6 ms·

The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, but everyone just takes it for granted until they’re reminded how

by pavlov 1y ago

The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, but everyone just takes it for granted until they’re reminded how much worse the rest of the world has it. In the EU, card payment fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. In the US, these interchange fees are about 2%. US businesses pay over $100 billion annually in these fees to card networks. If the fees were capped like in the EU, 85% of that money would stay with the businesses rather than feed the duopoly.

itake 1y ago
Is there information on EU vs US credit limits? How do the account fees compare between EU and US?
- cbzoiav 1y ago
  Most credit cards in the UK at least (same cap) have no standard account fee. Those that do come with other perks / beyond the 'world elite' etc side Mastercard/visa aren't seeing that money - its going to the issuing bank. Bank accounts also generaly have no standard fees (and a lot of other things we take forgranted - faster payments (if I send money to a friend/business I can do it instantly for free without needing a third party solution), standing orders, direct debit etc. - that make banking far easier than in the US). There is also regulation in place that restricts predatory fee practices, getting customers into revolving debt and protection that makes card issuers liable for purchases (Section 75 - e.g. if I order something paying with my credit card and the merchant doesn't pay, the card issuer is legally liable / I can claim from them and its on them to get it from the merchant)
- alexriddle 1y ago
  Other than Amex for airline points I don’t spend a penny on banking, all the standard services (eg transfers, bill payments, cash withdrawals, deposits) are free (in the U.K.) with no monthly fee.
- lillecarl 1y ago
  I pay 3€ per month to "Nordea" for "unlimited" accounts and one VISA debit card.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    My banks pays me more than that per month to use their debit cards.
    - lillecarl 1y ago
      So are you the product at your bank or why would they pay you to use their services?
      - carlosjobim 1y ago
        Fractional reserve banking. Banks would even pay interest on money you had in your account in times past. And then the fact that banks and card companies are charging merchants a fee for transactions and have margin to give back some of those fees to the customers.
        lillecarl 1y ago
        I still get interest, it's really bad though. And the transaction fees are very low here (someone said 0.2% but I don't know) which should cover a lot of infrastructure, fraud and such.
        carlosjobim 1y ago
        Transaction fees have a great variation depending on which contract the business has with banks or payment providers. It's not a set percentage for a country. For example a large retailer with a huge number of transactions per day will have a deal for the lowest fees possible, and then those fees differ if the card is credit or debit, national or foreign, and between standard or premium cards, and private or business cards. If you have a job, your bank should give you a premium card and then you will get cash back instead of having to pay your bank. If your bank doesn't offer this, it's just a matter of switching to any European bank of your preference.
- TMWNN 1y ago
  >Is there information on EU vs US credit limits? I would be very interested in this as well. My understanding is that cashback cards of the type we have everywhere in the US (e.g. Amazon Amex = 5% back on Amazon purchases, Wells Fargo Active Cash = 2% back on everything) don't exist elsewhere. Another example: I just earned $1000 from Chase Sapphire as a new customer bonus for diverting $5K of the spending I would do elsewhere on that card over three months.
  - Detrytus 1y ago
    That's just your bank giving back some (but not all) of those 2+% interchange fees. Basically, in EU you have low fees, so credit cards are boring, they offer almost zero perks (because there's no money to finance those). No one really cares about what brand of card they get, only about their credit limit. In the US you are charged high fees on every purchase, and then the bank uses your own money to bribe you, or encourage particular types of (excessive) spending, or just make you addicted to credit card debt.
    - TMWNN 1y ago
      >That's just your bank giving back some (but not all) of those 2% interchange fees. On the contrary, for someone like me who pays off my balances each month, if I get 2% back for every transaction, I am breaking even on those fees if assuming that I pay 100% of the fees, which of course isn't true; the merchant pays some of that. So really, I come out slightly ahead. For something like the Amex I mentioned with its 5% back on Amazon, I am coming out well ahead. > and then the bank uses your own money to bribe you, or encourage particular types of (excessive) spending, or just make you addicted to credit card debt. Oh, good grief. So EU credit card companies don't do this? I had no idea they offered cards purely as a charitable venture. I love how you stacked up all those sins just on the US side. Keep this sort of /r/AmericaBad nonsense out of HN.
      - Detrytus 1y ago
