Comment by jacknews
19 hours ago
Every country should have this.
Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?
It perhaps made sense when the technology was difficult, and America was trusted, but ...
19 hours ago
Every country should have this.
Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?
It perhaps made sense when the technology was difficult, and America was trusted, but ...
It's interesting that we live in 2026 and people still don't understand the fees of credit card processing.
Visa charges only a Assessment fee the majority goes to Issuer Bank +PSP.
E.g: Interchange fee (0.8-1.8%): Paid by acquirer to issuer (card-holding bank)
Assessment fee (0.1-0.3%): Paid to card network (Visa, Mastercard)
Acquirer margin (0.3-0.8%): Retained by merchant’s payment processor
The army of middlemen with their hands out is the worst part, where you also have fees paid to the merchant bank, the iso/payment service provider, and a chain of agents. In disfavored industries like adult content, this can reach 15% or more, plus thousands in annual "high risk" fees (even if chargeback rate is good). It's a huge anticompetitive racket, and the sooner US can shake off Visa/MasterCard, the better off we'll be.
Add an extra fixed fee if you need 3D Secure (and equivalents). This should be covered already by the assessment and interchange fees to begin with.
Card networks' moat is their network effect. If you need to take a payment from someone around the world, cards are very convenient. Unless Pix and friends get to interop globally, cards will always have a place.
Any percentage based fee for processing a transaction is borderline criminal.
EU regulations limit those interchange fees to 0.2% for debit card transactions and 0.3% for credit card transactions so total costs are much lower for businesses. Cards have replaced cash even for small transactions in most European countries.
The banks and the payment processors are the real customers of the payment networks and they all do better when they can squeeze more money from the end users - the cardholders and the businesses. Pix cuts out these middlemen and that’s an existential threat to their business model, ergo an “investigation” by the Trump admin.
All should be free. Imagine if government decided to impose 3% revenue tax, yet these companies get a free pass.
If these networks cannot run this for free, then they should be nationalised and tax payer should cover it. It will be cheaper (because it will become non-profit) for everyone and better.
Cash handling also costs businesses money so I'm not sure it needs to be free, just strictly regulated.
1 reply →
> Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?
I don't think VISA/Mastercard takes such a fee? (They'd be some of the biggest companies in the world if they did.)
The fees they charge are actually fractions of a percent, the rest are charged by the card issuer, which is usually your bank.
You could, in theory, use the VISA network and not pay those fees to a card issuer.
Still greater than 0.
There's absolutely no reason for a country to outsource paynent infrastructure to US corporations.
> You could, in theory, use the VISA network and not pay those fees to a card issuer.
You can not. The only way is to have a private agreement with the card issuer. That's why stores all try to push their co-branded cards.
> Every country should have this
Many countries do, it's really more common than you might think. The problem is international payments and things like tourism. Want to order something from another country? Want to go there for a week and not have to use cash? In most cases it's either Visa or MasterCard.
I misunderstood, psd2 is Europe's equivalent.
And yes, every country should have this. Even America
PSD2 is merely a framework for an uniform access to banking, same APIs everywhere. While you can send money through it, it's still through the same means as normal.
Many of the european countries have their own "Pix", but there's no European-wide alternative. The ECB wants to make one (tentatively titled "digital euro"), but it's going to take a long time to come out.
There are plans for interoperability between the various European payment apps.
My local app (MB Way, PT) can be used to send money to Spain and Italy. Others will follow.
https://www.mbway.pt/a-interoperabilidade-e-o-futuro-dos-pag... (link in portuguese)
Wero is the alternative, it's moving on quite well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
> Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?
And spy on every single transaction
Exactly and if you think 2-3% is a small number you should keep in mind that that is effectively half of what the market returns over the long-term at 7%.
It made sense back in the 1970s when it was hard for an American to pay for a hotel room in Manilla.
But in 2026 data moves in a micro second from one continent to another.