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There is, it's called debit cards, but Stripe et al. "simplified" pricing by charging a percentage regardless of card type instead of the traditional interchange-plus pricing. Merchant banks "used to" make money by tacking on fixed fees, i.e. a set-up fee, terminal fee, monthly fee, etc, but then Stripe came along and provided (1) a better dev experience, (2) better onboarding, and (3) simplified pricing.

It boggles my mind that the government has privatized currency to these people.

Crazy-person-but-actually-really practical-idea:

Nationalize one if these networks. Maybe Discover.

The US government should provide us digital currency. The simplest way is to force the current systems to do that. All that rent they collect in terms of transactions fees shouldn't be profit for a private business but fees of the government.

That's what systems like Pix fixes. It's managed by the state, it's low cost and it's universal... which is why the US is against it so hard.

If we look at this in a non US-centric view, then many other areas have solved this, partially since decades.

For example, in Germany we used to have a bank card, "EC Karte", it is now called "Girocard".

So, if you are a shop and accept Girocard, you pay 0.2% of the transaction plus a fix 0.05 - 0.10 €.

And in Germany virtually everyone has a Girocard, it's part of getting a bank account. The cards are free to the customers.

So assume you're a small Café with 8000€ per months, 70% via Girocard and 30% via credit cards. Then you'd pay ~ 17€ per month for Girocard, but 95€ if you use "blended sum" - a contract with a payment provider to accept all cards. But you don't have bureaucracy. With you do an extra contract with a credit card only provider it's still 41€ for just the 30% of your monthly business.

That creates the effect that in Germany lots of shops don't accept credit cards. The market speaks.

I know that other countries also have payment methods, e.g. Netherland or China. It's just the US banking system that is decades behind what is possible.

The real shittiness begins when having to deal with them as a business. If you’re classified as high risk, which could be whatever the fuck, you’re deplatformed or need to deal with Byzantine merchants.

I used to think "I should be nice to merchants" and pay everything in cash.

That was 15 years ago. Now, living costs have gone up, I'm getting taxed to death by not just governments but increasingly more by businesses themselves ("benefits fees", "installation fee", "convenience fee", guilt-tip screens, sneaky price increases, etc.) so now I feel no guilt in playing the system to get at least some of my money back. Now I just churn 1-2 credit cards a year to pay my taxes and get some of it back in the massive sign up bonuses, which more than cover the transaction costs, fees, and then get me another few thousand back.

If merchants across the world make a deal with me to charge exactly the listed/advertised number exactly, no more, no less, then I'll pay in cash again.

Deal? No? Okay, you continue paying your merchant fees and I'll continue reaping the credit card bonuses to the maximum possible.

There’s a startup in Switzerland (https://www.pimpay.ch/) trying to offer no per-transaction payments (at the Swiss-level). I wish them good luck but it’s not going to be easy to disrupt the existing players in this field.

This is something governments could fix by running the payments rails.

In my case, it's literally free money. I travel a lot for work. I pay for everything with my card, and I'm reimbursed by the company. I rack up points, and whenever I travel for pleasure or as an independent contractor, hotels are free. I'd get free airfare like my coworkers do if I didn't avoid flying and drive everywhere.

The system is broken. No one with the power to fix it has any incentive to do so. Might as well get what you can.

Another thing to consider is your credit card rewards cash back etc are really trading your privacy for a little rounding error worth of discount in comparison to using cash.

You may also save far more money going cash only. E.g. some local restaurants near me give you like 5% off paying in cash. Gas is generally cheaper cash price vs card price or debit fee. You have a big job with a contractor, tell them you might be interested in paying cash and they might offer you a substantial discount.

Agreed.

I will admit that sometimes I do have fun playing the game (certainly a lot more when I was younger), but not often anymore. I feel like I "have" to do it, because there's no such thing as a free lunch, and as such stores price in the fees and so I might as well get it back in the form of traveling, but it is very weird that we just expect credit cards to do that.

Agreed. The pool hall nearby has a game of pool for $2. But if you use a credit card the minimum purchase is $6 (three games) due to fees. It works, but I thought it was a gimmick to trap people into playing more pool until I saw your comment here and realized it was from fees.

What's really fun is when you're reselling something like Microsoft 365 and both the credit card companies and the state (through sales tax) make more than you do on each sale.

In india we use UPI. But people still use cards enough to be in decent enough terms with them for when you want to make a risky purchase and chargeback. In a sense, it's simply insurance. You pay extra 2% everywhere so you can dispute a txn at any point later.

Personally I make very few risky + expensive purchases, so my CC usage is non existent. I am comfortable enough to not really care if a random shady hobby electronics website fleeces me 500rs.

