business could (but don’t) opt to only accept credit cards. However since it has no per-transaction fees for either party in most cases (some low-volume personal and business accounts have per-transaction fees) it’s reached near total market penetration. To be clear it’s not a single network, there are two networks that fully interoperate. Unfortunately we don’t have any regulation on credit card fees, so both credit cards go up to 2% and debit cards take over 1%. This has made the banks (who own the largest EFTPOS provider) reluctant to upgrade the system to support contactless and online transactions, both of which are possible with the technology.
- westoque 8y agoThese kinds of problems (swipe fees, etc) is where I believe cryptocurrencies shine. Having a fee payment which is reasonable and fast confirmation times would solve this problem immediately removing the need for third parties.
- mehrdadn 8y ago> These kinds of problems (swipe fees, etc) is where I believe cryptocurrencies shine. Having a fee payment which is reasonable and fast confirmation times would solve this problem immediately removing the need for third parties. Isn't this precisely where cryptocurrencies have utterly failed with their high fees and long confirmation times?
- cycrutchfield 8y agoSwipe fees are not a problem that the average consumer cares about at all.
- Marsymars 8y agoNo need for cryptocurrencies, this has been a solved problem in various countries for literal decades. See Interac in Canada, Dankort (as mentioned by another poster) in Denmark, and presumably others.
- ckdarby 8y agoI'm a Canadian living in Canada. Nobody likes interac, debit only system and sending money to others has crazy fees for small transactions.
- smnrchrds 8y agoSimplii Financial (direct banking subsidiary of CIBC) has unlimited transactions, Interac e-transfers, Autodeposit and Request Money, Interac Flash (contactless payments), and supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay, and all these features are absolutely free. Maybe you just need to change your bank.
- 8y ago
- chiph 8y agoI like my rewards Visa more than I like Kroger. Good luck with that ban, guys.
- parshimers 8y agoSeriously, dealing with cash is a hassle, especially on a self-checkout. Arco has tried the same nonsense and I avoid them at every turn, because it requires me to a) have cash and b) stand in line to pay , rather than it taking a moment to swipe a card.
- jchb 8y agoWhy do you need to stand in line to pay with cash? Maybe the self-checkout machine in particular only accepts cards, but it could look like this: https://www.ecrs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/fujitsu-genesis-sco.png https://www.ecrs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/fujitsu-gene... - I see these all the time.
- bowmessage 8y agoArco is a gas station - the pumps don't accept cash so the only way to pay cash is to wait inside to speak with the cashier.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoKroger has most likely done the math with their Kroger rewards program (which has historical payment data), and has determined most people won't care and will switch to debit or a non-Visa CC network instead.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoWal-Mart has had success with forcing debit transactions to withhold merchant fees.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
- lowpro 8y agoI hate credit card fees as much as the next guy, but to be fair my credit card was the only way I could pay for things in Asia since I just lived there for 6 months. If I had used cash, the only ATM near me stole my friends debit card, and multiple people I know were robbed and pick-pocketed. My credit card insulated me from those risks, which I was fine paying an extra 1% for. Now that I’m back in America the risk is far less, but what alternatives in America are there? I hope the payment apps/wallets become universal but we definitely aren’t there yet.
- QML 8y agoAn alternative like you said is with payment apps. One example I have seen in public is with Venmo, although there are drawbacks like no fraud protection and delay in bank transfer. Latter is solved if you solely use your bank as a settlement layer and Venmo as the application layer — that is, conduct all internal transactions on the app and only settle when you need to trade with a person outside the app.
- kitsunesoba 8y agoYep. The US is reasonably safe in this regard, but I’ve had credit cards skimmed a handful of times. These cases were dealt with with little more than a quick call to custom service, but had it been my debit card that was skimmed, it would’ve been bad news. For this reason I carry only a small amount of cash (just enough for cash only bars/restaurants) and never carry my debit card. My primary payment method is credit card with an increasing percentage through Apple Pay.
- clan 8y agoAround here debit cards are protected in the same way as credit cards. You are fully covered if you in no way have been negligent. If the PIN code have been used you have a own risk of $173. Have you been negligent the own risk goes up to $1255. In very severe cases you can be made fully liable but that is very rare.
