5 ms·

> The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking acco

by koolba 8y ago

> The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users. s/offer new services to users/increase revenue per user/ Once you've reached the levels of market saturation that Facebook has the only way to grow is value per-user, specifically in 1st world countries where there's actual value to be had. > One large U.S. bank pulled away from talks due to privacy concerns, some of the people said. Good for them. I wish I knew which one. > Banks face pressure to build relationships with big online platforms, which reach billions of users and drive a growing share of commerce. They also are trying to reach more users digitally. Many struggle to gain traction in mobile payments. That's an industry problem, not an individual bank problem. Also, credit cards are already very convenient and near universally accepted. It's hard to compete with that. Only the uninformed would use a different payment technologies with less convenience and weaker chargeback/fraud guarantees. > Bank executives are worried about the breadth of information being sought, even if it means not being available on certain platforms that their customers use. It is unclear whether bank customers would need to opt-in to the proposed Facebook services or what other privacy protections might be offered. It's unclear to me what segment of bank customers would knowingly agree to anything remotely close to this.

joering2 8y ago
> Good for them. I wish I knew which one. Don't ask me how I know, don't believe me, but its Wells Fargo. > It's unclear to me what segment of bank customers would knowingly agree to anything remotely close to this. Customers would not agree much, correct. However since credit cards are not your money, you are limited in the ways to tell the bank how and what to share or not to share with other players on the market, since its bank's money you operated with, and bank's goal is to make as much money off of lending it to you as possible. (of course I don't like; jsut so you know before you downvote) This is in fact even right in your face. Any new card (or renewal you got in mail) has a few pages attached to it, called something like "what do we do with your information and how can you stop us", where it clearly draws a matrix table with YES/NO of what information they share, with whom, and in which example you can change their default behavior (hint: not always)
- kabulykos 8y ago
  Your unsourced assertion does makes sense. WF isn't well positioned to survive any further SNAFUs — technical ones in particular. Plus I don't think of them as being primarily focused on their CC business in a way Chase, Citi or Amex are. More a complement of their retail banking and mortgage businesses.
- bitmapbrother 8y ago
  >Don't ask me how I know, don't believe me, but its Wells Fargo. I'd be surprised if it wasn't. Wells Fargo is still asking for forgiveness in their Jon Hamm narrated Earning Back Your Trust[0] commercial. It would be incredibly stupid of them to engage in another scheme to take advantage of their customers at this time. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rrivHxCeeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rrivHxCeeY
  - vl 8y ago
    Funny enough I had no idea that Wells Fargo was mixed up in any scandal before I saw these ads. Even then I didn't know what scandal was about, and finally this comment prompted me to look it up. :)
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      US media has more important issues to cover than major banking scandals.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        Huh? The Wells Fargo stuff was all over the news.
- iamdave 8y ago
  Don't ask me how I know, don't believe me, but its Wells Fargo. I'm asking anyway because a statement like this absolutely demands more than what you're offering for anyone to take a statement like this, in this context remotely serious. Not even an article or something published from WF to support the claim, that the rest of us may benefit from?
aaavl2821 8y ago
> Once you've reached the levels of market saturation that Facebook has the only way to grow is value per-user, specifically in 1st world countries where there's actual value to be had. I remember a few years ago some hedge fund friends pitching Facebook as a digital age "value investment" because of its competitive moat and compounding returns. Idea being the more users you get the more revenue you get, and these benefits compound. The issue with that is, as you mention, they already have most of the users they'd plan to get. To continue to grow, they need to better monetize users by 1) more ads per user or 2) higher price per ad Seems like they tried 1) the last few years and it failed. Now maybe they are trying 2), but the best way to get higher price ads is through better targeting, which will require deeper privacy intrusions
- ethbro 8y ago
  #3 Drain all value around you. Increase price of same data / data-supported services you've been selling third parties, as they have no alternate seller to choose. I suspect this is why Facebook is so insistent on the "free" price point. Less from a revenue perspective than to make it impossible to stay in business long enough to compete with them.
krotton 8y ago
> Also, credit cards are already very convenient and near universally accepted. It's hard to compete with that. Oh, come on. Maybe it's a US thing, but credit card is the last but one (just before a manual transfer) payment method I use (in Europe, Poland most of the time). It requires providing full credentials to every merchant you transact with on-line. It requires taking out your wallet and typing all this data in. Or taking out your wallet and taking photos of both sides in some modern apps, then checking for correctness. I actually use PayPal as my card payment gate to minimize the number of parties that see my complete set of payment authorization data. Credit cards are moderately convenient when used off-line and completely unadapted to being used on-line.
- epanchin 8y ago
  Credit cards have section 75 protection, PayPal does not. It’s certainly convenient to use, but comparatively unwise. Edit: except for small transactions when 75 doesn’t apply. Also I don’t know if it’s in Poland too, but I’d guess so.
  - dwringer 8y ago
    I interpreted the post to mean Paypal is the poster's preferred choice for using as a credit card processing gateway. Merchants can sign up with Paypal to handle all card transactions, and buyers don't need a Paypal account to use it. From the buyer's perspective, this is just an ordinary credit card transaction, it just shows up as being directed through Paypal as a middleman. The convenience is when buyers do have a Paypal account, then they no longer have to re-enter CC# details even on sites they've never purchased from as long as they support Paypal-processed credit-card payments. FWIW I take the same option, because it does feel nice to buy from a website without typing credit card information into some ad-hoc javascript form they came up with. Note that this is not the same thing as making a payment from a Paypal account.
- rusk 8y ago
  Just out of curiosity what do you use to capitalises your PayPal account? For me it’s linked directly to my credit card so it’s basically a shell of convenience above that. What do you use when a vendor doesn’t support PayPal? I still encounter these regulalarly
maxxxxx 8y ago
"including card transactions and checking account balances," It's hard to imagine how anyone could even consider this being OK without the user being asked and being able to revoke permission anytime.
FireBeyond 8y ago
> s/offer new services to users/increase revenue per user/ Well, in theory, offering "more aligned" (eyeroll) products to users is technically 'new services', but ugh.
ww520 8y ago
> as part of an effort to offer new services to users. Sorry. The "users" are not you. They are advertisers.