        > So EU credit card companies don't do this? No, as I said, they don't because of the interchange fees limit: they simply don't have money to finance any perks. Sometimes you get travel insurance, with the card that charges 200 EUR annual fee, sometimes you get some rewards program, where you collect the points, but those points are typically valued at 0.0001 cent, so no one really bothers earning them. Credit cards in Europe are really boring, commodity products, not status symbols or coupon books. > assuming that I pay 100% of the fees, which of course isn't true; the merchant pays some of that. You are paying that one way or the other: merchant will pass their fees on you by raising prices.
- laurencerowe 1y ago
  I was really surprised that it was normal to have account fees in the US. In the UK banking is free, at least until you hit an overdraft charge. They even made Bank ATMs fee free whatever bank you are with around 2000 (non bank ATMs still have a charge.)
  - drdec 1y ago
    If you pick the right bank, you can get the same deal in the US. Actually, you can get no fees at any ATM
    - itake 1y ago
      schwab has no fees at any atm globally :)
867-5309 1y ago
that's only a very recent change, and not universally rolled out. for decades shops charged ~£3 "connection fee" for paying by credit card, no matter the purchase amount, and many still (probably illegally) enforce a minimum spend if paying by credit or debit card. like when paying or withdrawing money abroad, it's just a lottery as to the "fees" you'll be charged not because there are such fees, but because someone in the '70s created super advanced tech to detect usage outside the country of issuance, and everyone got used to that
- laurencerowe 1y ago
  As I remember it credit card minimums were only a thing at smaller shops but usually didn’t apply to debit cards.
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    Credit card chargebacks are very expensive for a vendor, you don't want credit card purchases for 1$ items.
- criemen 1y ago
  Visa and Mastercard have a net profit margin in the order of 50%. Do you think that's justified for the service they're providing, and is indicative of a healthy market/competition?
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    It's indicative of a healthy bankroll to fund superPACs and that's what matters!
- btown 1y ago
  A bit pedantic, but especially relevant in a conversation about government-permitted monopoly power: while requiring minimum spend might be in breach of the payment networks' contracts, and may give rise to _civil_ liability (and punitive measures towards the merchants), we shouldn't use language like "illegal" that implies that government would have any interest in, or capacity for, proactive enforcement. When we use language that evokes the mechanisms of state and implies they'd be used to enforce a monopoly power, we imbue that power with the gravity of those mechanisms, and further entrench it as a "way of life." We should be especially careful of that when said monopoly/duopoly essentially creates and enables a private taxation of the primary source of credit to many in the world!
benced 1y ago
People always cite the first-order benefits of this regulation but don't look into anything else. To be clear, I haven't either but what I would look for is: - are real prices cheaper for consumers? - is economic activity higher or lower (i.e. maybe credit cards encourage purchases?) - does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? - is lowering credit card penetration, particularly for people bad at doing interest math a good thing? - is making cash or debit cards relatively more appealing good? My vague impression is that the studies on these questions are mixed (am I wrong? A quick Google found several EC funded ones which I'm a little suspicious of). Note that the US has 4 credible payment processing networks but the fees have remained constant. My suspicion is that 3ish% is the optimal value or a very large anti-trust investigation (not a price cap) is in order.
- bigDinosaur 1y ago
  They're set at whatever the payment networks can get away with. There's nothing that says that's good for anyone else, although it is very good for Mastercard and Visa.
  - AdieuToLogic 1y ago
    > They're set at whatever the payment networks can get away with. There's nothing that says that's good for anyone else, although it is very good for Mastercard and Visa. MasterCard and Visa are more like clearinghouses. The decision makers are their members having "access to the rails", issuers and processors, which are either banks, subsidiaries owned by banks, or companies sponsored by the aforementioned two (which very often includes one or more banks getting an ownership percentage).
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    There are several ways to reduce costs underlying payments. One is better IT. Notice that IT infrastructure has improved and dropped in cost by immeasurable amounts since those 3% fees were first instituted. Another way is to reduce card fraud. Notice that we’ve had excellent solutions to many types of fraud for decades now, but online shopping still requires us to enter 16-digit easily-stolen numbers into websites, and so fraud is enormously higher than it needs to be. With biometrics and modern smartphones, in person fraud should be very low. A better way to look at these networks is to understand two things: the first is that at one level, they’re an insurance business that makes a profit from insuring against fraud, and reducing fraud would reduce the profit margins they can make from that business. And a second way to understand them is as guardians of a hugely profitable network portal that’s very hard to compete with, and they’re charging as much as the market can bear for that service.