- chillacy 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- h4b4n3r0 8y agoInstead of this they should look into adopting Apple Pay. Creating additional friction in payments is idiotic.
- kccqzy 8y agoRelevant: due to Ohio v. American Express, merchants are generally unable to steer customers from using a particular card. For example if a merchant accepts Visa at all, the merchant has to accept all Visa cards, not selectively choose the lower-fee cards; the merchant also cannot tell the customer to use Discover instead to save costs and only use Visa if that's the customer's only card. This anti-steering provision is originally invented by AmEx and now all four major networks have this requirement. And the SCOTUS just ruled that anti-steering provisions do not violate anti-trust regulations. So the only possible recourse is to outright stop accepting a particular payment network. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1454diff_6579.pdf#page2 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1454diff_6579...
- stickfigure 8y agoIt has been asserted elsewhere in this HN discussion that Visa charges merchants higher amounts for transactions with higher-end rewards cards. Assuming this is true, and these anti-steering provisions prevent merchants from discriminating, what prevents Visa from issuing cards with 200% fees? What's holding the cash back level at a mere 1-2%?
- spiznnx 8y agoI'm speculating that if that happened, we'd see more stories like this one.
- so33 8y agoCompetition with MasterCard, Discover, and Amex should hold them back from doing this, because at such punitive rates merchants would definitely stop accepting them. I believe Amex is only able to get away with its highest-in-the-industry rates because of the association of Amex cards with business expense accounts and high income earners. This is changing now (https://www.ft.com/content/715d785e-23fc-11e8-ae48-60d3531b7d11 https://www.ft.com/content/715d785e-23fc-11e8-ae48-60d3531b7...) especially after years of competition from banks like Chase, who have been working on creating what is essentially a structural clone of American Express’ network (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorganchase-creditcards-insight/jpmorgan-uses-its-might-to-cut-costs-in-credit-card-market-idUSKCN0R80B620150908 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorganchase-creditcards...).
- amf12 8y agoAt this point they should consider investing in their own debit-like card issued by themselves. You prepay it with $100, you get extra 5% loaded on the card, and additional discounts for using it. The retailer saves on per transaction fees since they will have to only pay it once for $100.
- finaliteration 8y agoThis is basically the approach Amazon and Starbucks have taken. Every $25 card reload via the Starbucks app probably adds up to a lot of money in saved transaction fees.
- nandemo 8y agoAFAIK such cards make money primarily on breakage, i.e., points that people buy but do not use.
- finaliteration 8y agoThat would make sense. There’s also the customer loyalty factor. I use the Starbucks app a lot (probably too much if I’m being honest), and all of the “stars” and “challenges” definitely work in terms of gamification. PS you can pry my caramel macchiato from my cold, dead, jittery hands.
- so33 8y agoIt’s win-win: Starbucks keeps their most loyal customers loyal and likely uses the “unspent” money to subsidize the loyalty program.
- extrapickles 8y agoI doubt they are able to use that money without it showing up as a loan (oversimplification). While they get $25 in cash, they also get $25 in obligation/debt to you (eg: they owe you $25 in products). If you don’t use it, after a jurisdiction dependent time, it goes to the jurisdictions treasury (at least in some areas). Or in other words they can’t count that $25 as money they have until you the use credit. It’s probably more complicated than this as I’m not an accountant.
- ashishb 8y agohttps://www.bostonfed.org/publications/public-policy-discussion-paper/2010/who-gains-and-who-loses-from-credit-card-payments-theory-and-calibrations.aspx https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/public-policy-discuss... " On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,133 from cash users every year. Because credit card spending and rewards are positively correlated with household income, the payment instrument transfer also induces a regressive transfer from low-income to high-income households in general."
- jamie_ca 8y agoI believe it. My MasterCard is 2% cashback (through points, but that just means I batch it), but has an annual fee of $150 for two cards, and a minimum household income. I need to spend $7500 on the card just to break even, but if I funnel nearly all my expenses through the card I can net $1000 or more a year. These "rewards" come from the merchant, in the form of higher fees, and because the merchant can't discriminate prices between credit/cash (probably in the CC t&c somewhere) then if the merchant wants x% profit from me, they're earning >x% from someone paying cash.
