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I'm Danish and I find this thoroughly distressing. The payment processor, Nets, is a monopoly, owned by US investment firms. They have frequent outages and are

by plesner 11y ago

I'm Danish and I find this thoroughly distressing. The payment processor, Nets, is a monopoly, owned by US investment firms. They have frequent outages and are unapologetic when they do. There is no transparency. They have a terrible privacy record (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Se_og_H%C3%B8r_media_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Se_og_H%C3%B8r_media_scan...). Until last year everyone down to their phone support staff had open access to everyone's payment records (see http://www.computerworld.dk/art/230818/alle-kundeservice-folk-i-nets-har-adgang-til-foelsomme-kort-data http://www.computerworld.dk/art/230818/alle-kundeservice-fol... -- in Danish). Despite all these issues they just laid off a bunch of people. Their only priority, it appears, it making money for the owners. Money is a critical piece of infrastructure and these guys absolutely cannot be trusted to implement it. With more payment processors and a regulatory framework that forced them to provide decent service maybe cashless is not a bad idea. With the current implementation though there's a good chance it will be a disaster. It will certainly be a gaping vulnerability for anyone who should feel like targeting us; I wouldn't be surprised if all it would take to bring the whole thing down is one lone hacker.

sumedh 11y ago
India developed its own payment network called Rupay although adoption is a bit slow among the masses. Denmark should create its own network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay
- plesner 11y ago
  It is homegrown. The Dankort was a government initiative originally built and paid for by a consortium of banks back in the 80s. The theory was that the savings for the banks from having a more efficient alternative to cash would pay for the development costs, which is exactly how it turned out. But then the banks forgot that what they spent on payment processing they made back elsewhere and wanted it to pay for itself, and started cutting costs. Finally last year they sold the whole thing off to the US. In addition, the dankort is strictly regulated to the benefit of consumers which the banks dislike because it limits how much they can charge when you use it. They have an interest in pushing people to visa or mastercard or their own mobile payment solutions which don't have the same restrictions. The payment processor itself is developing their own alternative to compete with the dankort which they are mandated to also implement. I don't think they provide bad dankort service on purpose but it's a concern that good service is actually against their own economic interest.
deleted 11y ago
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by plesner 11y ago

sumedh 11y ago

India developed its own payment network called Rupay although adoption is a bit slow among the masses. Denmark should create its own network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPay

plesner 11y ago
It is homegrown. The Dankort was a government initiative originally built and paid for by a consortium of banks back in the 80s. The theory was that the savings for the banks from having a more efficient alternative to cash would pay for the development costs, which is exactly how it turned out. But then the banks forgot that what they spent on payment processing they made back elsewhere and wanted it to pay for itself, and started cutting costs. Finally last year they sold the whole thing off to the US. In addition, the dankort is strictly regulated to the benefit of consumers which the banks dislike because it limits how much they can charge when you use it. They have an interest in pushing people to visa or mastercard or their own mobile payment solutions which don't have the same restrictions. The payment processor itself is developing their own alternative to compete with the dankort which they are mandated to also implement. I don't think they provide bad dankort service on purpose but it's a concern that good service is actually against their own economic interest.

deleted 11y ago

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