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Payment fees matter more than you think

92 points by dxs

by wagwang

3 subcomments

Let's just call it for what it is.
Visa and mastercard innovated in an era where payment settlement was notoriously difficult and expensive but they've used their monopolies to entrench themselves in (by negotiating deals with merchants and bribing consumers with points) while the rest of the world moves on towards "layer 2" payment systems that are much cheaper and efficient.

by saharshpruthi

2 subcomments

In India there is UPI (Unified Payment Interface), which works with all bank accounts, it's facilitated by the Government and it comes with i. QR Code (Used with strangers and at Merchants) ii. UPI ID iii.And links to phone number.
Anyone can pay to anyone instantly free of Charge. Only limit is it's limited to ~ $1000 payment. The QR code can also be dynamically created by POS terminals containing the total bill amount as well, so upon scanning the amount is auto populated in the payment app, you just have to enter the security pin.
And since it's a Govt. Project, its not limited to just one app, there are lots and lots of apps working on the same system. There is even a VISA/Mastercard credit alternative : RuPay that works within the system.

by ralferoo

2 subcomments

Wechat pay in China is interesting. It costs nothing to add money to your balance from your bank, or to pay someone from your balance. It only costs the end merchant who wants to withdraw it from their balance back into their bank. If they can keep it in Wechat pay and spend it on other things (which is very easy as it and Alipay are the primary payment methods for everything), then there's no charge.
I guess Tencent are making their profit from the interest they earn on the money that was transferred into them that just stays in people's Wechat wallets in effectively a parallel currency.

by crazygringo

2 subcomments

by konschubert

4 subcomments

In the EU, we now have instant, free SEPA bank transfers.
I know that the banks are trying to build a payment solution on top of this technology but it's not really getting traction.
I am wondering if there is a way to bootstrap something bottom-up by offering something to merchants that has a clear value prop.

by touwer

0 subcomment

It's time for Europe to process the own money. Strange that the dominance of Visa/Mastercard/Maestro was left for so long. Of course there is a lobby from them to attack the digital Euro

by montenegrohugo

1 subcomments

by flerchin

1 subcomments

Payment processing networks are not free to build or operate. There are necessarily fraud controls and transaction reversals that require human oversight. This all costs. Nations can and should build this infrastructure, but in the absence, a payment processor is going to charge interchange. Otherwise why would they bother.

by havaloc

2 subcomments

If a restaurant runs on a 9% net margin and pays around 3% in card fees, then roughly one-third of its net profit is going toward payment processing.

by ezfe

2 subcomments

4% seems high. Quick googling in the US (which has high rates) shows 1.5-3.5%, avg of 2%

by kwanbix

0 subcomment

In Argentina we can transfer using our account number (or account Alias, for example my alias could be kwanbix) directly, account to account, instantly, it costs 0.

by Finnucane

0 subcomment

One factor that the author glosses over a bit is that highest swipe fees are for credit cards with benefits. The interbank system he describes is a debit system, no credit is being extended. Even in the US, debit swipe fees tend to be less.

by intrasight

1 subcomments

0 subcomment

by flaxxer

0 subcomment