7 ms·

When you start at the wrong premise, you typically end up in the wrong place. The premise is that credit cards (visa / Mastercard) is broken. When actually it

When you start at the wrong premise, you typically end up in the wrong place. The premise is that credit cards (visa / Mastercard) is broken. When actually it works really well. For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Merchants might pay 3%, (and ultimately yes, that's in the price of goods) but checkout "just works". They're in the "get paid" business, not the "teach customer new system" business. They'll accept new payment options (which the POS) just provides. But they don't drive the market. Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken.

sneak 1y ago
> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Just like tariffs, right? Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy.
- Tor3 1y ago
  It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    how is cash too expensive?? huh?
    - Tor3 1y ago
      _Handling_ cash is expensive. I never thought of that until my SO started working in a shop. To and from the bank, with stacks of coins and notes.. and there's presumably much more than that for larger firms. In general I rely my statement on what merchants themselves are saying. Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. "It's too expensive. It reduces our bottom line." That kind of thing. When I look around I see "Cards only" a lot of places.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        > Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. That's legal. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm Legal tender applies only to debt/creditor relationships.
        Tor3 1y ago
        The USA is not all the world. The US rules don't apply in other countries. Rules differ. In many countries _businesses_ have to accept legal tender. Including in my own. That's why it's such a big deal when businesses actually still refuse cash.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender > Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment in court for any monetary debt. A country may separately require businesses to accept legal tender, if they feel like it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#Status_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#Status_by_country would appear to indicate this distinction is very common in the developed world.
    - ubercow13 1y ago
      Of course cash is expensive, you have to handle it, count it, transport it. Haven't you ever seen those heavily armoured cash delivery vehicles? I mean just think how inefficient cash obviously is in every aspect of how it works compared to modern tech.
    - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
      Time spent totaling it, transporting it to from bank Having to buy a register / point of sale which can handle it Hoping you employees don’t pocket a few bills here and there Hoping you don’t get robbed
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    They only use cards because credit cards can allow them to get sales from people who wouldn't have been able to buy the product through debit itself, but they can buy it from credit.., so they are okay with eating 1-2% of costs in the fact that sale might happen and the companies will get 0.5-1% of it to you back as rewards (hopefully) and so there is incentive to buy using credit card for rewards but they might also give incentives of 1-2% if you buy through cash since they aren't eating that 1-2% cost. And this whole network has now been built in such a way that now even debit costs the same charge just as network fees Open sourcing this might be a step in good faith and I mean, we have UPI where I live and it has 0 fees and trust me its crazy good. I personally wish that either everybody in the world could use UPI or pixis from brazil.
    - Tor3 1y ago
      The argument doesn't hold - if cards were only about getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get - and the part about "getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get", is true enough - then there's no reason to refuse cash payments. That's additional sales, right? But the fact is that more and more shops refuse cash payments entirely. "Pay by card or go somewhere else".
      - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
        I can't comment on this fact of more and more shops refusing for cash payments entirely as I personally have NEVER seen that? Provide me an article or some proof to this fact for me to comment further as currently we are at an disagreement on this thing which I hope we can turn into meaningful discussion.
        Tor3 1y ago
        Well.. just a quick search (as I won't be talking a walk and photograph all the "cards only" signs I now see in so many places): https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street-chains-restaurants-cash-payments https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street... https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/news-2023/some-retail-sectors-refuse-cash-payments-too-often/ https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/news-2023/some-retail-sec... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gevkx8gyo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gevkx8gyo https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/no-cash-accepted-trend/ https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/no-cash-accepted... https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/legal-news/do-you-have-the-right-to-pay-in-cash/ https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/legal-news/do-you-have-the-right-t... https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-sweden/payments-report-2025/trends-on-the-payments-market/many-small-retail-businesses-have-stopped-accepting-cash-/cash-acceptance-differs-widely-between-sectors/ https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-swe...
  - heavensteeth 1y ago
