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I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing. How long before the opaque governance of the Ap

I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing. How long before the opaque governance of the App Store is applied to their payments offering? How long before activists start making this a new vector for deplatforming? Apple also announced a news offering (https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-news-plus https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-news-plus) and I think the same concerns apply there.

Swizec 8y ago
You mean like Visa and MasterCard? Yes very unhealthy. Big entities shouldn’t control payments.
- SonicSoul 8y ago
  the difference is that there re dozens of CC companies which do not share information. Apple already has a lot more info on users then CCs do. edit Apple knows a lot about you IF you use apple products. Didn't think this would be a controversial point :)
  - stevenhubertron 8y ago
    how is this remotely true? Apple has nearly nothing on you. Amex knows what I buy, when, and where.
    - SonicSoul 8y ago
      if you're using their products, why would they not know anything about you? using their phone, app store, itunes, news app, maps appointments.. maybe im missing something? I'm not saying they have your purchase history, but they have a lot
      - ashildr 8y ago
        So you did inform yourself about Apples technical implementation of those services and the implications for privacy, or did you just make an uninformed guess to post something?
      - drcoopster 8y ago
        You are confusing Apple with Google.
      - tomalpha 8y ago
        Apple have built up a reputation for not knowing this about me as a consumer. Maybe they do know lots about me, maybe they don’t. A significant part of their public reputation rests on their respecting privacy concerns however. So if it turned out that they were secretly collecting data on me they would take a hit to their public reputation and (very likely) their bottom line. They are very much incentivised to keep my data private and imho that offers a strong likelihood that they’ll actually do so.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    ??? Wait? What? Apple doesn't know what I buy. At least not currently. How can they know that? Only Mastercard and Visa know that. Maybe Apple could buy that information from Mastercard or Visa? Is that what you're saying?
    - SonicSoul 8y ago
      i never said Apple knows what you buy. They just know a lot about you based on using their devices / services.
      - bilbo0s 8y ago
        I don't know man? I'd wager that Google, Mastercard, Visa, and AT&T each know way more about me than Apple does. That's not even counting companies like Amazon, Target, etc. It seems to me that with respect to privacy, Apple is the least of my problems.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Point taken. You could also argue that having multiple big entities doing payment processing is better for everyone to the extent that they are competing. I mean, Mastercard and Visa are undoubtedly going to pull every lever at their disposal to take out Apple. (And to take out Amazon and Walmart as well if they decide to jump into this thing.) So rather than wishing that Apple were NOT a payment processor, I guess a better idea is to hope for the Walmarts, the Amazons, the Targets, etc to all jump in and join the cage match.
  - droithomme 8y ago
    > Mastercard and Visa are undoubtedly going to pull every lever at their disposal to take out Apple The images shown are labeled the "Apple Mastercard". So it's a Mastercard with Apple branding.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - lemoncucumber 8y ago
    > Mastercard and Visa are undoubtedly going to pull every lever at their disposal to take out Apple. The Apple card isn't competing with Mastercard and Visa -- in fact, it uses the Mastercard payment network. It's competing with credit cards issued by other banks on top of the MC and Visa payment networks (and AmEx/Discover, which unlike MC and Visa combine the payment network and card issuing). I doubt the other banks are too afraid of Apple though, I didn't see anything so compelling about the Apple card that would cause it kill other credit cards. It's a slick product, but not game-changing the way that e.g. the iPhone was to entrenched phone makers.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      Then Visa will pull every lever at its disposal to take it out. It's also disappointing though, because it means Apple is not competing as a separate entity. What we want is for Apple to jump in be an actual credit card company. Then for all of them to try to destroy each other. (Unfortunately, now that I think about it, there are probably legal reasons that Apple is restricted in this regard. That's a shame. Basically means that it's Mastercard and Visa forever.)
- throwawaysea 8y ago
