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It depends for some of us, though. I have a credit card that gives me 5% back on Amazon purchases. Another card gives me 4.5% back on travel and dining expens

by kelnos 2y ago

It depends for some of us, though. I have a credit card that gives me 5% back on Amazon purchases. Another card gives me 4.5% back on travel and dining expenses. That card also gives me 15% back on Lyft rides. Even if those businesss were to offer me a 2% or 3% discount to use FedNow, I would stick with the credit card. And on top of that, I really do value things the credit cards offer, like fraud protection. If I pay for something with a credit card and never receive the goods, I can get the card company to issue a chargeback, and pay nothing. If I buy something with FedNow and never receive the goods, that money is just gone.

saywhanow 2y ago
The protection offered by credit cards has real value. Some anecdotes from this year: I attempted to use LetsRoam over a year ago. It was a spectacular failure and offered no value. Cancelled and all was well. Over a year later they started charging me two monthly fees for who knows what reason. I called them, they bumbled around, and referred it asynchronously to some other department. I’m three months into these mysterious charges. All have been clawed back. I tried educative.io and frequently encountered non-sense that was objectively, demonstrably false being presented with high confidence. I asked for a refund, and they said they don’t do that. I wasn’t really asking… I paid a $2k deposit for a Harley that the dealer didn’t have in hand yet. There were unreasonable delays (I suspect they sold the bike to someone else for more), and the dealer’s policy was to not refund the deposit, but to only allow me to apply it to another motorcycle. Guess who else has policies. Because of the amount and timeframe, this was a little more involved, but still only took 15 minutes of my time. I paid to park, but it appeared to fail. So, I tried again. I was doubled billed. Idk who I’d contact to request a refund. So, dispute it is. I open my banks app, click dispute, and am refunded. It’s saved me untold hours of dealing with incompetence and/or maliciousness. I simply don’t deal with this BS. I behave ethically (as best as one can judge that for themselves), but as soon as I hit abusive commercial sociopathy, I disengage. As far as I’m concerned, Visa / Chase are earning their 3%.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Nobody is saying that it has no value. The issue is that it has a finite value and the consumer should have the ability to choose how much they value it in a given context, instead of Visa prohibiting merchants from pricing the cost of that system into the customer's decision to use it. If the total cost of processing fees and chargeback fraud in some industry is 10% and you want to pay the extra 10%, that's fine -- as long as people who don't think it's worth that much have the option to opt out of the insurance and pocket the 10%.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> I have a credit card that gives me 5% back on Amazon purchases. Another card gives me 4.5% back on travel and dining expenses. That card also gives me 15% back on Lyft rides. Even if those businesss were to offer me a 2% or 3% discount to use FedNow, I would stick with the credit card. These are promotions. The card company is gambling that most of your purchases won't be in the promotion category, so they'll come out ahead even if they have to eat 2% when you buy something on Amazon as long as they make 2% when you buy anything else and less than half of your purchases are on Amazon. But if they're making out on net then you're losing out on net, which has to be the case on average or they'd stop offering it. Many of the promotions are also deals with the merchant. Maybe they're not eating 2% when you buy something on Amazon, maybe Amazon is offering that extra 2% to cause you to perceive a 5% discount and then buy from Amazon instead of Walmart. In which case they're not trying to get you to use FedNow for that. > And on top of that, I really do value things the credit cards offer, like fraud protection. If I pay for something with a credit card and never receive the goods, I can get the card company to issue a chargeback, and pay nothing. If I buy something with FedNow and never receive the goods, that money is just gone. The converse of this is buyer fraud. Fraudulent buyers dispute the charge even though the goods were delivered. Merchants then have to incorporate the cost of this into the prices you pay whether you use a credit card or not -- which is another reason why capping the surcharge at 3% is anti-competitive. A competing payment method which is less susceptible to buyer fraud should cost less to use, and then you can decide if you want to pay for the insurance or not. But Visa makes you pay even if you trust the merchant not to defraud you and would rather have the discount than have a greater ability to defraud them.
- eurleif 2y ago
  >even if you trust the merchant not to defraud you I understand that your point is to do with personal choice, and being able to navigate pros and cons oneself, so I'm not exactly contradicting anything you said; but after an experience I had with Best Buy a couple of years ago, I wouldn't trust any business not to defraud me (or at least, not to put me in a position where I need to dispute a charge). I ordered a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra for delivery from them. When I received the package, it was an S22 Plus instead. I explained the situation to their customer service, who told me to ship it back to them for a refund. Then they shipped it right back to me, with a note saying that they couldn't accept the return because it was the wrong item. (Yes, because they shipped me the wrong item! That was the point!) I don't think Best Buy was intentionally trying to defraud me -- it was presumably just crossed wires on their end -- but a credit card dispute saved me a lot of aggravation, and perhaps money. My credit card company informed me that when they reached out to Best Buy to get their side of the story, they just repeated that I'd returned the wrong item. Since I'd already explained that to the credit card company, they understood that wasn't a satisfactory explanation, and resolved the dispute in my favor.