DevX101 1y ago
0.2% should be about the correct rate. WeChat in China has zero transaction fee in the system and a 0.1% fee on withdrawals. Visa/MasterCard amounts to a private tax on the economy. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon, since the US allows rent-seeking middlemen like Visa/MC, TurboTax, and PBMs (pharmacy drugs), to continue their operation as long as they keep funding the right politicians.
- geokon 1y ago
  As far as I understand with WeChat you can't disputes purchases and do things like chargebacks. If your phone is somehow stolen and account drained (they'd need to know your pin..) then you're probably be screwed? So there isn't the concept of insurance as far as I understand. Not to defend the credit card companies in the slightest.. but its a bit apples to oranges
  - geokon 1y ago
    EDIT: Arguably "insurance" is actually an artificial problem creates to justify the cards' fees. The intentionally didn't implement CC chips for the longest time, insisted on signatures, and now support insecure things like contactless payment - thereby ensuring theft/fraud still exists and necessitating insurance (for a very marginal increase in user convenience) The only plus side I can see is that you can buy stuff from shady ass websites and sleep comfortably knowing you can do a chargeback later.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  What are UnionPay's fees? That's the correct comparison, not WeChat. PayPal/CashApp have zero transaction fee as well for person-to-person transfers.
hopelite 1y ago
That money goes to buying off politicians though. So it’s a good investment to make the American people pay for their own robbery.
pzo 1y ago
Unfortunately this only applies for physical transactions. For online payments this is still around 3% - reason why stripe cannot be cheaper. Wish we had something like transferwise is a wrapper around those QRCide payments so can pay cheap internationally as well
isodev 1y ago
The EU (the ECB) is actively working towards a system similar to SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) but for cards [0]. This would enable card transfers to also become faster (SEPA is instantaneous even cross-border within the EU) also allow for operations not depending on Visa or Mastercard. There is a major EU effort to develop an alternative 'instant payment' system that doesn't depend on Visa or Mastercard called Wero [1]. [0] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pubbydate/2019/html/ecb.cardpaymentsineu_currentlandscapeandfutureprospects201904~30d4de2fc4.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pubbydate/2019/html/ecb.card... [1] https://wero-wallet.eu https://wero-wallet.eu
- omgwtfbbq123 1y ago
  wero is a private company, from Belgium, not an EU initiative. In the same vibe you have Lydia in France that is successful.
  - isodev 1y ago
    I think the EU calls for a decentralised approach with multiple cross border providers. Wero is technically from Benelux as there are origins in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. There are also other initiatives in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, … to create alternative card payment system that is also resilient to internet failure.
- doikor 1y ago
  There is also the Digital Euro project. Though no timeline exists yet. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
- elric 1y ago
  I had never heard of wero, despite living in Belgium and having been actively involved in fintech. Android also tells me that the app is not available in my country. Sounds like it's supposed to replace Payconiq (which is currently the biggest mobile payment service in Belgium). The fragmentation of payment services is starting to annoy me. I can use cash or cards everywhere in the eurozone with 100% compatibility. But every handful of banks in every country has decided to create their own payment "solution". Typically using Android & iOS apps that require an insane number of permissions (including location and wifi connections!?). Looks like wero is just more of the same. Another non-standard that's only supported by a handful banks in a handful of countries. And I'll bet it won't work on rooted android devices, and that there won't be a web version. At least it's built on top of SEPA Instant Payments, which is a step forward...
RataNova 1y ago
It's a great example of how quiet, unsexy regulation can have a massive impact
xdennis 1y ago
> The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, [...] In the EU, card payment fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards No it hasn't. The right cap is 0, like in Brazil. It doesn't make any sense to have 0% payment fees on cash and 0.2% on cards. Cash is easier to fake. It also doesn't make any sense to be a percentage. It takes the same number of bits to transport the number 10000 as it does to transport the number 10. Even 0.2% is essentially just a privatized tax.