  I agree we are already exposed to this problem. Visa and Mastercard already make judgments about whom to support and whom to disallow. This is dangerous, especially because they are willing to succumb to the Internet outrage machine and pressure from loud activist groups to make these decisions. When a platform is large enough (or has to be inherently large due to network effects), we should ensure (through regulation perhaps) that they act neutrally and provide service to everyone except where the law explicitly disallows it. That is, they should behave as a "dumb pipe" and not curators.
  - djsumdog 8y ago
    They isn't any neutrality, at least in the US. We've watched Visa/Mastercard/Paypal and others take down people they politically disagree with. Look at Paypal + Patreon for another example. What's currently in the pipes to help fix this? Sure you can always support someone by mailing them a money order or cryptocurrency, but that is a huge hindrance to most people. It can cripple groups that are political unpopular. 20 years ago, that might have been gay rights groups.
    - hakfoo 8y ago
      Personally, I think we need to have state intervention. The American finance and payment systems are a Rube Goldberg machine. Too many layers of middlemen adding cost and clunkiness; technology which was barely a good idea in the 1970s. But too many middlemen with a stake in it for anything but the state to blow it out. I could imagine a system where everyone got a basic bank account for life-- each SSN and EIN is also an account number. The account is managed by the state as a public service, and you can assign it to a local brick-and-mortar bank to handle in-person banking. There would presumably be competition for the business. That way, everyone would have guaranteed access to direct-deposit payroll and ACH-style-but-less-of-a-boondoggle electronic funds transfers. Push and pull payment APIs could be part of the state provided system, with enormous economies of scale driving the transaction price to essentially zero. Since the underlying service is state-run, it has to support any legal business purpose or the courts will shred it. The financial tech sector is then freed from having to reinvent basic transfers and accounts again and again, and can focus on value-add services.
m3kw9 8y ago
Banks are pretty big too
- naravara 8y ago
  Banks are also much more heavily regulated than tech companies. Yes, they've mostly captured all the regulators at this point so it's like the foxes running the henhouse, but at least in theory that's how it's supposed to work. . .
  - kerbalspacepro 8y ago
    Yes, and ultimately Goldman Sachs is a bank and will be held accountable for anything that happens. This is a GS product that Apple gets a significant cut of.
    - naravara 8y ago
      >Yes, and ultimately Goldman Sachs is a bank and will be held accountable for anything that happens. The jokes almost write themselves. . .
      - saryant 8y ago
        Retail banking, especially credit, is much more regulated than the investment banking shenanigans that led to the 2008 crisis.
        naravara 8y ago
        While true, I feel like many of the perks of Apple's offering are well over and above the regulatory mandates that credit card issuers are held to.
        ralph84 8y ago
        Retail banks were on the front lines making the liar loans that got everything started. Investment banks wouldn't have had any bogus mortgages to bet on without retail banks originating them. The decision to use GS is highly dilutive to Apple's brand.
ralusek 8y ago
Look no further than the recent issue where Patreon competitor Subscribestar had payment processors Stripe and PayPal stop processing their payments for _political_ disagreements with the purported beneficiaries of the donations through the platform. PayPal said that it was actually one of the underlying payment processors, and it was suspected to be MasterCard. That incident was the first time I've ever taken the need for alternative payment processors very seriously.
- draw_down 8y ago
  If MasterCard is doing it, how would an alternative payment processor help? You need to change the payment method.
- ddorian43 8y ago
  Same with wikileaks
  - tubbs 8y ago
    For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Payback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Payback
- kyrra 8y ago
  The CC networks are known cave to political pressure to shut down certain merchants. Apple is likely no better or worse here. example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/caving-government-pressure-visa-and-mastercard-shut-down-payments-backpagecom https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/caving-government-pres...
  - throw0101a 8y ago
    > Apple is likely no better or worse here. Apple will be piggybacking off of MasterCard's network.
  - wurzelzwerg 8y ago
    I have a news site too http://www.uptopnews.com/ http://www.uptopnews.com/
eridius 8y ago
Apple said they've engineered the service such that Apple does not know what you're purchasing or even what vendors you're shopping at. If Apple doesn't know this, they can't very well apply arbitrary rules to it.
- zaphirplane 8y ago
  I wonder how you can challenge a fraudulent transaction when that information is missing
  - ar0 8y ago