by kelnos 2y ago

saywhanow 2y ago

The protection offered by credit cards has real value. Some anecdotes from this year: I attempted to use LetsRoam over a year ago. It was a spectacular failure and offered no value. Cancelled and all was well. Over a year later they started charging me two monthly fees for who knows what reason. I called them, they bumbled around, and referred it asynchronously to some other department. I’m three months into these mysterious charges. All have been clawed back. I tried educative.io and frequently encountered non-sense that was objectively, demonstrably false being presented with high confidence. I asked for a refund, and they said they don’t do that. I wasn’t really asking… I paid a $2k deposit for a Harley that the dealer didn’t have in hand yet. There were unreasonable delays (I suspect they sold the bike to someone else for more), and the dealer’s policy was to not refund the deposit, but to only allow me to apply it to another motorcycle. Guess who else has policies. Because of the amount and timeframe, this was a little more involved, but still only took 15 minutes of my time. I paid to park, but it appeared to fail. So, I tried again. I was doubled billed. Idk who I’d contact to request a refund. So, dispute it is. I open my banks app, click dispute, and am refunded. It’s saved me untold hours of dealing with incompetence and/or maliciousness. I simply don’t deal with this BS. I behave ethically (as best as one can judge that for themselves), but as soon as I hit abusive commercial sociopathy, I disengage. As far as I’m concerned, Visa / Chase are earning their 3%.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Nobody is saying that it has no value. The issue is that it has a finite value and the consumer should have the ability to choose how much they value it in a given context, instead of Visa prohibiting merchants from pricing the cost of that system into the customer's decision to use it. If the total cost of processing fees and chargeback fraud in some industry is 10% and you want to pay the extra 10%, that's fine -- as long as people who don't think it's worth that much have the option to opt out of the insurance and pocket the 10%.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> I have a credit card that gives me 5% back on Amazon purchases. Another card gives me 4.5% back on travel and dining expenses. That card also gives me 15% back on Lyft rides. Even if those businesss were to offer me a 2% or 3% discount to use FedNow, I would stick with the credit card. These are promotions. The card company is gambling that most of your purchases won't be in the promotion category, so they'll come out ahead even if they have to eat 2% when you buy something on Amazon as long as they make 2% when you buy anything else and less than half of your purchases are on Amazon. But if they're making out on net then you're losing out on net, which has to be the case on average or they'd stop offering it. Many of the promotions are also deals with the merchant. Maybe they're not eating 2% when you buy something on Amazon, maybe Amazon is offering that extra 2% to cause you to perceive a 5% discount and then buy from Amazon instead of Walmart. In which case they're not trying to get you to use FedNow for that. > And on top of that, I really do value things the credit cards offer, like fraud protection. If I pay for something with a credit card and never receive the goods, I can get the card company to issue a chargeback, and pay nothing. If I buy something with FedNow and never receive the goods, that money is just gone. The converse of this is buyer fraud. Fraudulent buyers dispute the charge even though the goods were delivered. Merchants then have to incorporate the cost of this into the prices you pay whether you use a credit card or not -- which is another reason why capping the surcharge at 3% is anti-competitive. A competing payment method which is less susceptible to buyer fraud should cost less to use, and then you can decide if you want to pay for the insurance or not. But Visa makes you pay even if you trust the merchant not to defraud you and would rather have the discount than have a greater ability to defraud them.

eurleif 2y ago
>even if you trust the merchant not to defraud you I understand that your point is to do with personal choice, and being able to navigate pros and cons oneself, so I'm not exactly contradicting anything you said; but after an experience I had with Best Buy a couple of years ago, I wouldn't trust any business not to defraud me (or at least, not to put me in a position where I need to dispute a charge). I ordered a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra for delivery from them. When I received the package, it was an S22 Plus instead. I explained the situation to their customer service, who told me to ship it back to them for a refund. Then they shipped it right back to me, with a note saying that they couldn't accept the return because it was the wrong item. (Yes, because they shipped me the wrong item! That was the point!) I don't think Best Buy was intentionally trying to defraud me -- it was presumably just crossed wires on their end -- but a credit card dispute saved me a lot of aggravation, and perhaps money. My credit card company informed me that when they reached out to Best Buy to get their side of the story, they just repeated that I'd returned the wrong item. Since I'd already explained that to the credit card company, they understood that wasn't a satisfactory explanation, and resolved the dispute in my favor.