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tiffanyh 3 minutes ago [-]
What seems to be getting lost is that the acquirer, not the payment network, sets the Merchant Discount Rate. The acquirer is also the merchant’s direct payments provider.
Yet the acquirers seem to be always absent from these lawsuits.
hmokiguess 28 minutes ago [-]
I think a lot of this is starting to bubble up to the surface after PIX made headlines[1]
Surely the UK can also pull this off given how quick faster payments is. I'm always surprised at how we just stuck with Visa
criddell 8 minutes ago [-]
I think the problem is that merchants hate the card networks and consumers generally like them and there are a lot more consumers than merchants. If you are a politician, which block of voters are you going to side with?
cromka 23 minutes ago [-]
Sorry, how is PIX different than a plethora of similar P2P and p2b solutions already present in Europe?
alightsoul 9 minutes ago [-]
It's not different, many countries already have their own version of it, you just don't hear about them. India's UPI has more users but you don't hear about it.
Maybe we hear about it because, it's right in the US' backyard and the biggest country there is Brazil from which pix comes from. All these payment systems threaten visa and Mastercard but pix is the largest in the US' backyard because the country it comes from, Brazil, is the largest there.
And it's also government run, dun dun dun. The us hates anything that is government run. That's why they hate china and communists and socialism so much.
yturijea 8 minutes ago [-]
I hope more things like this comes to light, as we have seen how mastercard and visa in union has moved censorship among things around the world, which by the way is illegal, but due to their monopoly could still carry out and they did.
So the hope is that new or one of the other brokers step up and hopefully their ethics are better.
yieldcrv 2 minutes ago [-]
Illegal where?
Amex does this as well and it’s a mixture of internal opinions of executives, board, major shareholders, as well as the US federal government just telling them (see operation chokepoint for just one variation), as well as chargeback and fraud rates in some industries just validating personally held opinions
criddell 24 minutes ago [-]
What's the intended outcome?
If you break up the Visa and Mastercard cartels, does this San Diego pizzeria then have to decide what cards to accept on a bank-by-bank basis?
prasadjoglekar 16 minutes ago [-]
The opposite of what's being alleged. From TFA:
Broadly, the interlocking restraints set and maintained by the defendants have forced merchants that accept any Visa and Mastercard credit card to accept all such cards, regardless of cost, thereby eliminating any incentive for issuing banks to compete by lowering their fees, the suit says. The lawsuit claims the challenged restraints have also prevented merchants from being able to steer customers to lower-cost payment options—for instance, by surcharging based on a customer’s use of a particular card. These and other restraints have prevented competition among issuing banks and other credit card networks, allowing the financial giants to raise their fees every year “without consequence,” the case alleges.
criddell 14 minutes ago [-]
That sounds a lot like they want to be able to say which banks cards they want to accept (the "forced merchants that accept any Visa and Mastercard credit card to accept all such cards" part).
buzer 4 minutes ago [-]
It's most likely primarily about different credit card "brands" like Visa infinite, signature etc. These have different benefits for customers (like cashback and points) and higher fees for merchants.
astura 20 minutes ago [-]
Legislation to cap fees.
The European Union caps consumer card interchange fees at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards
Can the courts cap fees? I thought that would have to be something congress does.
486sx33 24 seconds ago [-]
[dead]
ajkjk 10 minutes ago [-]
um, the same system we have today but with less rent extraction
and don't pretend like it's not possible, it's obviously possible: take the system and lower the fee to something proportional to the price of providing the service
if credit card rewards programs have to go to make it economically viable -- awesome, that would be a second win.
somat 45 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn't high fees be competitive? A lot of incentive to compete there. Anticompetitive would be setting the fees too low to compete with.
I guess the point being there is probably a better reason for the high fees than the company trying to be anticompetitive, Or perhaps better said as a better reason for being anti competitive than high fees. Monopolistic lock in? Regulatory Capture? The problem is, that this blames the government instead of the company.
armada651 42 minutes ago [-]
You've got it backwards, their anti-competitive practices is what allows them to charge such high fees:
> A class action lawsuit alleges Visa, Mastercard and some of America's largest banks have conspired to artificially inflate merchants' credit card transaction fees.
If they didn't conspire together and actually competed then they wouldn't be able to charge such high fees as they would surely try to undercut each other.
majorchord 30 minutes ago [-]
IMO They (Visa et al) have been desperately clinging to the outside of their speeding gravy train for way too long, and it's only a matter of time before they run out of track underneath them, so they're trying every trick in the book to keep things running.
Any new competitor could spell the end for them, so making it astronomically difficult to onboard enough people is so far working out for them.
2OEH8eoCRo0 31 minutes ago [-]
Exactly. Courts will ask why they can charge high fees and not lose customers. The answer will be that they are anticompetitive or behaving as a cartel or monopoly would.
SaltyBackendGuy 31 minutes ago [-]
>The problem is, that this blames the government instead of the company.
Both are true though right? The company needs to be held accountable for price collusion by the government. Government not acting due to lobbying (i.e. bribes).
Yet the acquirers seem to be always absent from these lawsuits.
[1] https://whatispix.com
Maybe we hear about it because, it's right in the US' backyard and the biggest country there is Brazil from which pix comes from. All these payment systems threaten visa and Mastercard but pix is the largest in the US' backyard because the country it comes from, Brazil, is the largest there.
And it's also government run, dun dun dun. The us hates anything that is government run. That's why they hate china and communists and socialism so much.
So the hope is that new or one of the other brokers step up and hopefully their ethics are better.
Amex does this as well and it’s a mixture of internal opinions of executives, board, major shareholders, as well as the US federal government just telling them (see operation chokepoint for just one variation), as well as chargeback and fraud rates in some industries just validating personally held opinions
If you break up the Visa and Mastercard cartels, does this San Diego pizzeria then have to decide what cards to accept on a bank-by-bank basis?
Broadly, the interlocking restraints set and maintained by the defendants have forced merchants that accept any Visa and Mastercard credit card to accept all such cards, regardless of cost, thereby eliminating any incentive for issuing banks to compete by lowering their fees, the suit says. The lawsuit claims the challenged restraints have also prevented merchants from being able to steer customers to lower-cost payment options—for instance, by surcharging based on a customer’s use of a particular card. These and other restraints have prevented competition among issuing banks and other credit card networks, allowing the financial giants to raise their fees every year “without consequence,” the case alleges.
The European Union caps consumer card interchange fees at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...
and don't pretend like it's not possible, it's obviously possible: take the system and lower the fee to something proportional to the price of providing the service
if credit card rewards programs have to go to make it economically viable -- awesome, that would be a second win.
I guess the point being there is probably a better reason for the high fees than the company trying to be anticompetitive, Or perhaps better said as a better reason for being anti competitive than high fees. Monopolistic lock in? Regulatory Capture? The problem is, that this blames the government instead of the company.
> A class action lawsuit alleges Visa, Mastercard and some of America's largest banks have conspired to artificially inflate merchants' credit card transaction fees.
If they didn't conspire together and actually competed then they wouldn't be able to charge such high fees as they would surely try to undercut each other.
Any new competitor could spell the end for them, so making it astronomically difficult to onboard enough people is so far working out for them.
Both are true though right? The company needs to be held accountable for price collusion by the government. Government not acting due to lobbying (i.e. bribes).