    My understanding was that Goldman Sachs will have that information and they will be responsible for fraud prevention etc. -- they just won't share it with Apple.
    - acjohnson55 8y ago
      Oh great, now I feel much better.
      - tyre 8y ago
        Goldman is a client of Apple's. It's possible that they do some shady shit, but it's also possible that they don't want to fuck up their relationship with the world's most valuable company or jeopardize their entry into the consumer space. Their profit motive might save them. Or it could be a disaster, who knows. My guess is that Goldman would trade on the aggregate data
        tylerhou 8y ago
        Nit: world's most valuable publicly traded* company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco
        eridius 8y ago
isostatic 8y ago
It's an inevitable end state of capitalism - large companies merge and use monopolitic tactics up and down the chain. That's why we have democratically accountable regulators
- caprese 8y ago
  > democratically accountable regulators do you write for the onion?
- baddox 8y ago
  Here's a gut check question: Do you think that the average individual politician/regulator is more or less influenced by the desires of mega-corporations than the average individual voter?
- nailer 8y ago
  > It's an inevitable end state of capitalism - large companies merge and use monopolitic tactics A free market is the opposite of a monopoly.
vkou 8y ago
Payment platforms, including Visa and Mastercard, have deplatformed merchants, are currently deplatforming merchants, and will continue to deplatform merchants, for all sorts of reasons, since day 1. This sort of deplatforming happens for moral reasons (adult content), discriminatory reasons (Suppression of gay activist movements in the 90s), political reasons (Suppression of IRA/ISIS symathisers), legal reasons (Enforcing international embargoes - ie, Iran). For some reason, though, techies get up in arms when tech firms start doing this.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  We get up in arms about it because we think that it's unethical in all but the last case. Society as a whole should be publicly deciding which personal transactions are forbidden, not the payment processing platform.
  - profmonocle 8y ago
    In the case of the last two it's the state making the decision, not the processor.
  - andrekandre 8y ago
    hey, that sounds like democracy! ^_^ seriously though, i don’t really think it’s in a company’s purview to promote those values, otherwise they’d let their employees vote on who their ceo should be or wether their jobs should be outsourced or not etc... it definitely is in their purview to maximize their profit and at least in the short-term it would seem banning is “easier” (aka profitable) since it quells any “controversies” quickly enough... please note, i’m not defending tech companies or payment processors banning merchants etc, just stating how i see it for my limited experience...
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      >seriously though, i don’t really think it’s in a company’s purview to promote those values, otherwise they’d let their employees vote on who their ceo should be or wether their jobs should be outsourced or not etc... it definitely is in their purview to maximize their profit and at least in the short-term it would seem banning is “easier” (aka profitable) since it quells any “controversies” quickly enough... Indeed. I may not support the political views of (checks notes) ultra-nationalist furries, but I damn well think in a free society, their right to (checks notes) draw furry pr0n with Nazi flags in it should be abridged only by democratically discussed and broadly supported hate-speech laws. An "ew no" to one is an "ew no" to all! Or, a little more seriously, if we're not going to go through with actual social control over these decisions, we shouldn't control them at all. The lived experience of freedom is simply having the smallest possible number of choke-points between you and what you want, subject to not violating anyone else's rights or doing anything so morally horrific it was actually banned by the government (eg: organ trafficking or whatever). Our society needs to stop accepting that privatized, for-profit choke-points somehow give us "more freedom" than a law banning the choke-points (ie: common carrier regulations, First Amendment restrictions on state action, etc).
morpheuskafka 8y ago
> I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing. You mean big entities like transnational banks and payment networks?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
riffraff 8y ago
but it's running on the mastercard network anyway, what's new?
skybrian 8y ago
Fortunately there are a lot of banks and a lot of credit cards. There are only a few credit card networks, but this doesn't make things better or worse.
devy 8y ago
Apple's partnering with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard to do payment processing, I don't think Apple themselves are doing payment processing per se, neither they are certified to do it. What they can do is to generate alternative account numbers and passing that along with transaction details to Goldman Sachs(which is a bank)/ Mastercard (top 2 payment processing network) for actual payment processing.