    > even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash this is not true as it is not what "legal tender" means. Legal tender is something that the government must accept as payment, not private enterprise. > Businesses don’t have to accept cash.[0] > There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.[1] [0]: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/payment-methods https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
    - Tor3 1y ago
      That depends on the country. There are many countries (including my own) where any business must accept certain parts of the cash payment system (around here a taxi doesn't have to accept the highest-value bank note, but the rest cannot be refused). And shops, of course. That's why newspapers bother to write articles about it.
    - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
      They have to accept cash, huh? * Cash Payment Method Will No Longer Be Accepted A Notice by the Patent and Trademark Office on 10/03/2017* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21194/cash-payment-method-will-no-longer-be-accepted https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21...
    - wat10000 1y ago
      Note that legal tender does apply to private entities when it comes to paying debts, at least in the US. Creditors must accept legal tender, or give up claim to the debt. It’s true that private businesses can set pretty much any payment terms they want for a transaction that hasn’t yet taken place. But the moment you move to a situation where you owe money, they do have to accept cash.
    - sneak 1y ago
      They don’t have to accept cash in advance. They do have to accept cash for debts, such as when you have already eaten the meal.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  That’s an acceptable fee for the consumer protections I receive.
  - sneak 1y ago
    There is another hidden cost: total mass government surveillance of the entire economy, including the ability to arbitrarily veto any transaction or participant for any reason (such as publishing) without trial or even burden of proof. https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ People are only okay with this because it hasn’t been visibly abused on a large scale yet. Imagine Nazi Germany having this sort of access to the private transactions of everyone in an entire country. The abuses won’t ever be front-page news, either, because they’ll only ever be targeted against tiny fractions of society, and most people won’t be directly affected by their lives being surveilled and their rights being so infringed. https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html Generally and commonly used payment systems (ie cash) that cannot be centrally censored are the only way to avoid this. Presently that means physical cash, physical precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The first two are impractical for large-scale use.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      > Generally and commonly used payment systems (ie cash) that cannot be centrally censored are the only way to avoid this. Presently that means physical cash, physical precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The first two are impractical for large-scale use. Tether freezes accounts. Bitcoin gets confiscated. Eth forked when big stakeholders didn't like how the DAO went. And it's a bit hard to take seriously privacy concerns that propose a public transaction ledger as a solution. (And of the three, only physical cash has actually been proven in large-scale use.)
sampullman 1y ago
If it's ultimately in the price of goods, then it doesn't cost the consumer nothing, no matter how you spin it. It's just cleverly hidden. I think it's close to impossible to "fix" Visa without government intervention (e.g. limit fees to a fraction of a percent), but I'm still grateful to anyone who tries.
- paranoidrobot 1y ago
  > I think it's close to impossible to "fix" Visa without government intervention (e.g. limit fees to a fraction of a percent), but I'm still grateful to anyone who tries. This is what Australia is looking at currently: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-15/rba-credit-debit-merchant-surcharge-payment-cost-review/105530340 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-15/rba-credit-debit-merc...
  - sampullman 1y ago
    I'm interested to see if that works out, and curious what it means for international cards with lots of perks. I imagine, for example, it wouldn't change anything right away for a Chase Sapphire card issued in the US, but if more countries followed suit there would eventually be a tipping point and card benefits would be reduced. I guess the issuers all have complex models that take these things into account. In any case, I think it's a good move.
- itake 1y ago
  The price is the same if you use cash or card. Really, after reward points, card tends to be even cheaper. Visa/Mastercard/BNPL/Klarna etc. all have negotiated discounts for consumers, paid for by the merchant. I'm skeptical that merchants would lower prices (stepping away from $x.98, etc) instead of pocketing the higher margins themselves.
  - victorbjorklund 1y ago
    if all customers choose to us cash the merchant could lower price with 3%. If you are the only one paying cash then yes the price will stay the same.
vasco 1y ago
> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Sellers increase the price by the fee amount, savvy consumers with rewards cards can get back around 80% of that price increase, and regular non-credit-card-with-rewards holding consumers just subsidize the whole thing by paying the extra. It's a tax on people without rewards cards.
- memco 1y ago
  Not sure how prevalent this is now, but a few years back I was seeing a lot of "cash price" advertised for stuff that was lower by whatever the merchant didn't have to pay in fees so sometimes cash may not be subsidizing the credit industry.
  - ameliaquining 1y ago
    In a lot of cases there are regulatory or contractual barriers to doing that.
    - kylebenzle 1y ago
      [dead]
    - conductr 1y ago
      The card issuers used to prohibit it, not been the case in a while though. They used to prohibit having a minimum transaction amount or charging transaction fees to your customer too. It never stopped small merchants though
