The best way to pay for poor services already rendered and move on with life is to simply pay via card. Didn't like that haircut? Terrible food at the restaurant? Hold onto your cash and slip them the card.
In my opinion, the only solution is everyone (individuals as well as corporations) gets a direct account with the federal reserve as long as you can associate a taxpayer identification with the account. Using it is voluntary but it is free of cost, paid for by taxes, and moving money to and from accounts is free of cost. Depositors would get the same overnight interest rate that banks do, and this interest is added every day. I think if we could make this happen, the chokehold of Mastercard and Visa can be greatly diminished. The disintermediation of commercial banks, the loss of credit card perks, and the added cost of customer service should be an acceptable cost of removing the parasites visa and master card from our economy.
most importantly, this opens up a lot of money that the federal reserve can hold directly, something that will become more and more important as bond yields go sky high.
I remember reading a comment here a while back about merchants being offered a discount on the processing fee if they also transmitted detailed data about the purchase (essentially the data that would be on the receipt). That data could then be resold on to advertisers. Does anyone remember this or have links to more data? (Not having much luck with search, maybe I'm hallucinating the whole thing.)
I would love if it was transmitted to the bank for my own use so I can easily remember what I purchased or run budgeting software against it! Obviously wouldn't be pumped about it being resold tho.
Don’t forget arbitrage, which is the withholding of transferred funds for 7 days while the capital remains in visa’s accounts for “investing” / speculation.
It’s like if you gave your buddy $100 to give to his room mate, and he decides to wait a week and gamble it on Kalshi
They tax our entire economy at X rate, while maintaining their infrastructure only requires Y cost ... and X is significantly higher than Y.
From the actual article:
> The payment processor keeps 0.35% ($0.35), then pays 2% ($2.00) to the cardholder’s issuing bank and 0.15% ($0.15) to Visa. The 2% is the interchange fee, commonly known as interchange. The 0.15% is the network assessment fee. 8
In other words, they get 0.35% of every transaction ... and it does not require anything close to that to maintain their network.
That 0.35% feels more reasonable in 1976 or even maybe 2001 than it does today because technology changed so much. But maybe I'm wrong about that
If you're an American that 2% is a much bigger problem for your society. That's a direct funnel from the poor to the wealthy, it's not as a obvious a problem as "Trump gave the ultra-rich a tax cut" but it might structurally be more significant.
Credit card companies are mostly parasitic middle men but I have a credit card that I use for most payments and pay off the balance every month and effectively get 2% cashback with no interest costs.
The actual rates charged to merchants are variable, and typically higher for rewards/cashback cards. Basically, other people are subsidizing cards with higher benefits/cash back (of course as people shift, the merchant raises prices to compensate for the higher average fee, or just charge an additional Z% higher than your cash back)
> and it does not require anything close to that to maintain their network.
If it's so easy to disrupt visa/mastercard payment network, they wouldn't be able to charge this much. Payment is a highly competitive business. We witnessed so many payment companies went under or were bought out, but these two stay for years and are still profitable.
The truth is their moat is considered very durable and hard to build. A global n banks to n banks payment network is not as simple as how people thought.
The best way to pay for poor services already rendered and move on with life is to simply pay via card. Didn't like that haircut? Terrible food at the restaurant? Hold onto your cash and slip them the card.
most importantly, this opens up a lot of money that the federal reserve can hold directly, something that will become more and more important as bond yields go sky high.
It's only available in the US, many countries have lower interchange fees and prohibit sending this data.
You can’t, because Uncle Sam will come after you.
It’s like if you gave your buddy $100 to give to his room mate, and he decides to wait a week and gamble it on Kalshi
From the actual article:
> The payment processor keeps 0.35% ($0.35), then pays 2% ($2.00) to the cardholder’s issuing bank and 0.15% ($0.15) to Visa. The 2% is the interchange fee, commonly known as interchange. The 0.15% is the network assessment fee. 8
In other words, they get 0.35% of every transaction ... and it does not require anything close to that to maintain their network.
If you're an American that 2% is a much bigger problem for your society. That's a direct funnel from the poor to the wealthy, it's not as a obvious a problem as "Trump gave the ultra-rich a tax cut" but it might structurally be more significant.
If it's so easy to disrupt visa/mastercard payment network, they wouldn't be able to charge this much. Payment is a highly competitive business. We witnessed so many payment companies went under or were bought out, but these two stay for years and are still profitable.
The truth is their moat is considered very durable and hard to build. A global n banks to n banks payment network is not as simple as how people thought.
If they have the US government behind them its much easier
https://thepaypers.com/payments/expert-views/pix-hits-a-wall...