Comment by danpalmer
2 days ago
If you're in the US this sounds like a normal card. If you're in a lot of other places you won't have heard of it because it's not available and it sounds amazing because it wouldn't make any money in more regulated countries.
you mean it wouldn't make any money for the bank issuing the card? Is that because they can't charge merchants as much to accept it other countries?
Yes, fees are capped in the EU for exemple.
Considering the impact on prices, cashback is basically reverse redistribution. It makes the situation worse for the poorest customers to give money to the banks and their richest customers.
Yep if you use a card in the US the company just takes 2c from your left pocket and puts it in your right pocket in a form that's more difficult to use.
And if you don't use a card, the business takes 2c from your left pocket and keeps it.
It's a great trick though, people really buy into the whole points/cashback thing and don't realise they're being paid with their own money
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This is not even a particularly competitive cashback card in the UK. But perhaps you don't consider that a "more regulated country."
I was using "more regulated" as a lazy catch all, but I'm actually British and now live in Australia. The Apple Card would be pretty amazing in either market in my experience. The UK seemed to max out at 0.5-1% back at scale (not including sign up incentives). Australia is similar, although here credit cards are disincentivised even more.
The UK is very similar to the US, very neoliberal.
They have a little more consumer protection but not a lot.
Here in Spain cards don't tend to provide any cashback, also they hurt your credit rating (in contrast with the US where they improve it and people end up shuffling cards). They're pretty unpopular here, most people just use debit cards. I prefer it too, if I don't need credit to buy something I don't want to use it. I currently don't have any loan or credit active which is the best situation in case I'd want to get a mortgage.
We do have some cards like revolut which provide some benefits but you have to pay a monthly sub. It's more promotional stuff like 'free' Uber one, perplexity, tinder etc. I don't find those terribly useful except for perplexity but they give that away free with a lot of things. Uber one in particular really sucks because it's way more expensive than local alternatives (cabify for rides, glovo for meals) even with the discount.
Credit cards are, oddly enough, one place in which the US has absolutely amazing consumer protection laws. Debit cards do not share these protections by law (though many banks offer some of them).
So, if you move to the US, getting a credit card, even if you never intend to carry a balance, is a wise idea.
- You cannot be held responsible for more than $50 of fraudulent charges
- You are not required to report a card missing within a short period of time to claim that charges are fraudulent
- Because your bank account is not directly linked to the credit card, fraudulent charges occur with the credit bank's money, not yours, so you do not have to fight to have them declared fraudulent before you can use money in your account
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The UK still has EU-equivalent interchange rate caps that they inherited form pre-Brexit times. The only thing that's changed so far is that transactions between the UK and EU can be charged higher interchange rates again.
Huh? Cashback cards on VISA/Mastercard have all but disappeared, I think Lloyds still do one but it has a promo of 1% for the first year then drops to 0.25% after. American Express will give you 0.75% on first 10k spend then 1.25%. 2% is unheard of (unless it's promo or heavily capped).