Brain_Thief 8y ago
My bizarre experience attempting and failing to get Apple to refund erroneous charges to my credit card has reinforced my perspective that companies of this scale cannot be trusted with operations outside of their core competencies, and that any financial product offerings from non-finance companies must be avoided like the plague (not to say that I'm any fan of fintech...). I cannot imagine how Apple's foray into financial products / business can result in anything other than the incorporation of all of the destructive incentives and bad behaviors that come along with big banks as the profits stack up over time. God help anyone who needs customer support from a giant tech company when some unclear policy document or bug leads to a financially-ruinous mistake being made on either end of the relationship. Prediction: the little people will be crushed and have no recourse, just like they are when Google closes their email accounts without warning. In my case, Apple were attempting to charge me a monthly fee for an app that I installed last year before I ditched my iPhone. After using (and paying for) the app for a month, I realized I didn't like it and declined having a monthly subscription moving forward. After terminating my account with the app and uninstalling it Apple continued to charge me for it for months afterward. Repeated escalations in Apple's customer service labyrinth resulted in a massive amount of wasted time and, ultimately, an admission on their part that they didn't have a clear answer for what was happening or what I did wrong (one customer support person even told me that the same thing had happened to him once upon a time). Despite that, the relevant policy document they referred me to strictly prohibited me from being refunded for the erroneous charges. In the end, the only thing that saved me was being able to turn to my credit card company and flagging the months of charges as fraudulent. In this case I got all of my money back, but the experience really makes me wary of the idea of a big tech company being involved in my finances.
kelp 8y ago
I don't think this is very different from Bank of America or Chase running a payment processing system. Both issue cards, and run two of the largest credit card processing systems. Bank of America Merchant Services and Chase Paymentech. Most smaller providers still depend on one of those larger banks networks to process transactions. You generally always need an acquiring bank to issue cards or process transactions. I believe this is the role of Goldman Sachs in this Apple news. (Source: I worked at Square for 6 years, and my teams were directly responsible for the network integrations to connect to those merchant acquirers so we could process credit cards.)
abalone 8y ago
> I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing... How long before activists start making this a new vector for deplatforming? You're misunderstanding how card networks work a little bit here. This is a credit card, not a payment processing service. Two different sides of the network. "Deplatforming" refers to getting kicked off a given payment processor, which is an entity that gives a merchant access to a card network (in this case Mastercard). Perhaps issuers like Goldman Sachs could start banning their customers from using their card at certain merchants. But this wouldn't come from Apple -- they've already said they've engineered themselves out of that kind of control.
pmart123 8y ago
Apple is using Mastercard as the rails, Goldman as the issuer, and another company is the processor. Therefore, it isn't really doing any of the payment processing, but it is more similar to a Nordstrom's or Saks' card. I think Apple is hoping that the Apple card will get more users to adopt Apple Pay at the point of sale vs. dominate payment processing. Apple collects a small merchant loyalty fee when someone uses Apple Pay at the point of sale, even in cases where the card being used is Amex or Chase. My guess is the overall adoption of Apple Pay is a bigger win for Apple than the card itself. I am not sure there is much cause of concern here yet as people like their CC points, perks, and rewards? It doesn't seem like Apple has leverage here unless everyone stops carrying credit cards?
ratling 8y ago
This card specifically I... uh wouldn't be too worried about. It's a generic 1% card with a couple of apple specific gimmicks. My citi doublecash is 2% on everything as long as I pay the bill off each month (which you should). Chase sapphire reserve is also a better card if you travel and are willing to pay a fee. It does look sharp as hell though.
m463 8y ago
Visa is already a "big entity" I think the big indicator will be if payment overhead goes down with increased competition.
black-tea 8y ago
Sorry to inform you but big entities already control this space and they are doing their best now to destroy cash so that they control 100%.
thefounder 8y ago
We already have that. It's visa and mastercard. Even Apple depends on them.

