4 ms·

> The deal, which is expected to receive intense antitrust scrutiny, So... it is highly possible/more than likely it will not go through?

lgleason 3y ago
One can hope. The novus network attempts to provide a semblance of competition to AMEX, Visa and Mastercard in the US.
- dev_daftly 3y ago
  How would that change after this merger?
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  Do North American consumers/merchants pay less in processing fees overall than European/Asian counterparts or is it roughly 1-3% all over the world?
  - csnover 3y ago
    As far as I can tell, consumer interchange fees in the US are significantly higher than they are in Europe. The interchange fees for Visa and MC consumer products within the EEU are 0.2–0.3%[0][1], whereas in the US they are from 1–3%[2][3]. [0] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/intra-eea-interchange-october-2021.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD... [1] https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/eu/gb/Other/Website_Intra_EEA_Fallback_Interchange_Fees_220121.pdf https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/dam/public/mastercardco... [2] https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees.pdf https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/vis... [3] https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/na/us/en/documents/merchant-rates-2022-2023-apr22-2022.pdf https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...
    - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
      I asked ChatGPT about this. It said for interchange portion, sure. I'm not sure if EU payment processors finds a way to make it up in different portions of the fees so that it evens out to the same 1-3%?
      - piperswe 3y ago
        What's with all these "I asked ChatGPT" comments? I've seen quite a few, and I don't think any of them have added anything to a conversation.
        MuffinFlavored 3y ago
        How else would you quickly try to understand complex research topics like: "how much are payment processing fees in north america compared to europe/asia"?
        piperswe 3y ago
        I'd probably type that into a search engine, come across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee, and have all the information I'm looking for.
      - przemub 3y ago
        Not really, no. It's more than enough for them to operate on. The only downside from the American point of view is that banks very rarely offer cashback, points, etc.
        MuffinFlavored 3y ago
        > In Europe, credit card processing fees are generally lower compared to other regions, partly due to regulatory caps on interchange fees. For consumer debit and credit cards issued within the European Economic Area (EEA), the interchange fees are capped at 0.2% and 0.3% of the transaction value, respectively. However, total processing costs for merchants can be higher once all fees are included, often ranging from 1% to 2% per transaction.
  - xordon 3y ago
    The fees are significantly lower in Europe, the rewards/kick backs given to card holders are also less.
jsyang00 3y ago
basically deal goes thru is p(republican admin takes over) + p(win in court) + p(settlement deal of some sort).
- option 3y ago
  You should replace all + with * in your formula.
  - jsyang00 3y ago
    any of these would result in deal going through
  - ghayes 3y ago
    Or use log-probabilities
- zht 3y ago
  a republican admin denied Visa + plaid... so I wouldn't assume anything
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  Trump won in 2016, then lost in 2020 because he lost XYZ groups of voters. All of the people who didn't vote for Trump in 2020, why would they flip from Democrat to Republican and vote for him in 2024?
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, IIRC. While some people most likely did flip to Biden in 2020, there were also many, many people who voted 3rd-party in 2016 who didn't in 2020, and I think there was also higher voter turnout. The danger, as usual for Democrats, isn't people flipping to Trump, it's people not bothering to vote (or giving it to another party like the Greens) because they don't like the Dems' candidate. For the most part, Hillary didn't lose in 2016 because people voted for Trump instead of her; she lost because voters who normally would have voted (D) either stayed at home or voted for a protest party. Biden didn't have so much of a problem this way, for various reasons (voters liked him better to begin with, and they had just lived through the horrors of 4 years of a Trump presidency).
AzzyHN 3y ago
I mean, T-Mobile bought Sprint. Antitrust laws might as well not exist in America
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  It’s unfortunate for business planning but probably fortunate for consumers that the FTC and DOJ change leadership with presidential terms —- Biden’s FTC is a much different entity than Trump’s was when Sprint and T Mobile merged.
- dylan604 3y ago
  I mean, Spirit wasn't sold to JetBlue, and Adobe/Figma called off their courtship (likely due to fear of regulator disapproval) with in the past few months. But before T-mobile bought Sprint, ATT was blocked from acquiring T-mobile.
  - NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
    This is a recent uptick in enforcement actions. Meanwhile, TicketMaster/LiveNation/(scalping thing) has demonstrated a textbook consumer-harming monopoly for DECADES with impunity. DECADES. And politicians and agencies wave hands over "inflation" while the four U.S. meat producers report 90% profit increases (after whining about a "labor shortage"). NINETY PERCENT increases. Corporate toadies in Congress sit back and pretend that the Fed's feckless interest-rate hikes are all we can do. Disgusting.
- nradov 3y ago
  Sprint wouldn't have survived as an independent company. They made a fatal mistake by betting the company on WiMax and then the rest of the industry decided to go with 4G LTE instead. This left Sprint without enough capital to build out a competitive nationwide 5G network. Allowing T-Mobile to buy Sprint was a better outcome for consumers than allowing Sprint to slowly go bankrupt as there will now be three viable nationwide networks.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  This is completely different. If T-Mobile hadn’t bought Sprint, Sprint would have gone out of business. It had bedn losing money for years. Then the spectrum they had licenses to - the main reason T-Mobile wanted sprint, would have been auctioned off and probably still would have had t-mobile buy it since they needed it the most. Besides At&T was already dealing with a ton of debt and if Verizon had bought it, the landscape would have been less competitive
CPLX 3y ago
There’s absolutely no fucking chance this deal goes through in the current climate. It’s not clear why they are even trying. It’s not just the Biden antitrust contingency it’s going to be Visa/MC and the other big banks lining up against it too. And there’s a non-trivial coalition of Republicans also against this kind of thing.

