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by digitaltrees18 hours ago |
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upvoteby brikym36 minutes ago|
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If there is a cartel it's at the Visa & Mastercard layer surely.
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upvoteby reddalo21 minutes ago|
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I can't wait for Europe to come up with an alternative for Visa & Mastercard.

European business pay a "hidden" tax to the US on everything, in the form of Visa & Mastercard commissions.

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upvoteby PaulDavisThe1st15 minutes ago|
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Which (a) the EU can and does regulate (b) the majority of the commission goes to the issuing bank.

I hate feeling as if I'm defending Visa or Mastercard, but if we're going to attack them, let's get our storytelling correct first.

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upvoteby 32 minutes ago|
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upvoteby ergocoder15 hours ago|
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I doubt Stripe is anywhere near the monopoly status.
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upvoteby nickjj2 hours ago|
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Back when selling online tech courses was viable (pre-AI), about 30% of transactions in the US were from folks using PayPal on the platform I used. There's a huge of people who use PayPal, it's even more outside of the US.
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upvoteby ergocoder1 hours ago|
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It's the same argument why Google isn't never considered a monopoly to the online ads space. Because the whole ads industry is much larger.

Same thing with card payments. There are online card payments and in-store card payments and other kinds of payments. Stripe + Paypal volume is considered a fraction of it.

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upvoteby 6 hours ago|
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upvoteby dlcarrier14 hours ago|
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In the US, PayPal has nowhere near the adoption of other countries, for making payments directly between accounts, and Visa and Mastercard have enough regulatory capture to ensure it stays that way.

If there wasn't a regulation-ensured duopoly, everyone would be switching to RTP or FedNow which each charge 4.5¢ per transaction, without an additional commission.

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upvoteby Jblx21 hours ago|
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>FedNow

There is no recourse if something goes wrong with FedNow, right? Like you get scammed, and the scammer just keeps the money. Seems like a pretty big difference (in theory anyway) to PayPal. Although I'm apparently not the right guy to ask, since I really don't see the use case for PayPal vs. credit card.

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upvoteby 1 hours ago|
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upvoteby digitaltrees4 hours ago|
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What is the regulatory capture? Visa and master card have contract terms that ensure retail capture. That’s a private moat not regulation.
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upvoteby charlieyu13 hours ago|
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What’s stopping a new competitor to come in apart from regulations? You would expect someone already trying that given how profitable it is
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upvoteby digitaltrees2 hours ago|
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The contracts with merchants prohibited them from accepting other forms of payment.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

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upvoteby 3 hours ago|
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upvoteby BiteCode_dev2 hours ago|
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With wechat in china, pix in south america and wero in europe, I think it's quite the opposite. All continents want to see visa and mastercard dead so they can bring back those transaction fees in house and it will work as the phone is the low friction payment method now.

Wero in the EU is fantastic, albeit still very young. Once it's mature and deployed everywhere, I see no reason to use something else in my country.

In fact, in France, the CB system endured despite visa and mastercard for 4 decades, so we know how to do it already.

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upvoteby toomuchtodo18 hours ago|
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No reason it can’t be broken apart in the future. States will likely file suit, as twelve already have regarding the Paramount Warner deal.
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upvoteby pessimizer1 hours ago|
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You mean that Paramount-Warner deal that people waited and let happen so they could break it up in the future?
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upvoteby toomuchtodo1 hours ago|
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The deal that a low regulatory executive administration is supporting, while states attempt to prevent it (acting in place of what one would expect from an appropriately functioning Dept of Justice and FTC) until regime change. Midterms are approaching, and this admin has a bit more than two years left. Some folks involved are either at, or beyond, human life expectancy as well. Sort of but not quite similar to Brexit, which barely eeked by, and now all of the old pensioners who supported it are dead after a decade and the country is ready to consider getting back into the EU.

TLDR This low regulatory period of the US political timeline will eventually end, and there will be a lookback/clawback period. Nothing is permanent. Rules can be changed at any time.

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