Swizec 8y ago

You mean like Visa and MasterCard? Yes very unhealthy. Big entities shouldn’t control payments.

SonicSoul 8y ago
the difference is that there re dozens of CC companies which do not share information. Apple already has a lot more info on users then CCs do. edit Apple knows a lot about you IF you use apple products. Didn't think this would be a controversial point :)
- stevenhubertron 8y ago
  how is this remotely true? Apple has nearly nothing on you. Amex knows what I buy, when, and where.
  - SonicSoul 8y ago
    if you're using their products, why would they not know anything about you? using their phone, app store, itunes, news app, maps appointments.. maybe im missing something? I'm not saying they have your purchase history, but they have a lot
    - ashildr 8y ago
      So you did inform yourself about Apples technical implementation of those services and the implications for privacy, or did you just make an uninformed guess to post something?
    - drcoopster 8y ago
      You are confusing Apple with Google.
    - tomalpha 8y ago
      Apple have built up a reputation for not knowing this about me as a consumer. Maybe they do know lots about me, maybe they don’t. A significant part of their public reputation rests on their respecting privacy concerns however. So if it turned out that they were secretly collecting data on me they would take a hit to their public reputation and (very likely) their bottom line. They are very much incentivised to keep my data private and imho that offers a strong likelihood that they’ll actually do so.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  ??? Wait? What? Apple doesn't know what I buy. At least not currently. How can they know that? Only Mastercard and Visa know that. Maybe Apple could buy that information from Mastercard or Visa? Is that what you're saying?
  - SonicSoul 8y ago
    i never said Apple knows what you buy. They just know a lot about you based on using their devices / services.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      I don't know man? I'd wager that Google, Mastercard, Visa, and AT&T each know way more about me than Apple does. That's not even counting companies like Amazon, Target, etc. It seems to me that with respect to privacy, Apple is the least of my problems.
bilbo0s 8y ago
Point taken. You could also argue that having multiple big entities doing payment processing is better for everyone to the extent that they are competing. I mean, Mastercard and Visa are undoubtedly going to pull every lever at their disposal to take out Apple. (And to take out Amazon and Walmart as well if they decide to jump into this thing.) So rather than wishing that Apple were NOT a payment processor, I guess a better idea is to hope for the Walmarts, the Amazons, the Targets, etc to all jump in and join the cage match.
- droithomme 8y ago
  > Mastercard and Visa are undoubtedly going to pull every lever at their disposal to take out Apple The images shown are labeled the "Apple Mastercard". So it's a Mastercard with Apple branding.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- lemoncucumber 8y ago
  > Mastercard and Visa are undoubtedly going to pull every lever at their disposal to take out Apple. The Apple card isn't competing with Mastercard and Visa -- in fact, it uses the Mastercard payment network. It's competing with credit cards issued by other banks on top of the MC and Visa payment networks (and AmEx/Discover, which unlike MC and Visa combine the payment network and card issuing). I doubt the other banks are too afraid of Apple though, I didn't see anything so compelling about the Apple card that would cause it kill other credit cards. It's a slick product, but not game-changing the way that e.g. the iPhone was to entrenched phone makers.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    Then Visa will pull every lever at its disposal to take it out. It's also disappointing though, because it means Apple is not competing as a separate entity. What we want is for Apple to jump in be an actual credit card company. Then for all of them to try to destroy each other. (Unfortunately, now that I think about it, there are probably legal reasons that Apple is restricted in this regard. That's a shame. Basically means that it's Mastercard and Visa forever.)
throwawaysea 8y ago
I agree we are already exposed to this problem. Visa and Mastercard already make judgments about whom to support and whom to disallow. This is dangerous, especially because they are willing to succumb to the Internet outrage machine and pressure from loud activist groups to make these decisions. When a platform is large enough (or has to be inherently large due to network effects), we should ensure (through regulation perhaps) that they act neutrally and provide service to everyone except where the law explicitly disallows it. That is, they should behave as a "dumb pipe" and not curators.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  They isn't any neutrality, at least in the US. We've watched Visa/Mastercard/Paypal and others take down people they politically disagree with. Look at Paypal + Patreon for another example. What's currently in the pipes to help fix this? Sure you can always support someone by mailing them a money order or cryptocurrency, but that is a huge hindrance to most people. It can cripple groups that are political unpopular. 20 years ago, that might have been gay rights groups.
  - hakfoo 8y ago
    Personally, I think we need to have state intervention. The American finance and payment systems are a Rube Goldberg machine. Too many layers of middlemen adding cost and clunkiness; technology which was barely a good idea in the 1970s. But too many middlemen with a stake in it for anything but the state to blow it out. I could imagine a system where everyone got a basic bank account for life-- each SSN and EIN is also an account number. The account is managed by the state as a public service, and you can assign it to a local brick-and-mortar bank to handle in-person banking. There would presumably be competition for the business. That way, everyone would have guaranteed access to direct-deposit payroll and ACH-style-but-less-of-a-boondoggle electronic funds transfers. Push and pull payment APIs could be part of the state provided system, with enormous economies of scale driving the transaction price to essentially zero. Since the underlying service is state-run, it has to support any legal business purpose or the courts will shred it. The financial tech sector is then freed from having to reinvent basic transfers and accounts again and again, and can focus on value-add services.

