Comment by stubish
14 days ago
I don't see an alternative to Visa and Mastercard being discussed in the article. I just see ways of making bank transfers easier. Banks generally don't provide ways to dispute transactions, which is why fraudsters generally use bank transfer mechanisms. Once your money leaves your account, it is possibly gone, and once it leaves the country it is definitely gone. Banks here are now inserting delays on transfers in an attempt to combat the problem. Without a consumer focused and consumer friendly way of disputing transactions, consumers will keep using Visa, Mastercard and Paypal.
This is an American-centric POV. I can’t speak for Europe but in many parts of Asia payments are most commonly done as a transfer of digital cash rather than credit. Whether it’s “consumer friendly” is not particularly relevant. People already accept it as a way to transact and there’s very little reason to switch to credit cards.
Over here in Australia, it is mostly Visa and Mastercard debit cards in use (credit cards are available, but expensive and no longer popular). Your money still disappears from your account immediately, but you still can get a refund when using a payment network. Whereas a bank gets to say 'can't help, contact the vendor'. I suspect this is a result of how our consumer protection laws are setup, as the payment network takes on certain legal responsibilities when they accept my cash, even it they then just pass most of it on to the actual vendor. I guess that can work here, as until eCommerce arrived you were rarely making a payment over an international border.
Existing mobile wallets in Europe and beyond are absolutely eating into the market share of Visa and MC. Fraudulent transactions aren't that common since SCA became mandatory. Getting a chargeback in Europe is not trivial, this will change nothing to most consumers.