5 ms·

Every terminal should be required to run any legitimate card on its own network.

by sunflowerfly 2y ago

chinathrow 2y ago
And every transaction should have a fixed cost, no matter what the amount is.
- milesskorpen 2y ago
  Risk & value scale with transaction size
  - yxhuvud 2y ago
    And with account type.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Why? If I want to make a terminal, why should that be illegal. What regulators should really focus on in my opinion is any uncompetitive contractual obligations visa is imposing on vendors.
- zug_zug 2y ago
  Because interoperability is key to competition...? Imagine a universe where different hardware doesn't interoperate (e.g. androids can't call iphones, Macs can't use google.com, ChatGPT is only accessible to Comcast subscribers) I hope we can all agree it's a nightmare scenario. Sometimes the free market gets it right without intervention, sadly sometimes it does not.
  - cmeacham98 2y ago
    > androids can't call iphones Oh, you mean like how iOS has a private text chat system Androids can't access, and they're only kinda partially giving access to some of the features a decade later? Wouldn't that be crazy.
  - matwood 2y ago
    > androids can't call iPhones Nextel had exactly this with the walkie talkie feature and the market sorted it out.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I can imagine a universe where payment systems selectively interoperate. It is pretty common now. tells can have multiple pieces of hardware.
MBCook 2y ago
Or we could, you know, just have a reasonable government option. Like ACH for debit cards. This seems like a perfect opportunity for a common good. Something to make transactions easier and cheaper and help keep the economy running. But that would be big-government-communism-anti-jobs-whatever-people-are-mad-at. So that’s not how we do it. We’re getting FedNow (eventually). Seems like you could built a debit card processor on top of that. You may still need Visa/MC/whatever for international customers to use debit. But American has a lot of Americans doing debit from American bank accounts.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > We’re getting FedNow (eventually) It’s technically live [1]. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organizations#fi https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organi...
  - MBCook 2y ago
    Right, I knew it had launched in the last few months. But most people don’t have it yet. None of the big banks are on that list. It’ll just take time.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      There is probably some backroom dealing regarding the future of TCH's RTP rails [1]. [1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp
      - MBCook 2y ago
        I’m gonna be honest I’m a little worried that FedNow is too little too late. If it’s never widely deployed, people won’t know it exists and ask for it. And that means the banks can continue to push their Venmo competitor Zelle. And I’m guessing they somehow make more money that way. Or maybe push people to their 1st Local Town Visa credit card offer, now with 0.05% cash back!
throwway120385 2y ago
They do, sort of. What happens IME is that the terminal is linked to a gateway, and then the gateway links to a processor, and then the processor contacts the issuer through the payment network. Most gateways can contact many processors, and many processors can contact any issuer through several payment networks. What seems to be happening is that the payment networks are making exclusive deals with big issuers like banks and these deals are allowing specific payment networks to have a lot of pricing power with merchants, who have to pay a fee to everyone involved in the transaction(gateway, processor, etc).
YawningAngel 2y ago
You can't process a Mastercard transaction over Visanet even if you wanted to: * The network won't know who to route the BIN range to * Even if it did, they may not be connected * Visa and Mastercard, although very similar, put different pieces of data in different places and have different business rules, so you're not necessarily going to have the information you need to process a transaction where you expect to find it nor is your processing of that transaction necessarily acceptable to Visanet. * Visa doesn't know Mastercard's PEK, so they cannot encrypt the PIN as the issuer would expect it even if they wanted to * The EMV crypto might not work, although I'm not sure These are just the problems that occur to me off the top of my head. They are solveable, but it would require a decade-long regulatory commitment with serious weight behind it.

Every terminal should be required to run any legitimate card on its own network.

chinathrow 2y ago

And every transaction should have a fixed cost, no matter what the amount is.

milesskorpen 2y ago
Risk & value scale with transaction size
- yxhuvud 2y ago
  And with account type.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

Why? If I want to make a terminal, why should that be illegal. What regulators should really focus on in my opinion is any uncompetitive contractual obligations visa is imposing on vendors.

zug_zug 2y ago
Because interoperability is key to competition...? Imagine a universe where different hardware doesn't interoperate (e.g. androids can't call iphones, Macs can't use google.com, ChatGPT is only accessible to Comcast subscribers) I hope we can all agree it's a nightmare scenario. Sometimes the free market gets it right without intervention, sadly sometimes it does not.
- cmeacham98 2y ago
  > androids can't call iphones Oh, you mean like how iOS has a private text chat system Androids can't access, and they're only kinda partially giving access to some of the features a decade later? Wouldn't that be crazy.
- matwood 2y ago
  > androids can't call iPhones Nextel had exactly this with the walkie talkie feature and the market sorted it out.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I can imagine a universe where payment systems selectively interoperate. It is pretty common now. tells can have multiple pieces of hardware.

MBCook 2y ago

Or we could, you know, just have a reasonable government option. Like ACH for debit cards. This seems like a perfect opportunity for a common good. Something to make transactions easier and cheaper and help keep the economy running. But that would be big-government-communism-anti-jobs-whatever-people-are-mad-at. So that’s not how we do it. We’re getting FedNow (eventually). Seems like you could built a debit card processor on top of that. You may still need Visa/MC/whatever for international customers to use debit. But American has a lot of Americans doing debit from American bank accounts.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> We’re getting FedNow (eventually) It’s technically live [1]. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organizations#fi https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organi...
- MBCook 2y ago
  Right, I knew it had launched in the last few months. But most people don’t have it yet. None of the big banks are on that list. It’ll just take time.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    There is probably some backroom dealing regarding the future of TCH's RTP rails [1]. [1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp
    - MBCook 2y ago
      I’m gonna be honest I’m a little worried that FedNow is too little too late. If it’s never widely deployed, people won’t know it exists and ask for it. And that means the banks can continue to push their Venmo competitor Zelle. And I’m guessing they somehow make more money that way. Or maybe push people to their 1st Local Town Visa credit card offer, now with 0.05% cash back!

throwway120385 2y ago

They do, sort of. What happens IME is that the terminal is linked to a gateway, and then the gateway links to a processor, and then the processor contacts the issuer through the payment network. Most gateways can contact many processors, and many processors can contact any issuer through several payment networks. What seems to be happening is that the payment networks are making exclusive deals with big issuers like banks and these deals are allowing specific payment networks to have a lot of pricing power with merchants, who have to pay a fee to everyone involved in the transaction(gateway, processor, etc).

YawningAngel 2y ago

You can't process a Mastercard transaction over Visanet even if you wanted to: * The network won't know who to route the BIN range to * Even if it did, they may not be connected * Visa and Mastercard, although very similar, put different pieces of data in different places and have different business rules, so you're not necessarily going to have the information you need to process a transaction where you expect to find it nor is your processing of that transaction necessarily acceptable to Visanet. * Visa doesn't know Mastercard's PEK, so they cannot encrypt the PIN as the issuer would expect it even if they wanted to * The EMV crypto might not work, although I'm not sure These are just the problems that occur to me off the top of my head. They are solveable, but it would require a decade-long regulatory commitment with serious weight behind it.