by pavlov 1y ago

itake 1y ago

Is there information on EU vs US credit limits? How do the account fees compare between EU and US?

cbzoiav 1y ago
Most credit cards in the UK at least (same cap) have no standard account fee. Those that do come with other perks / beyond the 'world elite' etc side Mastercard/visa aren't seeing that money - its going to the issuing bank. Bank accounts also generaly have no standard fees (and a lot of other things we take forgranted - faster payments (if I send money to a friend/business I can do it instantly for free without needing a third party solution), standing orders, direct debit etc. - that make banking far easier than in the US). There is also regulation in place that restricts predatory fee practices, getting customers into revolving debt and protection that makes card issuers liable for purchases (Section 75 - e.g. if I order something paying with my credit card and the merchant doesn't pay, the card issuer is legally liable / I can claim from them and its on them to get it from the merchant)
alexriddle 1y ago
Other than Amex for airline points I don’t spend a penny on banking, all the standard services (eg transfers, bill payments, cash withdrawals, deposits) are free (in the U.K.) with no monthly fee.
lillecarl 1y ago
I pay 3€ per month to "Nordea" for "unlimited" accounts and one VISA debit card.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  My banks pays me more than that per month to use their debit cards.
  - lillecarl 1y ago
    So are you the product at your bank or why would they pay you to use their services?
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      Fractional reserve banking. Banks would even pay interest on money you had in your account in times past. And then the fact that banks and card companies are charging merchants a fee for transactions and have margin to give back some of those fees to the customers.
      - lillecarl 1y ago
        I still get interest, it's really bad though. And the transaction fees are very low here (someone said 0.2% but I don't know) which should cover a lot of infrastructure, fraud and such.
        carlosjobim 1y ago
        Transaction fees have a great variation depending on which contract the business has with banks or payment providers. It's not a set percentage for a country. For example a large retailer with a huge number of transactions per day will have a deal for the lowest fees possible, and then those fees differ if the card is credit or debit, national or foreign, and between standard or premium cards, and private or business cards. If you have a job, your bank should give you a premium card and then you will get cash back instead of having to pay your bank. If your bank doesn't offer this, it's just a matter of switching to any European bank of your preference.
TMWNN 1y ago
>Is there information on EU vs US credit limits? I would be very interested in this as well. My understanding is that cashback cards of the type we have everywhere in the US (e.g. Amazon Amex = 5% back on Amazon purchases, Wells Fargo Active Cash = 2% back on everything) don't exist elsewhere. Another example: I just earned $1000 from Chase Sapphire as a new customer bonus for diverting $5K of the spending I would do elsewhere on that card over three months.
- Detrytus 1y ago
  That's just your bank giving back some (but not all) of those 2+% interchange fees. Basically, in EU you have low fees, so credit cards are boring, they offer almost zero perks (because there's no money to finance those). No one really cares about what brand of card they get, only about their credit limit. In the US you are charged high fees on every purchase, and then the bank uses your own money to bribe you, or encourage particular types of (excessive) spending, or just make you addicted to credit card debt.
  - TMWNN 1y ago
    >That's just your bank giving back some (but not all) of those 2% interchange fees. On the contrary, for someone like me who pays off my balances each month, if I get 2% back for every transaction, I am breaking even on those fees if assuming that I pay 100% of the fees, which of course isn't true; the merchant pays some of that. So really, I come out slightly ahead. For something like the Amex I mentioned with its 5% back on Amazon, I am coming out well ahead. > and then the bank uses your own money to bribe you, or encourage particular types of (excessive) spending, or just make you addicted to credit card debt. Oh, good grief. So EU credit card companies don't do this? I had no idea they offered cards purely as a charitable venture. I love how you stacked up all those sins just on the US side. Keep this sort of /r/AmericaBad nonsense out of HN.
    - Detrytus 1y ago
      > So EU credit card companies don't do this? No, as I said, they don't because of the interchange fees limit: they simply don't have money to finance any perks. Sometimes you get travel insurance, with the card that charges 200 EUR annual fee, sometimes you get some rewards program, where you collect the points, but those points are typically valued at 0.0001 cent, so no one really bothers earning them. Credit cards in Europe are really boring, commodity products, not status symbols or coupon books. > assuming that I pay 100% of the fees, which of course isn't true; the merchant pays some of that. You are paying that one way or the other: merchant will pass their fees on you by raising prices.
laurencerowe 1y ago
I was really surprised that it was normal to have account fees in the US. In the UK banking is free, at least until you hit an overdraft charge. They even made Bank ATMs fee free whatever bank you are with around 2000 (non bank ATMs still have a charge.)
- drdec 1y ago
  If you pick the right bank, you can get the same deal in the US. Actually, you can get no fees at any ATM
  - itake 1y ago
    schwab has no fees at any atm globally :)

