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To 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

To 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 ago
You 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 ago
  Walmart has had similar spates in the past. They stopped accepting Visa at various Canadian stores last year when negotiating rates with Visa.
sitharus 8y ago
In 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.
clan 8y ago
Acceptance not required by law and no mandated monopoly. The card was introduced in 1983 and the law which helped the card stated that they could not charge any transaction fees to the consumer. It became popular with the consumers because there is no difference between cash and the debit card. It was popular with retail because it was cheap to handle. Consumers would typically get the card for free from the bank. If you wanted it to work as a VISA card abroad as well - then you would typically pay $31/year. Points, percentage, milage and whatnot are virtually unknown. Many retailers opted only to accept this card because the international cards where more expensive (but available!). Unfortunately regulations are going in the wrong direction. The banks have now gotten their saving by handling less cash - so now they're pushing for more fees. A brilliant construction which could have been a great stepping stone for a true cashless society now slowly turns into a "same same". It goes to tell - never let liberals near infrastructure.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  Who pays for the processing equipment? Clearing? Collection? The banks were running it as a loss leader?
  - clan 8y ago
    Retailers. There where agreements in place to ensure reasonable costs. This made it cheap to use. And it was so popular it surely did make a profit. Then the big banks realized they where helping the smaller banks and even more profit could be made by themselves. Hence a lot of lobbying for a "liberal" market. We still have the card. But slightly more expensive. Not sure for how long. I do not look forward to a future with global players setting the rules on "market" terms.

adventured 8y ago

You 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 ago
Walmart has had similar spates in the past. They stopped accepting Visa at various Canadian stores last year when negotiating rates with Visa.

sitharus 8y ago

In 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.

clan 8y ago

Acceptance not required by law and no mandated monopoly. The card was introduced in 1983 and the law which helped the card stated that they could not charge any transaction fees to the consumer. It became popular with the consumers because there is no difference between cash and the debit card. It was popular with retail because it was cheap to handle. Consumers would typically get the card for free from the bank. If you wanted it to work as a VISA card abroad as well - then you would typically pay $31/year. Points, percentage, milage and whatnot are virtually unknown. Many retailers opted only to accept this card because the international cards where more expensive (but available!). Unfortunately regulations are going in the wrong direction. The banks have now gotten their saving by handling less cash - so now they're pushing for more fees. A brilliant construction which could have been a great stepping stone for a true cashless society now slowly turns into a "same same". It goes to tell - never let liberals near infrastructure.

kasey_junk 8y ago
Who pays for the processing equipment? Clearing? Collection? The banks were running it as a loss leader?
- clan 8y ago
  Retailers. There where agreements in place to ensure reasonable costs. This made it cheap to use. And it was so popular it surely did make a profit. Then the big banks realized they where helping the smaller banks and even more profit could be made by themselves. Hence a lot of lobbying for a "liberal" market. We still have the card. But slightly more expensive. Not sure for how long. I do not look forward to a future with global players setting the rules on "market" terms.