Comment by mschuster91
2 years ago
> Why are we still using credit cards? It’s not great as a consumer either
Because the big networks (Mastercard and Visa) as well as the issuer and acquirer banks spend insane amounts of money on advertising and lobbying - even in the EU where payment fees are capped, the cap on CC fees is notably higher than on debit card/SEPA fees, so there is a clear incentive for everyone in the chain to push for credit cards.
Additionally, issuer banks make a ton of money on interest which means they have even more of an incentive to push for CC usage.
And also this reliance on a few payment providers causes the same type of problems as this business have with Google - big businesses trampling yours on a whim, with no real recourse. The problem is actually far worse with payment processors, who are increasingly taking it upon themselves to be an unelected worldwide morality police, deciding which types of commerce shall be legal with their own de facto law
I've talked about this before [0], but tl;dr - American banks operate worldwide, and since they are subject to US laws, worldwide banking is de facto under US jurisdiction.
> The banks operate under a laundry list of laws outside of a criminal conviction, such as the Terrorist watch list as well as whole countries that are under US sanctions. US sanctions are a particularly large bite because the US will sanction you from the US financial system for working with the above, even if you are not under US jurisdiction.
> This, of course, doesn't mention the all the reporting used for detecting tax evasion or money laundering.
> US banks are absolutely a wing of the court by operating under the given rule of law, and through the US banks' worldwide influence this 'rule of law' gains a global prominence.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28820330
Is it? My bank accounts in two European countries have in the last year transitioned from Visa Credit Cards to Vise Debit cards. Because the banks in both cases wanted about 2.5 euro per month for something that does not provide any value to me. Unfortunately Visa Secure seems to be changing its validation mechanism every 3 months though, which each time is super annoying.