- Nursie 8y agoThis sounds very weird to this european.... but that's probably because fees here are capped at 0.3% and AFAICT there's not really such thing as a cashback card. (I think they used to exist, just not any more)
- gst 8y agoAre the fees also capped for foreign cards? I spend significant amounts of time in Europe each year (multiple months) and some of my US credit cards don't charge foreign transaction fees and also earn cashback on transactions done in Europe. I'm wondering who is losing money here - the merchant or the card issuer?
- realityking 8y ago
- 8bitsrule 8y agoMaybe swipe will save us from a cashless society. Else ... don't want to think it.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoThe article mentions technological alternatives - what are they? There is no way blockchain can fill this void, so .... what can do electronic payment if not the giant card networks? interesting problem
- alkonaut 8y agoMany countries have (as yet) free electronic transfer services (Vipps in Norway, Swish In Sweden etc). Originally used mostly for p2p transfers, it’s showing up more and more as an accepted payment form. Obviously these systems also have costs they need to cover, but there is a good chance they will remain much lower than card fees. The big issue with them is that they are national. Even if every individual and many businesses in Norway have Vipps, you can’t use it to pay in a Danish web shop.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoA glance at wikipedia makes this a mobile app that requests transfers from bank account to bank account via a participating bank. Which is basically replacing visa with the Norwegian bank. I guess I have never wondered about it before, but i am surprised there is not a international common payment request protocol - "move 100 from a to b". Each bank could have their own gateway but as long as it understood the protocol ...
- jpatokal 8y agoIn Australia, despite the credit card companies and banks fighting tooth and nail against it, it's legal for merchants to charge credit card fees and the fees have to be proportionate to the actual merchant cost. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts/credit-debit-prepaid-card-surcharges https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts... Unsurprisingly, nobody uses AmEx or Diners here, because nobody's keen on paying 2% surcharges.
- stephen_g 8y agoPlenty of places charge no fee for Amex. Usually bigger ones like Woolworths, Coles, David Jones, etc. I use it whenever I can (for the frequent flyer rewards), and I expect quite a lot of people do since they do billions in revenue over here (but unfortunately have managed to pay no tax in Australia for several years according to investigative journalist Michael West [1]). 1. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/american-express-pays-no-tax-on-multibillion-dollar-australian-operation-for-seven-years/ https://www.michaelwest.com.au/american-express-pays-no-tax-...
- jpatokal 8y agoOh, I used to use Amex here myself, but no-fee Amex acceptance really is limited to the thousand pound gorillas who can extract the best rates for themselves. Then the banks gutted consumer earning rates and I got tired of swapping between Amex and Visa in Google Pay, so I changed to a Visa with slow but steady points everywhere.
- bit_logic 8y agoThis seems like a missed opportunity for Google Pay and Apple Pay. Before smartphones and NFC, it would've been too much for every merchant to make their own card, nobody is going to carry that many cards. But imagine if Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. made store cards and they all integrated with Google/Apple Pay. When a customer enters the store, the app could automatically pick the right card. Google and Apple just needs to be cheaper than the rates charged by Visa/MC/Discover/Amex. For example, I have a Target Redcard. Why isn't this card integrated with Google/Apply Pay? They've already setup the financial infrastructure to extend credit to customers. It should be a small step to add this to Apple/Google Pay.
- toast0 8y agoSo many merchants do have their own cards, many offer incentives better than available rewards cards, but managing more than a handful of accounts quickly gets very tedious. Especially if you move, or change your checking account, or otherwise need to notify all your accounts.
- bit_logic 8y agoBanks could innovate here. Such as offering credit accounts shared by store cards. That would simplify billing and account management. The concept of credit accounts and store cards could be completely separated. Signing up for a new store card would be just pointing it to an existing credit account.
- icebraining 8y agoIsn't that essentially what Visa et all do?