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      In the US, not since 2011 since the Dodd Frank act required payment card networks to allow merchants to offer cash and debit card discounts. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-electronic-payments-lower-costs-retailers https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-el...
      - 1y ago
chrismcb 1y ago
It costs the consumers. Sometimes indirectly and sometimes directly. I would think that this is the primary motivation to come up with a new scheme.
- astrange 1y ago
  Credit cards are a huge benefit to customers because of purchase protection, chargebacks, and being able to spend money before you earn it that month. The merchants pay the fees because it gets them sales they wouldn't otherwise get.
- frontfor 1y ago
  It might be one motivation, doesn’t mean it’s a good one as per the original comment if consumers don’t care.
albiinics 1y ago
This is like says the tarrifs are paid by the other countries, not the US citizens. In reality, there is no competition in the payment systems. Free markets mean competition.
- blitzar 1y ago
  All business costs are either paid for by the VCs or the customer. Even the VCs end up getting paid by the customers in the end.
- toast0 1y ago
  There might not be robust competition between payment systems, but when I go to a store, I've got options to pay: Cash, credit (discover is dieing, but amex/mc/visa compete a bit), debit (several networks and all US cards have to be on at least two), I've seen PayPal as an option ocassionally, some merchants take Zelle, FedNow could if a good UX comes around (I don't think many merchants want to give out their routing and account numbers, and it's tedious to input them into my banking app anyway). Some vendors take checks and deposit them later, some take checks and process them immediately, etc. People respond to incentives though. If merchants charge the same regardless of payment method, I'm going to use a rewards card that costs them more. When they add a line item credit charge, I'll consider cash or debit.
  - randallsquared 1y ago
    I would be very surprised if Discover is dying. The whole point of Capital One buying them--well, a major point--was to have an alternative to MC/Visa on which they can run debit and credit cards, and so they'll be pushing an expansion of the Discover network rails pretty hard, I'd expect.
nottorp 1y ago
> For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Only if Visa/MC agree with the item being sold though. Be careful to not get hobbies that some religious pressure group hates. Today sex, maybe tomorrow rock climbing or fixing your own motorcycle.
- camillomiller 1y ago
  OP wasn’t defending VISA policies, they were just realistically describing how taking on CC circuits with this premise is a risky approach that tries to fix a problem potential customers don’t have. What you are saying is in a completely different domain. Personally I think you’re right, but the only way to solve that is regulating the payment giants as a public utility, not picking a fight against a business model that is a lot of things, but not broken.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    A business mode that relies on duopoly is broken and must be regulated.
    - camillomiller 1y ago
      I literally said it must be regulated. Depends what you mean by broken: for the business owners it’s not broken. For the users? Sure, but they are not stakeholders in the business. They are stakeholders in the society that an excessively successful business model is affecting negatively, hence: regulation.
      - fsflover 1y ago
        So we agree.
nojs 1y ago
> For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Haha, if only that were true. I’d say roughly 20% of my purchases are rejected because of a badly tuned fraud algorithm somewhere.
ForHackernews 1y ago
Counterpoint: Loads of merchants refuse to accept American Express because the fees are higher. Some merchants have gone to court for the right to offer lower "cash prices" – something Visa/Mastercard oppose because they want those fees hidden. Clearly, at least some merchants are price-sensitive and would be interested in a lower-fee alternative to Visa/MC.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  It sounds like all merchants in the US have been able to offer lower cash prices for over 10 years now. I rarely see it though.
pbhjpbhj 1y ago
So a 1980s computer is faster at calculating than a person, so why reduce the cost? Or a car is cheaper to maintain than a horse, why reduce the cost? Let's flip the script. In reality the averaged transaction _cost_ is probably O(0.1%) or lower. Why are we paying more?
- Ekaros 1y ago
  Decision makers and regulators have been bribed in many places. EU has actually solved this with interchange fees for consumers being 0.3% which to me sound reasonably close to that 0.1%.
viraptor 1y ago
Sounds like one place where it's broken is the morality policing. If tech can succeed due to usage in porn, maybe Zenobia can too? Then move to services like onlyfans, then try all the other creators who also have problems with fees (like the revolt when patreon tried to raise them)?
scotty79 1y ago
> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Ultimately customer pays for everything. Credit card companies just prevent merchants from revealing the costs of using credit cards to customers. Which should be illegal. > Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken. People don't know it's broken because regulator doesn't do their job and lets credit companies police merchants.
worthless-trash 1y ago
> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. I can assure you in Australia, this is -clearly- not true, vendors pass the cost on to the consumer. I can probably choose a random store and prove this. > The cost goes to the merchant. And who do you think would pay the merchants costs in this case ?
rprend 1y ago
Yep you get it Bruce. Unfortunately I confused being a villain (everybody likes to bash visa) with being bad at their jobs and disrupt-able.