Another use is that sometimes you get CC offers on Amazon: "use $BANK $TIER CC to get extra 7k off" which are useful enough to justify paying extra everywhere else if you do your big shopping though Amazon festival deals. E.g you can get a 55k iphone for 45k.

I don't get this. Use cash like me and a bunch of us if you don't want to play the game. Or a debit card. Otherwise it's just an extra game. Extra games are choice. Choice is good.

> but it's ridiculous that people have this sense that shopping should somehow fund your vacation.

Some people are dumb and think tax refunds are free money when in reality they’re an interest-free loan to the IRS.

Money is fungible and instantly redeeming rewards for a statement credit is almost always the optimal way to use credit card rewards.

A person who wants to fund a vacation with rewards can simply redeem the rewards for a statement credit while simultaneously transferring that amount of cash to a HYSA or similar.

>I wish there was a low fee credit card network that merchants didn't charge a fee for, so I could continue the simplicity of digital payments but opt out of this crazy Visa Infinite rewards accounting boondoggle.

This is called "Regulate the max fees" like Europe did, where they still have functioning credit card networks, including good fraud coverage, but you aren't expected to dance for the credit card company for peanuts of kickback.

Why do you play the points game?

I felt like if I didnt spend $1 on something that was the equivalent of me spending $50 to get those same credit card points

Just came back from a vacation in Denmark and Norway, paid with debit card everywhere.

Heck, paying with card is the default, if you do pay cash, the cashier sometimes has to cancel the card payment before accepting the cash.

They charge you 23%?

I thought in the EU the maximum interchange fee for consumer credit cards is capped at 0.3% of the transaction value.

> Visa transactions costs are 0,22 € out of a payment of 1 €, Mastercard's is 0,23 €, and the French CB network is 0,17 €.

Are you sure of these values? Because that's different from what I was told, which was that CB was cheaper for transactions of more than 10 €, because their fees were fixed, not rates like Visa and Mastercard.

From what I've just read (not counting the possible extra tax by the bank of the seller):

CB: 0.20% + 0.00117 € ⇒ 0.00317 € for 1 €, 0.20117 for 100 €

Visa: 0.20% + (0.01% to 0.014%) ⇒ up to 0.00214 € for 1 €, 0.214 € for 100 €

Mastercard: 0.20% + (0.15 to 0.17%)

The 0.20% is for the "interchange" described in the article. So it applies only when the seller and the buyer do not have the same bank. The maximal rate is fixed by the UE, and AFAIK everyone use the max value.

Seems like you're getting scammed. Sumup for example charges 1,75 % per transaction, no other costs, not even a monthly fee. With a monthly fee the transaction cost drops to just 0.89%.

Level 2/3 data: https://docs.adyen.com/payment-methods/cards/enhanced-scheme...

It's only available in the US, many countries have lower interchange fees and prohibit sending this data.

I would love if it was transmitted to the bank for my own use so I can easily remember what I purchased or run budgeting software against it! Obviously wouldn't be excited about it being resold tho.

the main purpose of that data is for fraud detection, anything downstream (i.e. selling it to advertisers) is just the cherry on top. Merchants are always financially incentivized both implicitly and explicitly to do anything that would reduce fraud and increase the rate of successful authorizations.

This would explain why so many damn coffee shops dont deal with cash now - the double as a coffee shop and data reseller

Level 3 data.

At least in the US, and as of a few years ago (when last I tested), address verification can also be a bit flaky. Zipcode/postalcode is solid, but street address matches don't reliably account for the various ways people can colloquially write them. It's not awful, just not good. We should re-test it some time, but as of a few years ago, street address checks were not a major improvement in fraud prevention compared to just Zipcode and CVV checks.

That’s because there are more than 200 other parameters used for risk analysis during authentication. Worked in payments industry. Some banks don’t place high priority to name but some do.

I almost never pay cash.

Some businesses pass you the credit card fees if they offer other payment methods. You'll even hear about a discount around VAT/2 if you pay with cash sometimes.

I think that hiding the CC fees into the price that you pay with all payment methods should be illegal.

Jokes on you. Merchants prefer credit cards because there is less loss than cash. 2.5% is nothing compared to 5-10% loss at the register. Plus easier and more accurate accounting.

Between individuals it is free. For commercial transactions, there is a fee between 0.22% and 0.33% per transaction, which is actually ~2x the fee of the Visa network (0.13%)! Visa is extremely efficient at moving money anywhere in the world.