lgleason 3y ago

One can hope. The novus network attempts to provide a semblance of competition to AMEX, Visa and Mastercard in the US.

dev_daftly 3y ago
How would that change after this merger?
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
Do North American consumers/merchants pay less in processing fees overall than European/Asian counterparts or is it roughly 1-3% all over the world?
- csnover 3y ago
  As far as I can tell, consumer interchange fees in the US are significantly higher than they are in Europe. The interchange fees for Visa and MC consumer products within the EEU are 0.2–0.3%[0][1], whereas in the US they are from 1–3%[2][3]. [0] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/intra-eea-interchange-october-2021.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD... [1] https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/eu/gb/Other/Website_Intra_EEA_Fallback_Interchange_Fees_220121.pdf https://www.mastercard.co.uk/content/dam/public/mastercardco... [2] https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees.pdf https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/vis... [3] https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/na/us/en/documents/merchant-rates-2022-2023-apr22-2022.pdf https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    I asked ChatGPT about this. It said for interchange portion, sure. I'm not sure if EU payment processors finds a way to make it up in different portions of the fees so that it evens out to the same 1-3%?
    - piperswe 3y ago
      What's with all these "I asked ChatGPT" comments? I've seen quite a few, and I don't think any of them have added anything to a conversation.
      - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
        How else would you quickly try to understand complex research topics like: "how much are payment processing fees in north america compared to europe/asia"?
        piperswe 3y ago
        I'd probably type that into a search engine, come across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee, and have all the information I'm looking for.
    - przemub 3y ago
      Not really, no. It's more than enough for them to operate on. The only downside from the American point of view is that banks very rarely offer cashback, points, etc.
      - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
        > In Europe, credit card processing fees are generally lower compared to other regions, partly due to regulatory caps on interchange fees. For consumer debit and credit cards issued within the European Economic Area (EEA), the interchange fees are capped at 0.2% and 0.3% of the transaction value, respectively. However, total processing costs for merchants can be higher once all fees are included, often ranging from 1% to 2% per transaction.
- xordon 3y ago
  The fees are significantly lower in Europe, the rewards/kick backs given to card holders are also less.

jsyang00 3y ago

basically deal goes thru is p(republican admin takes over) + p(win in court) + p(settlement deal of some sort).

option 3y ago
You should replace all + with * in your formula.
- jsyang00 3y ago
  any of these would result in deal going through
- ghayes 3y ago
  Or use log-probabilities
zht 3y ago
a republican admin denied Visa + plaid... so I wouldn't assume anything
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
Trump won in 2016, then lost in 2020 because he lost XYZ groups of voters. All of the people who didn't vote for Trump in 2020, why would they flip from Democrat to Republican and vote for him in 2024?
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  Trump got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, IIRC. While some people most likely did flip to Biden in 2020, there were also many, many people who voted 3rd-party in 2016 who didn't in 2020, and I think there was also higher voter turnout. The danger, as usual for Democrats, isn't people flipping to Trump, it's people not bothering to vote (or giving it to another party like the Greens) because they don't like the Dems' candidate. For the most part, Hillary didn't lose in 2016 because people voted for Trump instead of her; she lost because voters who normally would have voted (D) either stayed at home or voted for a protest party. Biden didn't have so much of a problem this way, for various reasons (voters liked him better to begin with, and they had just lived through the horrors of 4 years of a Trump presidency).

AzzyHN 3y ago

I mean, T-Mobile bought Sprint. Antitrust laws might as well not exist in America

mikeyouse 3y ago
It’s unfortunate for business planning but probably fortunate for consumers that the FTC and DOJ change leadership with presidential terms —- Biden’s FTC is a much different entity than Trump’s was when Sprint and T Mobile merged.
dylan604 3y ago
I mean, Spirit wasn't sold to JetBlue, and Adobe/Figma called off their courtship (likely due to fear of regulator disapproval) with in the past few months. But before T-mobile bought Sprint, ATT was blocked from acquiring T-mobile.
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
  This is a recent uptick in enforcement actions. Meanwhile, TicketMaster/LiveNation/(scalping thing) has demonstrated a textbook consumer-harming monopoly for DECADES with impunity. DECADES. And politicians and agencies wave hands over "inflation" while the four U.S. meat producers report 90% profit increases (after whining about a "labor shortage"). NINETY PERCENT increases. Corporate toadies in Congress sit back and pretend that the Fed's feckless interest-rate hikes are all we can do. Disgusting.
nradov 3y ago
Sprint wouldn't have survived as an independent company. They made a fatal mistake by betting the company on WiMax and then the rest of the industry decided to go with 4G LTE instead. This left Sprint without enough capital to build out a competitive nationwide 5G network. Allowing T-Mobile to buy Sprint was a better outcome for consumers than allowing Sprint to slowly go bankrupt as there will now be three viable nationwide networks.
scarface_74 3y ago
This is completely different. If T-Mobile hadn’t bought Sprint, Sprint would have gone out of business. It had bedn losing money for years. Then the spectrum they had licenses to - the main reason T-Mobile wanted sprint, would have been auctioned off and probably still would have had t-mobile buy it since they needed it the most. Besides At&T was already dealing with a ton of debt and if Verizon had bought it, the landscape would have been less competitive

CPLX 3y ago

There’s absolutely no fucking chance this deal goes through in the current climate. It’s not clear why they are even trying. It’s not just the Biden antitrust contingency it’s going to be Visa/MC and the other big banks lining up against it too. And there’s a non-trivial coalition of Republicans also against this kind of thing.