sneak 1y ago

> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Just like tariffs, right? Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy.

Tor3 1y ago
It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  how is cash too expensive?? huh?
  - Tor3 1y ago
    _Handling_ cash is expensive. I never thought of that until my SO started working in a shop. To and from the bank, with stacks of coins and notes.. and there's presumably much more than that for larger firms. In general I rely my statement on what merchants themselves are saying. Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. "It's too expensive. It reduces our bottom line." That kind of thing. When I look around I see "Cards only" a lot of places.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      > Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. That's legal. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm Legal tender applies only to debt/creditor relationships.
      - Tor3 1y ago
        The USA is not all the world. The US rules don't apply in other countries. Rules differ. In many countries _businesses_ have to accept legal tender. Including in my own. That's why it's such a big deal when businesses actually still refuse cash.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender > Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment in court for any monetary debt. A country may separately require businesses to accept legal tender, if they feel like it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#Status_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#Status_by_country would appear to indicate this distinction is very common in the developed world.
  - ubercow13 1y ago
    Of course cash is expensive, you have to handle it, count it, transport it. Haven't you ever seen those heavily armoured cash delivery vehicles? I mean just think how inefficient cash obviously is in every aspect of how it works compared to modern tech.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    Time spent totaling it, transporting it to from bank Having to buy a register / point of sale which can handle it Hoping you employees don’t pocket a few bills here and there Hoping you don’t get robbed
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  They only use cards because credit cards can allow them to get sales from people who wouldn't have been able to buy the product through debit itself, but they can buy it from credit.., so they are okay with eating 1-2% of costs in the fact that sale might happen and the companies will get 0.5-1% of it to you back as rewards (hopefully) and so there is incentive to buy using credit card for rewards but they might also give incentives of 1-2% if you buy through cash since they aren't eating that 1-2% cost. And this whole network has now been built in such a way that now even debit costs the same charge just as network fees Open sourcing this might be a step in good faith and I mean, we have UPI where I live and it has 0 fees and trust me its crazy good. I personally wish that either everybody in the world could use UPI or pixis from brazil.
  - Tor3 1y ago
    The argument doesn't hold - if cards were only about getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get - and the part about "getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get", is true enough - then there's no reason to refuse cash payments. That's additional sales, right? But the fact is that more and more shops refuse cash payments entirely. "Pay by card or go somewhere else".
    - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      I can't comment on this fact of more and more shops refusing for cash payments entirely as I personally have NEVER seen that? Provide me an article or some proof to this fact for me to comment further as currently we are at an disagreement on this thing which I hope we can turn into meaningful discussion.
      - Tor3 1y ago
        Well.. just a quick search (as I won't be talking a walk and photograph all the "cards only" signs I now see in so many places): https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street-chains-restaurants-cash-payments https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street... https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/news-2023/some-retail-sectors-refuse-cash-payments-too-often/ https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/news-2023/some-retail-sec... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gevkx8gyo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gevkx8gyo https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/no-cash-accepted-trend/ https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/no-cash-accepted... https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/legal-news/do-you-have-the-right-to-pay-in-cash/ https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/legal-news/do-you-have-the-right-t... https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-sweden/payments-report-2025/trends-on-the-payments-market/many-small-retail-businesses-have-stopped-accepting-cash-/cash-acceptance-differs-widely-between-sectors/ https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-swe...
- heavensteeth 1y ago
  > even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash this is not true as it is not what "legal tender" means. Legal tender is something that the government must accept as payment, not private enterprise. > Businesses don’t have to accept cash.[0] > There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.[1] [0]: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/payment-methods https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
  - Tor3 1y ago
    That depends on the country. There are many countries (including my own) where any business must accept certain parts of the cash payment system (around here a taxi doesn't have to accept the highest-value bank note, but the rest cannot be refused). And shops, of course. That's why newspapers bother to write articles about it.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    They have to accept cash, huh? * Cash Payment Method Will No Longer Be Accepted A Notice by the Patent and Trademark Office on 10/03/2017* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21194/cash-payment-method-will-no-longer-be-accepted https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21...
  - wat10000 1y ago
    Note that legal tender does apply to private entities when it comes to paying debts, at least in the US. Creditors must accept legal tender, or give up claim to the debt. It’s true that private businesses can set pretty much any payment terms they want for a transaction that hasn’t yet taken place. But the moment you move to a situation where you owe money, they do have to accept cash.
  - sneak 1y ago
    They don’t have to accept cash in advance. They do have to accept cash for debts, such as when you have already eaten the meal.
ceejayoz 1y ago
That’s an acceptable fee for the consumer protections I receive.
- sneak 1y ago
  There is another hidden cost: total mass government surveillance of the entire economy, including the ability to arbitrarily veto any transaction or participant for any reason (such as publishing) without trial or even burden of proof. https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ People are only okay with this because it hasn’t been visibly abused on a large scale yet. Imagine Nazi Germany having this sort of access to the private transactions of everyone in an entire country. The abuses won’t ever be front-page news, either, because they’ll only ever be targeted against tiny fractions of society, and most people won’t be directly affected by their lives being surveilled and their rights being so infringed. https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html Generally and commonly used payment systems (ie cash) that cannot be centrally censored are the only way to avoid this. Presently that means physical cash, physical precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The first two are impractical for large-scale use.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    > Generally and commonly used payment systems (ie cash) that cannot be centrally censored are the only way to avoid this. Presently that means physical cash, physical precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The first two are impractical for large-scale use. Tether freezes accounts. Bitcoin gets confiscated. Eth forked when big stakeholders didn't like how the DAO went. And it's a bit hard to take seriously privacy concerns that propose a public transaction ledger as a solution. (And of the three, only physical cash has actually been proven in large-scale use.)