867-5309 1y ago

that's only a very recent change, and not universally rolled out. for decades shops charged ~£3 "connection fee" for paying by credit card, no matter the purchase amount, and many still (probably illegally) enforce a minimum spend if paying by credit or debit card. like when paying or withdrawing money abroad, it's just a lottery as to the "fees" you'll be charged not because there are such fees, but because someone in the '70s created super advanced tech to detect usage outside the country of issuance, and everyone got used to that

laurencerowe 1y ago
As I remember it credit card minimums were only a thing at smaller shops but usually didn’t apply to debit cards.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  Credit card chargebacks are very expensive for a vendor, you don't want credit card purchases for 1$ items.
criemen 1y ago
Visa and Mastercard have a net profit margin in the order of 50%. Do you think that's justified for the service they're providing, and is indicative of a healthy market/competition?
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  It's indicative of a healthy bankroll to fund superPACs and that's what matters!
btown 1y ago
A bit pedantic, but especially relevant in a conversation about government-permitted monopoly power: while requiring minimum spend might be in breach of the payment networks' contracts, and may give rise to _civil_ liability (and punitive measures towards the merchants), we shouldn't use language like "illegal" that implies that government would have any interest in, or capacity for, proactive enforcement. When we use language that evokes the mechanisms of state and implies they'd be used to enforce a monopoly power, we imbue that power with the gravity of those mechanisms, and further entrench it as a "way of life." We should be especially careful of that when said monopoly/duopoly essentially creates and enables a private taxation of the primary source of credit to many in the world!

benced 1y ago

People always cite the first-order benefits of this regulation but don't look into anything else. To be clear, I haven't either but what I would look for is: - are real prices cheaper for consumers? - is economic activity higher or lower (i.e. maybe credit cards encourage purchases?) - does making credit cards a less lucrative business lower credit card penetration? - is lowering credit card penetration, particularly for people bad at doing interest math a good thing? - is making cash or debit cards relatively more appealing good? My vague impression is that the studies on these questions are mixed (am I wrong? A quick Google found several EC funded ones which I'm a little suspicious of). Note that the US has 4 credible payment processing networks but the fees have remained constant. My suspicion is that 3ish% is the optimal value or a very large anti-trust investigation (not a price cap) is in order.

bigDinosaur 1y ago
They're set at whatever the payment networks can get away with. There's nothing that says that's good for anyone else, although it is very good for Mastercard and Visa.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago
  > They're set at whatever the payment networks can get away with. There's nothing that says that's good for anyone else, although it is very good for Mastercard and Visa. MasterCard and Visa are more like clearinghouses. The decision makers are their members having "access to the rails", issuers and processors, which are either banks, subsidiaries owned by banks, or companies sponsored by the aforementioned two (which very often includes one or more banks getting an ownership percentage).
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  There are several ways to reduce costs underlying payments. One is better IT. Notice that IT infrastructure has improved and dropped in cost by immeasurable amounts since those 3% fees were first instituted. Another way is to reduce card fraud. Notice that we’ve had excellent solutions to many types of fraud for decades now, but online shopping still requires us to enter 16-digit easily-stolen numbers into websites, and so fraud is enormously higher than it needs to be. With biometrics and modern smartphones, in person fraud should be very low. A better way to look at these networks is to understand two things: the first is that at one level, they’re an insurance business that makes a profit from insuring against fraud, and reducing fraud would reduce the profit margins they can make from that business. And a second way to understand them is as guardians of a hugely profitable network portal that’s very hard to compete with, and they’re charging as much as the market can bear for that service.