- exabrial 8y agoOr just a new payment system in general, based on asymmetric cryptography and message signatures. I'd love to generate a key, enroll the key with my bank, and have them authorize transactions signed by said key. This would be similar to have you enroll an ssh key at GitHub. The problem with the credit card number system is the lack of authentication. Anyone you pay with a credit card can take a picture of the numbers and go spend wildly online.
- m0rphy99 8y agoThe penetration of credit cards into everyone's daily life is already too deep. Let's face it, at this point they already got everybody well locked up. Any attempts to resist from just a few companies here and there are really just futile.
- coldtea 8y agoPeople didn't say that about Nazi Germany or slavery -- and they won over them in the end. And we'll say it for credit cards?
- kalleboo 8y agoNot really. Smartphone apps can be a game changer since they require so little infrastructure to adopt. Look at Venmo. In Sweden a banking revolution is taking place where an app similar to Venmo that instead was developed by a consortium of banks has quickly gotten mass adoption, recently also including at retail. I bought strawberries from a street stall using my phone.
- clan 8y agoThe exact same is happening in Denmark. The huge players are under fire from new fintech startups. It has been amazing to see how fast such apps gain penetration in the market.
- mrweasel 8y agoHonestly I can't think of a single fintech startup in Denmark that's is any competition to the banks and card companies. The only two apps that really have any penetration is MobilePay, but that's the large banks, and eDankort, but that's NETS. There are a fintech startups, but they all work with or for the large players.
- clan 8y agoDue to regulations I think it is difficult to find any fintech which a small bootstrapped startup in the traditional sense. Some bank tie-in is needed. And by that I might be overloading the startup moniker. My point was that they're still tiny compared to the giants such as AmEx or Visa. And it shows that the old players can be unseated faster than expected.
- wcoenen 8y agoA lot of problems would go away if all merchants (voluntarily or by law) explicitly charged their payment costs to the customer. Both for card and cash transactions, because cash handling isn't free either. The customers using high reward cards would then soon discover that they are just paying for those rewards themselves, and the free market would quickly push everyone to the most efficient payment systems.
- dodgemustang 8y agoDogecoin it is then. Edit: If you really believe the freemarket is the best to determine what is the preferred mode of exchange. Then decentralized currencies are inevitably going to win out, especially if they're equally accessable. (Meaning no need for extensive tech knowledge or expensive mining rigs). A currency that has a built in UBI and virtually no transaction costs is going to be attractive to consumers. And merchants will eventually gravitate towards it more as they see it enables consumers to consume more.
- pwg 8y ago> A lot of problems would go away if all merchants (voluntarily or by law) explicitly charged their payment costs to the customer. At least in the US, the contract the retailer signs with the CC processor to be able to accept CC's explicitly bans passing the card fees on to the customer as a specific line item in the receipt. Which really translates to the merchant increaseing their prices by 1.02x to compensate for the 2% (avg. estimate) fee the cards charge. So the customer still pays, but they do not directly see what part of the price goes directly to the payment network.
- _archon_ 8y agoWhat prevents a seller from giving a cash discount line item for cash transactions?
- frockington 8y agoProbably wouldn't be the best idea from a business perspective to make it more inconvenient for people with high rewards cards (rich people)
- ebbv 8y agoKroger bought out a local chain here in Michigan (Hiller’s) that was way better than Kroger and then laid off the Hiller’s employees and killed the chain. I’m never gonna feel any sympathy for Kroger.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- exabrial 8y agoDoes this also include debit cards?
- mhb 8y agoMaybe this is crazy, but it seems like Google or Amazon could compete with a credit card network with lower merchant fees. Besides being great, it would be great PR.
- mxuribe 8y agoTechnically, i'm sure you are right. But, to give these guys even more of my data - in this case my other spending habits? Ugh.
- arisAlexis 8y agobitcoin solves these kind of problems. and yes merchants can auto-convert so they don't need to speculate on price.
- a3n 8y agoIn the early days of the Republic, individual Banks used to print their own currency. It was all dollars, but it was produced by different companies. Now our different dollars are plastic or even just ephemeral, the difference being that they may not be universally usable. Something's definitely wrong here.