sampullman 1y ago

If it's ultimately in the price of goods, then it doesn't cost the consumer nothing, no matter how you spin it. It's just cleverly hidden. I think it's close to impossible to "fix" Visa without government intervention (e.g. limit fees to a fraction of a percent), but I'm still grateful to anyone who tries.

paranoidrobot 1y ago
> I think it's close to impossible to "fix" Visa without government intervention (e.g. limit fees to a fraction of a percent), but I'm still grateful to anyone who tries. This is what Australia is looking at currently: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-15/rba-credit-debit-merchant-surcharge-payment-cost-review/105530340 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-15/rba-credit-debit-merc...
- sampullman 1y ago
  I'm interested to see if that works out, and curious what it means for international cards with lots of perks. I imagine, for example, it wouldn't change anything right away for a Chase Sapphire card issued in the US, but if more countries followed suit there would eventually be a tipping point and card benefits would be reduced. I guess the issuers all have complex models that take these things into account. In any case, I think it's a good move.
itake 1y ago
The price is the same if you use cash or card. Really, after reward points, card tends to be even cheaper. Visa/Mastercard/BNPL/Klarna etc. all have negotiated discounts for consumers, paid for by the merchant. I'm skeptical that merchants would lower prices (stepping away from $x.98, etc) instead of pocketing the higher margins themselves.
- victorbjorklund 1y ago
  if all customers choose to us cash the merchant could lower price with 3%. If you are the only one paying cash then yes the price will stay the same.

vasco 1y ago

> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Sellers increase the price by the fee amount, savvy consumers with rewards cards can get back around 80% of that price increase, and regular non-credit-card-with-rewards holding consumers just subsidize the whole thing by paying the extra. It's a tax on people without rewards cards.

memco 1y ago
Not sure how prevalent this is now, but a few years back I was seeing a lot of "cash price" advertised for stuff that was lower by whatever the merchant didn't have to pay in fees so sometimes cash may not be subsidizing the credit industry.
- ameliaquining 1y ago
  In a lot of cases there are regulatory or contractual barriers to doing that.
  - kylebenzle 1y ago
    [dead]
  - conductr 1y ago
    The card issuers used to prohibit it, not been the case in a while though. They used to prohibit having a minimum transaction amount or charging transaction fees to your customer too. It never stopped small merchants though
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    In the US, not since 2011 since the Dodd Frank act required payment card networks to allow merchants to offer cash and debit card discounts. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-electronic-payments-lower-costs-retailers https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-el...
    - 1y ago

chrismcb 1y ago

It costs the consumers. Sometimes indirectly and sometimes directly. I would think that this is the primary motivation to come up with a new scheme.