m3kw9 8y ago

Banks are pretty big too

naravara 8y ago
Banks are also much more heavily regulated than tech companies. Yes, they've mostly captured all the regulators at this point so it's like the foxes running the henhouse, but at least in theory that's how it's supposed to work. . .
- kerbalspacepro 8y ago
  Yes, and ultimately Goldman Sachs is a bank and will be held accountable for anything that happens. This is a GS product that Apple gets a significant cut of.
  - naravara 8y ago
    >Yes, and ultimately Goldman Sachs is a bank and will be held accountable for anything that happens. The jokes almost write themselves. . .
    - saryant 8y ago
      Retail banking, especially credit, is much more regulated than the investment banking shenanigans that led to the 2008 crisis.
      - naravara 8y ago
        While true, I feel like many of the perks of Apple's offering are well over and above the regulatory mandates that credit card issuers are held to.
      - ralph84 8y ago
        Retail banks were on the front lines making the liar loans that got everything started. Investment banks wouldn't have had any bogus mortgages to bet on without retail banks originating them. The decision to use GS is highly dilutive to Apple's brand.

ralusek 8y ago

Look no further than the recent issue where Patreon competitor Subscribestar had payment processors Stripe and PayPal stop processing their payments for _political_ disagreements with the purported beneficiaries of the donations through the platform. PayPal said that it was actually one of the underlying payment processors, and it was suspected to be MasterCard. That incident was the first time I've ever taken the need for alternative payment processors very seriously.

draw_down 8y ago
If MasterCard is doing it, how would an alternative payment processor help? You need to change the payment method.
ddorian43 8y ago
Same with wikileaks
- tubbs 8y ago
  For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Payback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Payback
kyrra 8y ago
The CC networks are known cave to political pressure to shut down certain merchants. Apple is likely no better or worse here. example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/caving-government-pressure-visa-and-mastercard-shut-down-payments-backpagecom https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/caving-government-pres...
- throw0101a 8y ago
  > Apple is likely no better or worse here. Apple will be piggybacking off of MasterCard's network.
- wurzelzwerg 8y ago
  I have a news site too http://www.uptopnews.com/ http://www.uptopnews.com/

eridius 8y ago

Apple said they've engineered the service such that Apple does not know what you're purchasing or even what vendors you're shopping at. If Apple doesn't know this, they can't very well apply arbitrary rules to it.