by koolba 8y ago

joering2 8y ago

> Good for them. I wish I knew which one. Don't ask me how I know, don't believe me, but its Wells Fargo. > It's unclear to me what segment of bank customers would knowingly agree to anything remotely close to this. Customers would not agree much, correct. However since credit cards are not your money, you are limited in the ways to tell the bank how and what to share or not to share with other players on the market, since its bank's money you operated with, and bank's goal is to make as much money off of lending it to you as possible. (of course I don't like; jsut so you know before you downvote) This is in fact even right in your face. Any new card (or renewal you got in mail) has a few pages attached to it, called something like "what do we do with your information and how can you stop us", where it clearly draws a matrix table with YES/NO of what information they share, with whom, and in which example you can change their default behavior (hint: not always)

kabulykos 8y ago
Your unsourced assertion does makes sense. WF isn't well positioned to survive any further SNAFUs — technical ones in particular. Plus I don't think of them as being primarily focused on their CC business in a way Chase, Citi or Amex are. More a complement of their retail banking and mortgage businesses.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
>Don't ask me how I know, don't believe me, but its Wells Fargo. I'd be surprised if it wasn't. Wells Fargo is still asking for forgiveness in their Jon Hamm narrated Earning Back Your Trust[0] commercial. It would be incredibly stupid of them to engage in another scheme to take advantage of their customers at this time. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rrivHxCeeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rrivHxCeeY
- vl 8y ago
  Funny enough I had no idea that Wells Fargo was mixed up in any scandal before I saw these ads. Even then I didn't know what scandal was about, and finally this comment prompted me to look it up. :)
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    US media has more important issues to cover than major banking scandals.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Huh? The Wells Fargo stuff was all over the news.
iamdave 8y ago
Don't ask me how I know, don't believe me, but its Wells Fargo. I'm asking anyway because a statement like this absolutely demands more than what you're offering for anyone to take a statement like this, in this context remotely serious. Not even an article or something published from WF to support the claim, that the rest of us may benefit from?

aaavl2821 8y ago

> Once you've reached the levels of market saturation that Facebook has the only way to grow is value per-user, specifically in 1st world countries where there's actual value to be had. I remember a few years ago some hedge fund friends pitching Facebook as a digital age "value investment" because of its competitive moat and compounding returns. Idea being the more users you get the more revenue you get, and these benefits compound. The issue with that is, as you mention, they already have most of the users they'd plan to get. To continue to grow, they need to better monetize users by 1) more ads per user or 2) higher price per ad Seems like they tried 1) the last few years and it failed. Now maybe they are trying 2), but the best way to get higher price ads is through better targeting, which will require deeper privacy intrusions

ethbro 8y ago
#3 Drain all value around you. Increase price of same data / data-supported services you've been selling third parties, as they have no alternate seller to choose. I suspect this is why Facebook is so insistent on the "free" price point. Less from a revenue perspective than to make it impossible to stay in business long enough to compete with them.

krotton 8y ago

> Also, credit cards are already very convenient and near universally accepted. It's hard to compete with that. Oh, come on. Maybe it's a US thing, but credit card is the last but one (just before a manual transfer) payment method I use (in Europe, Poland most of the time). It requires providing full credentials to every merchant you transact with on-line. It requires taking out your wallet and typing all this data in. Or taking out your wallet and taking photos of both sides in some modern apps, then checking for correctness. I actually use PayPal as my card payment gate to minimize the number of parties that see my complete set of payment authorization data. Credit cards are moderately convenient when used off-line and completely unadapted to being used on-line.

epanchin 8y ago
Credit cards have section 75 protection, PayPal does not. It’s certainly convenient to use, but comparatively unwise. Edit: except for small transactions when 75 doesn’t apply. Also I don’t know if it’s in Poland too, but I’d guess so.
- dwringer 8y ago
  I interpreted the post to mean Paypal is the poster's preferred choice for using as a credit card processing gateway. Merchants can sign up with Paypal to handle all card transactions, and buyers don't need a Paypal account to use it. From the buyer's perspective, this is just an ordinary credit card transaction, it just shows up as being directed through Paypal as a middleman. The convenience is when buyers do have a Paypal account, then they no longer have to re-enter CC# details even on sites they've never purchased from as long as they support Paypal-processed credit-card payments. FWIW I take the same option, because it does feel nice to buy from a website without typing credit card information into some ad-hoc javascript form they came up with. Note that this is not the same thing as making a payment from a Paypal account.
rusk 8y ago
Just out of curiosity what do you use to capitalises your PayPal account? For me it’s linked directly to my credit card so it’s basically a shell of convenience above that. What do you use when a vendor doesn’t support PayPal? I still encounter these regulalarly

maxxxxx 8y ago

"including card transactions and checking account balances," It's hard to imagine how anyone could even consider this being OK without the user being asked and being able to revoke permission anytime.

FireBeyond 8y ago

> s/offer new services to users/increase revenue per user/ Well, in theory, offering "more aligned" (eyeroll) products to users is technically 'new services', but ugh.

ww520 8y ago

> as part of an effort to offer new services to users. Sorry. The "users" are not you. They are advertisers.