astrange 1y ago
Credit cards are a huge benefit to customers because of purchase protection, chargebacks, and being able to spend money before you earn it that month. The merchants pay the fees because it gets them sales they wouldn't otherwise get.
frontfor 1y ago
It might be one motivation, doesn’t mean it’s a good one as per the original comment if consumers don’t care.

albiinics 1y ago

This is like says the tarrifs are paid by the other countries, not the US citizens. In reality, there is no competition in the payment systems. Free markets mean competition.

blitzar 1y ago
All business costs are either paid for by the VCs or the customer. Even the VCs end up getting paid by the customers in the end.
toast0 1y ago
There might not be robust competition between payment systems, but when I go to a store, I've got options to pay: Cash, credit (discover is dieing, but amex/mc/visa compete a bit), debit (several networks and all US cards have to be on at least two), I've seen PayPal as an option ocassionally, some merchants take Zelle, FedNow could if a good UX comes around (I don't think many merchants want to give out their routing and account numbers, and it's tedious to input them into my banking app anyway). Some vendors take checks and deposit them later, some take checks and process them immediately, etc. People respond to incentives though. If merchants charge the same regardless of payment method, I'm going to use a rewards card that costs them more. When they add a line item credit charge, I'll consider cash or debit.
- randallsquared 1y ago
  I would be very surprised if Discover is dying. The whole point of Capital One buying them--well, a major point--was to have an alternative to MC/Visa on which they can run debit and credit cards, and so they'll be pushing an expansion of the Discover network rails pretty hard, I'd expect.

nottorp 1y ago

> For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Only if Visa/MC agree with the item being sold though. Be careful to not get hobbies that some religious pressure group hates. Today sex, maybe tomorrow rock climbing or fixing your own motorcycle.

camillomiller 1y ago
OP wasn’t defending VISA policies, they were just realistically describing how taking on CC circuits with this premise is a risky approach that tries to fix a problem potential customers don’t have. What you are saying is in a completely different domain. Personally I think you’re right, but the only way to solve that is regulating the payment giants as a public utility, not picking a fight against a business model that is a lot of things, but not broken.
- fsflover 1y ago
  A business mode that relies on duopoly is broken and must be regulated.
  - camillomiller 1y ago
    I literally said it must be regulated. Depends what you mean by broken: for the business owners it’s not broken. For the users? Sure, but they are not stakeholders in the business. They are stakeholders in the society that an excessively successful business model is affecting negatively, hence: regulation.
    - fsflover 1y ago
      So we agree.

nojs 1y ago

> For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Haha, if only that were true. I’d say roughly 20% of my purchases are rejected because of a badly tuned fraud algorithm somewhere.

ForHackernews 1y ago

Counterpoint: Loads of merchants refuse to accept American Express because the fees are higher. Some merchants have gone to court for the right to offer lower "cash prices" – something Visa/Mastercard oppose because they want those fees hidden. Clearly, at least some merchants are price-sensitive and would be interested in a lower-fee alternative to Visa/MC.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
It sounds like all merchants in the US have been able to offer lower cash prices for over 10 years now. I rarely see it though.

pbhjpbhj 1y ago

So a 1980s computer is faster at calculating than a person, so why reduce the cost? Or a car is cheaper to maintain than a horse, why reduce the cost? Let's flip the script. In reality the averaged transaction _cost_ is probably O(0.1%) or lower. Why are we paying more?

Ekaros 1y ago
Decision makers and regulators have been bribed in many places. EU has actually solved this with interchange fees for consumers being 0.3% which to me sound reasonably close to that 0.1%.

viraptor 1y ago

Sounds like one place where it's broken is the morality policing. If tech can succeed due to usage in porn, maybe Zenobia can too? Then move to services like onlyfans, then try all the other creators who also have problems with fees (like the revolt when patreon tried to raise them)?

scotty79 1y ago

> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Ultimately customer pays for everything. Credit card companies just prevent merchants from revealing the costs of using credit cards to customers. Which should be illegal. > Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken. People don't know it's broken because regulator doesn't do their job and lets credit companies police merchants.

worthless-trash 1y ago

> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. I can assure you in Australia, this is -clearly- not true, vendors pass the cost on to the consumer. I can probably choose a random store and prove this. > The cost goes to the merchant. And who do you think would pay the merchants costs in this case ?

rprend 1y ago

Yep you get it Bruce. Unfortunately I confused being a villain (everybody likes to bash visa) with being bad at their jobs and disrupt-able.