zaphirplane 8y ago
I wonder how you can challenge a fraudulent transaction when that information is missing
- ar0 8y ago
  My understanding was that Goldman Sachs will have that information and they will be responsible for fraud prevention etc. -- they just won't share it with Apple.
  - acjohnson55 8y ago
    Oh great, now I feel much better.
    - tyre 8y ago
      Goldman is a client of Apple's. It's possible that they do some shady shit, but it's also possible that they don't want to fuck up their relationship with the world's most valuable company or jeopardize their entry into the consumer space. Their profit motive might save them. Or it could be a disaster, who knows. My guess is that Goldman would trade on the aggregate data
      - tylerhou 8y ago
        Nit: world's most valuable publicly traded* company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco
        eridius 8y ago

isostatic 8y ago

It's an inevitable end state of capitalism - large companies merge and use monopolitic tactics up and down the chain. That's why we have democratically accountable regulators

caprese 8y ago
> democratically accountable regulators do you write for the onion?
baddox 8y ago
Here's a gut check question: Do you think that the average individual politician/regulator is more or less influenced by the desires of mega-corporations than the average individual voter?
nailer 8y ago
> It's an inevitable end state of capitalism - large companies merge and use monopolitic tactics A free market is the opposite of a monopoly.

vkou 8y ago

Payment platforms, including Visa and Mastercard, have deplatformed merchants, are currently deplatforming merchants, and will continue to deplatform merchants, for all sorts of reasons, since day 1. This sort of deplatforming happens for moral reasons (adult content), discriminatory reasons (Suppression of gay activist movements in the 90s), political reasons (Suppression of IRA/ISIS symathisers), legal reasons (Enforcing international embargoes - ie, Iran). For some reason, though, techies get up in arms when tech firms start doing this.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago
We get up in arms about it because we think that it's unethical in all but the last case. Society as a whole should be publicly deciding which personal transactions are forbidden, not the payment processing platform.
- profmonocle 8y ago
  In the case of the last two it's the state making the decision, not the processor.
- andrekandre 8y ago
  hey, that sounds like democracy! ^_^ seriously though, i don’t really think it’s in a company’s purview to promote those values, otherwise they’d let their employees vote on who their ceo should be or wether their jobs should be outsourced or not etc... it definitely is in their purview to maximize their profit and at least in the short-term it would seem banning is “easier” (aka profitable) since it quells any “controversies” quickly enough... please note, i’m not defending tech companies or payment processors banning merchants etc, just stating how i see it for my limited experience...
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    >seriously though, i don’t really think it’s in a company’s purview to promote those values, otherwise they’d let their employees vote on who their ceo should be or wether their jobs should be outsourced or not etc... it definitely is in their purview to maximize their profit and at least in the short-term it would seem banning is “easier” (aka profitable) since it quells any “controversies” quickly enough... Indeed. I may not support the political views of (checks notes) ultra-nationalist furries, but I damn well think in a free society, their right to (checks notes) draw furry pr0n with Nazi flags in it should be abridged only by democratically discussed and broadly supported hate-speech laws. An "ew no" to one is an "ew no" to all! Or, a little more seriously, if we're not going to go through with actual social control over these decisions, we shouldn't control them at all. The lived experience of freedom is simply having the smallest possible number of choke-points between you and what you want, subject to not violating anyone else's rights or doing anything so morally horrific it was actually banned by the government (eg: organ trafficking or whatever). Our society needs to stop accepting that privatized, for-profit choke-points somehow give us "more freedom" than a law banning the choke-points (ie: common carrier regulations, First Amendment restrictions on state action, etc).

morpheuskafka 8y ago

> I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing. You mean big entities like transnational banks and payment networks?

deleted 8y ago
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riffraff 8y ago

but it's running on the mastercard network anyway, what's new?

skybrian 8y ago

Fortunately there are a lot of banks and a lot of credit cards. There are only a few credit card networks, but this doesn't make things better or worse.

devy 8y ago

Apple's partnering with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard to do payment processing, I don't think Apple themselves are doing payment processing per se, neither they are certified to do it. What they can do is to generate alternative account numbers and passing that along with transaction details to Goldman Sachs(which is a bank)/ Mastercard (top 2 payment processing network) for actual payment processing.

