4 ms·

Are they? Or the real mafia took over US healthcare long time ago? How about Visa/MC monopoly taking three pennies from every damn transaction for three decades

by lvl155 2y ago

Are they? Or the real mafia took over US healthcare long time ago? How about Visa/MC monopoly taking three pennies from every damn transaction for three decades now? I detest most of the original Paypal crew but there are far worse offenders in corporate America. Hate him or not, Musk made EVs a reality. Thiel backed some of the biggest startups in modern history. Same for Reid Hoffman. These guys are your typical American businessmen.

wesselbindt 2y ago
> These guys are your typical American businessmen Oh come on, I don't think they're that bad
lxgr 2y ago
> How about Visa/MC monopoly taking three pennies from every damn transaction If they were, who do you think would be paying for your 1-3 pennies of cashback/rewards points on every said transaction? The bulk of card payment fees goes to the issuers as interchange, not to Visa/MC or the acquiring bank or payment service provider. That's not to say that the competitive landscape in that space doesn't leave anything to be desired, but nothing will get improved by misstating the problem.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > If they were, who do you think would be paying for your 1-3 pennies of cashback/rewards points on every said transaction? The bulk of card payment fees goes to the issuers as interchange, not to Visa/MC or the acquiring bank or payment service provider. Visa/MC and everyone else along the chain makes insane amounts of money even on relative pittances, simply because of the market size they corner. That's particularly obscene in Europe - we already have SEPA Direct Debit and Instant Payment, we could rework national schemes like Girocard (that worked under the precursor scheme of SEPA DD) to work with it, but instead we add VISA and MC's debit card schemes to the payment flow for no reason at all.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    They earn a non-negligible cut, yes, but stating that they're "taking 1-3 pennies" is simply not true (or rather, you'd have to expand your statement to "the card payments industry in collaboration with consumers"). Rewards and interchange foster a very bad market structure (it's a kind of "tragedy of the commons" in that it's the rational move to participate in this scheme as a consumer with good credit, and consumers with bad credit are ultimately paying for it), and the EU (in my view correctly) recognized that and capped most interchange rates significantly. But if you look into the details, you'll find that they did not do anything about Visa's or Mastercard's share of the card fees (at least so far). > we could rework national schemes like Girocard That would need a lot of reworking to be a real competitor. Girocard does not have a viable story for online payments (no actual processing capabilities beyond some Apple Pay only pilots, importantly no dispute resolution mechanism, which is critical for online payments, etc). It is a great low-fee payment method at the POS, though, and I'd love to see it compete EU-wide!
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > They earn a non-negligible cut, yes, but stating that they're "taking 1-3 pennies" is simply not true (or rather, you'd have to expand your statement to "the card payments industry in collaboration with consumers"). That's the range of fees that the merchants have to pay [1], subtract about 1% for "cashback" programs, and that leaves 1-2% to Mastercard, the payment processor service and the banks of the consumer and the store. It's a hefty amount of money, no matter what - and MC has a very healthy profit margin [2]. > Girocard does not have a viable story for online payments (no actual processing capabilities beyond some Apple Pay only pilots, importantly no dispute resolution mechanism, which is critical for online payments, etc). I'm talking about physical presence payments primarily. But for online, SEPA Instant Transfer works out just fine - 10 seconds processing time from payment initiation to confirmation for the merchant, and dispute/chargeback has been a thing in SEPA Direct Debit and SEPA transfers from the start. Only thing is quite a few banks don't support it because their core IT is decades old. [1] https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-credit-card-processing-fees-costs-america/?pStoreID=@@6qFsI https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-credit-card-proc... [2] https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/MA/financials/annual/income-statement https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/MA/financials/annual/...
stavros 2y ago
> Visa/MC monopoly taking three pennies from every damn transaction for three decades now Three pennies for every dollar!
micromacrofoot 2y ago
All of the above — "typical american businessmen" isn't an answer to any question
exceptione 2y ago
Problem A detected. What about Problem B? Problem A is not bad, because problem B is bad too. Let 's talk about other things of A.
nonrandomstring 2y ago
> typical American businessmen But the job description was for "typical American statesmen". Business skills are great. But I think people over-estimate their value on the world stage. Here's a reminder [0] of the brief. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/job-vacancy https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/job-vacancy

