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> The most important thing about a payment network are its network effects. Quite Visa 500b Mastercard 380b Amex 115b

• lxgr 3y ago
  What does revenue have to do with network effects? On the contrary, if Apple wants instant and almost ubiquitous merchant acceptance, it would make much more sense to buy a low-volume but wide-reach network than one that's generating lots of revenue from fees, simply because it would be much more capital intensive to finance.
  • ta1243 3y ago
    Nobody takes discover, as evidenced from their market price of 1/20th of that of Visa.
    • lxgr 3y ago
      What market are you talking about? I know a single store in NYC that accepts (credit) cards but not Discover. And as explained above, market price is an extremely poor proxy for network reach. Economic success as a payment network takes more than just reach; it’s necessary, but not sufficient.