Brain_Thief 8y ago

My bizarre experience attempting and failing to get Apple to refund erroneous charges to my credit card has reinforced my perspective that companies of this scale cannot be trusted with operations outside of their core competencies, and that any financial product offerings from non-finance companies must be avoided like the plague (not to say that I'm any fan of fintech...). I cannot imagine how Apple's foray into financial products / business can result in anything other than the incorporation of all of the destructive incentives and bad behaviors that come along with big banks as the profits stack up over time. God help anyone who needs customer support from a giant tech company when some unclear policy document or bug leads to a financially-ruinous mistake being made on either end of the relationship. Prediction: the little people will be crushed and have no recourse, just like they are when Google closes their email accounts without warning. In my case, Apple were attempting to charge me a monthly fee for an app that I installed last year before I ditched my iPhone. After using (and paying for) the app for a month, I realized I didn't like it and declined having a monthly subscription moving forward. After terminating my account with the app and uninstalling it Apple continued to charge me for it for months afterward. Repeated escalations in Apple's customer service labyrinth resulted in a massive amount of wasted time and, ultimately, an admission on their part that they didn't have a clear answer for what was happening or what I did wrong (one customer support person even told me that the same thing had happened to him once upon a time). Despite that, the relevant policy document they referred me to strictly prohibited me from being refunded for the erroneous charges. In the end, the only thing that saved me was being able to turn to my credit card company and flagging the months of charges as fraudulent. In this case I got all of my money back, but the experience really makes me wary of the idea of a big tech company being involved in my finances.

kelp 8y ago

I don't think this is very different from Bank of America or Chase running a payment processing system. Both issue cards, and run two of the largest credit card processing systems. Bank of America Merchant Services and Chase Paymentech. Most smaller providers still depend on one of those larger banks networks to process transactions. You generally always need an acquiring bank to issue cards or process transactions. I believe this is the role of Goldman Sachs in this Apple news. (Source: I worked at Square for 6 years, and my teams were directly responsible for the network integrations to connect to those merchant acquirers so we could process credit cards.)

abalone 8y ago

> I don't thing it is healthy to have big entities like this control fundamental services like payment processing... How long before activists start making this a new vector for deplatforming? You're misunderstanding how card networks work a little bit here. This is a credit card, not a payment processing service. Two different sides of the network. "Deplatforming" refers to getting kicked off a given payment processor, which is an entity that gives a merchant access to a card network (in this case Mastercard). Perhaps issuers like Goldman Sachs could start banning their customers from using their card at certain merchants. But this wouldn't come from Apple -- they've already said they've engineered themselves out of that kind of control.

pmart123 8y ago

Apple is using Mastercard as the rails, Goldman as the issuer, and another company is the processor. Therefore, it isn't really doing any of the payment processing, but it is more similar to a Nordstrom's or Saks' card. I think Apple is hoping that the Apple card will get more users to adopt Apple Pay at the point of sale vs. dominate payment processing. Apple collects a small merchant loyalty fee when someone uses Apple Pay at the point of sale, even in cases where the card being used is Amex or Chase. My guess is the overall adoption of Apple Pay is a bigger win for Apple than the card itself. I am not sure there is much cause of concern here yet as people like their CC points, perks, and rewards? It doesn't seem like Apple has leverage here unless everyone stops carrying credit cards?

ratling 8y ago

This card specifically I... uh wouldn't be too worried about. It's a generic 1% card with a couple of apple specific gimmicks. My citi doublecash is 2% on everything as long as I pay the bill off each month (which you should). Chase sapphire reserve is also a better card if you travel and are willing to pay a fee. It does look sharp as hell though.

m463 8y ago

Visa is already a "big entity" I think the big indicator will be if payment overhead goes down with increased competition.

black-tea 8y ago

Sorry to inform you but big entities already control this space and they are doing their best now to destroy cash so that they control 100%.

thefounder 8y ago

We already have that. It's visa and mastercard. Even Apple depends on them.