DevX101 1y ago

0.2% should be about the correct rate. WeChat in China has zero transaction fee in the system and a 0.1% fee on withdrawals. Visa/MasterCard amounts to a private tax on the economy. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon, since the US allows rent-seeking middlemen like Visa/MC, TurboTax, and PBMs (pharmacy drugs), to continue their operation as long as they keep funding the right politicians.

geokon 1y ago
As far as I understand with WeChat you can't disputes purchases and do things like chargebacks. If your phone is somehow stolen and account drained (they'd need to know your pin..) then you're probably be screwed? So there isn't the concept of insurance as far as I understand. Not to defend the credit card companies in the slightest.. but its a bit apples to oranges
- geokon 1y ago
  EDIT: Arguably "insurance" is actually an artificial problem creates to justify the cards' fees. The intentionally didn't implement CC chips for the longest time, insisted on signatures, and now support insecure things like contactless payment - thereby ensuring theft/fraud still exists and necessitating insurance (for a very marginal increase in user convenience) The only plus side I can see is that you can buy stuff from shady ass websites and sleep comfortably knowing you can do a chargeback later.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
What are UnionPay's fees? That's the correct comparison, not WeChat. PayPal/CashApp have zero transaction fee as well for person-to-person transfers.

hopelite 1y ago

That money goes to buying off politicians though. So it’s a good investment to make the American people pay for their own robbery.

pzo 1y ago

Unfortunately this only applies for physical transactions. For online payments this is still around 3% - reason why stripe cannot be cheaper. Wish we had something like transferwise is a wrapper around those QRCide payments so can pay cheap internationally as well

isodev 1y ago

The EU (the ECB) is actively working towards a system similar to SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) but for cards [0]. This would enable card transfers to also become faster (SEPA is instantaneous even cross-border within the EU) also allow for operations not depending on Visa or Mastercard. There is a major EU effort to develop an alternative 'instant payment' system that doesn't depend on Visa or Mastercard called Wero [1]. [0] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pubbydate/2019/html/ecb.cardpaymentsineu_currentlandscapeandfutureprospects201904~30d4de2fc4.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pubbydate/2019/html/ecb.card... [1] https://wero-wallet.eu https://wero-wallet.eu

omgwtfbbq123 1y ago
wero is a private company, from Belgium, not an EU initiative. In the same vibe you have Lydia in France that is successful.
- isodev 1y ago
  I think the EU calls for a decentralised approach with multiple cross border providers. Wero is technically from Benelux as there are origins in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. There are also other initiatives in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, … to create alternative card payment system that is also resilient to internet failure.
doikor 1y ago
There is also the Digital Euro project. Though no timeline exists yet. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
elric 1y ago
I had never heard of wero, despite living in Belgium and having been actively involved in fintech. Android also tells me that the app is not available in my country. Sounds like it's supposed to replace Payconiq (which is currently the biggest mobile payment service in Belgium). The fragmentation of payment services is starting to annoy me. I can use cash or cards everywhere in the eurozone with 100% compatibility. But every handful of banks in every country has decided to create their own payment "solution". Typically using Android & iOS apps that require an insane number of permissions (including location and wifi connections!?). Looks like wero is just more of the same. Another non-standard that's only supported by a handful banks in a handful of countries. And I'll bet it won't work on rooted android devices, and that there won't be a web version. At least it's built on top of SEPA Instant Payments, which is a step forward...

RataNova 1y ago

It's a great example of how quiet, unsexy regulation can have a massive impact

xdennis 1y ago

> The credit card duopoly is another instance where the EU has done a good job with regulation, [...] In the EU, card payment fees are capped at 0.2% for debit cards No it hasn't. The right cap is 0, like in Brazil. It doesn't make any sense to have 0% payment fees on cash and 0.2% on cards. Cash is easier to fake. It also doesn't make any sense to be a percentage. It takes the same number of bits to transport the number 10000 as it does to transport the number 10. Even 0.2% is essentially just a privatized tax.