by lvl155 2y ago

wesselbindt 2y ago

> These guys are your typical American businessmen Oh come on, I don't think they're that bad

lxgr 2y ago

> How about Visa/MC monopoly taking three pennies from every damn transaction If they were, who do you think would be paying for your 1-3 pennies of cashback/rewards points on every said transaction? The bulk of card payment fees goes to the issuers as interchange, not to Visa/MC or the acquiring bank or payment service provider. That's not to say that the competitive landscape in that space doesn't leave anything to be desired, but nothing will get improved by misstating the problem.

mschuster91 2y ago
> If they were, who do you think would be paying for your 1-3 pennies of cashback/rewards points on every said transaction? The bulk of card payment fees goes to the issuers as interchange, not to Visa/MC or the acquiring bank or payment service provider. Visa/MC and everyone else along the chain makes insane amounts of money even on relative pittances, simply because of the market size they corner. That's particularly obscene in Europe - we already have SEPA Direct Debit and Instant Payment, we could rework national schemes like Girocard (that worked under the precursor scheme of SEPA DD) to work with it, but instead we add VISA and MC's debit card schemes to the payment flow for no reason at all.
- lxgr 2y ago
  They earn a non-negligible cut, yes, but stating that they're "taking 1-3 pennies" is simply not true (or rather, you'd have to expand your statement to "the card payments industry in collaboration with consumers"). Rewards and interchange foster a very bad market structure (it's a kind of "tragedy of the commons" in that it's the rational move to participate in this scheme as a consumer with good credit, and consumers with bad credit are ultimately paying for it), and the EU (in my view correctly) recognized that and capped most interchange rates significantly. But if you look into the details, you'll find that they did not do anything about Visa's or Mastercard's share of the card fees (at least so far). > we could rework national schemes like Girocard That would need a lot of reworking to be a real competitor. Girocard does not have a viable story for online payments (no actual processing capabilities beyond some Apple Pay only pilots, importantly no dispute resolution mechanism, which is critical for online payments, etc). It is a great low-fee payment method at the POS, though, and I'd love to see it compete EU-wide!
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > They earn a non-negligible cut, yes, but stating that they're "taking 1-3 pennies" is simply not true (or rather, you'd have to expand your statement to "the card payments industry in collaboration with consumers"). That's the range of fees that the merchants have to pay [1], subtract about 1% for "cashback" programs, and that leaves 1-2% to Mastercard, the payment processor service and the banks of the consumer and the store. It's a hefty amount of money, no matter what - and MC has a very healthy profit margin [2]. > Girocard does not have a viable story for online payments (no actual processing capabilities beyond some Apple Pay only pilots, importantly no dispute resolution mechanism, which is critical for online payments, etc). I'm talking about physical presence payments primarily. But for online, SEPA Instant Transfer works out just fine - 10 seconds processing time from payment initiation to confirmation for the merchant, and dispute/chargeback has been a thing in SEPA Direct Debit and SEPA transfers from the start. Only thing is quite a few banks don't support it because their core IT is decades old. [1] https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-credit-card-processing-fees-costs-america/?pStoreID=@@6qFsI https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-credit-card-proc... [2] https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/MA/financials/annual/income-statement https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/MA/financials/annual/...

stavros 2y ago

> Visa/MC monopoly taking three pennies from every damn transaction for three decades now Three pennies for every dollar!

micromacrofoot 2y ago

All of the above — "typical american businessmen" isn't an answer to any question

exceptione 2y ago

Problem A detected. What about Problem B? Problem A is not bad, because problem B is bad too. Let 's talk about other things of A.

nonrandomstring 2y ago

> typical American businessmen But the job description was for "typical American statesmen". Business skills are great. But I think people over-estimate their value on the world stage. Here's a reminder [0] of the brief. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/job-vacancy https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/job-vacancy