Credit and debit card transactions have higher fees because unlike Pix, there is chargeback risk, and the the merchant and acquiring banks party to the transaction are compensated for the risk they assume in those transactions. Pix on the other hand is digital cash. When you spend it, it's gone. Unlike with chargebacks and disputes, there is no reliable mechanism to recover funds for goods not delivered.

You are literally linking to a page published by Visa's Investors Relations Department.

The problem is that like all cartels, they hold progress back. Things could be even more efficient than the current state of affairs. For example we could have open standards with thousands of local players, much faster settlement times etc...

There are also aspects such as the fact that due to this concentration of power, the whole world is subject to US sanctions, such that a EU citizen sanctioned by the US is effectively cut off from civilization.

Yes. As a merchant it's pretty cool that the money just shows up and I don't have to chase down as much bad debt. The processing costs easily pay for themselves.

It seems Visa revenue is $40B/year. You shouldn't compare that to the amount of economic activity they enable - you should compare it to how much it could cost to run a system like theirs.

The problem is not that the tech is bad, it’s that the industry is a cartel with no viable way to disrupt the established players.

> VisaNet & friends make the modern consumer world go round.

I mean, as opposed to what? You could apply this to any infrastructure cartel like with AT&T in the 90s or Comcast or 100s of historical examples. The alternative to a bridge troll is not ”no bridge”.

Well, in Germany the "girocard", the local card network, is the most popular form of payment. So I guess, citation needed?

In the US. Not in Europe because interchange fees for consumer cards are capped at 0.3%

Yes that intuition is correct, though the reality is much more complicated. The actual share to the bank is roughly proportional to the risk of the transaction/ tied to the type of credit card

https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-in...

US Bank for a brief period opened up a 4% card, but then closed it so quick that obviously the numbers didn't work out there.

2% seems to be a local maximum of cashback cards. There's a lot of 2% cards, and only a handful above that.

Makes sense?

2% is just an example figure, the actual rate varies

Has the characteristics to implement the digital Euro. Plus guarantees anonymity of buyers. And should be extremely cheap to operate. But is not under bank’s control.

Networks like visa and Mastercard don’t seem evil. If you’ve ever had to dispute a charge and got your money back easily or relied on the fact that even if their computers are down they’ll still take the risk and allow you to take money out of your account you’d find the fees they charge pretty minimal. Now the issuer bank… that’s where most of the fee and why most banks now have reward cards because the issuing bank can ask for whatever additional fees on top of what visa/mastercard does.

How are chargebacks resolved in this situation?

This is an important question- most of the costs of a credit card providers come from dealing with fraud and chargebacks. That's partially because, under US law, credit card companies have to eat fraudulent charges if they can't get the person or company that did the fraud to do so. (Funnily enough, this is one of two places where protections for average people in the US are significantly better than protections for average people in Europe).

But credit card companies can keep their costs low by making a business decision not to renew the accounts of frequent chargeback-ers or chargeback-ees (even if they never officially found those individuals at fault). If the government had to make a payment system for everyone and take on all responsibility for all fraud, that would create an incentive with massive second-order effects.

So the article shows how visa and mastercard are, by far, not the ones taking the largest fee, and the solution is to get rid of them?

Where are you going to do the transactions in your scheme? Because credit card transactions are not the same as sending money from one bank account to another. There are settlements, disputes, chargebacks, etc.

How is the central bank going to offer the same variety of products described in the article? I.e..

> Interchange fees vary dramatically based on the kind of card, category of spend, and even the metadata attached to a transaction. The network’s goal is to set fees that incentivize desired behaviors on their network, including using more secure payment methods (lowering interchange fees for merchants), or for companies to do more business spending (higher interchange fees on commercial credit cards).

Your scheme sounds like all these crypto guys who think they can replace credit cards with bitcoin transactions, as if they were the same thing

A few years ago congress had a nice solution via a market mechanisms, have sufficiently large banks be required to have their cards support at least 2 card networks, via which the merchant may at at swipe time decide which network to run against. Unfortunately like any good idea, it died in congress.

Travel and tourism is about 9% of the world economy, and by some measures considered the largest economic sector in the world. Visa and Mastercard will continue to be dominant.

The answer to that is to "donate" to about 270 congress critters. Buying 5 motorhomes for supreme court members could work too.

Crypto is in no way better money.

It’s slow and expensive and doesn’t scale.

The real answer is an alternative that relies on a centralised provider - or set of them - who use traditional databases and the like, but do things in a modern efficient way and don’t charge the same fees as the current card providers do.

The problem is that bitcoin (and similar) are so computationally intense to run, that the transaction cost is much higher than Visa's.

Furthermore, a currency needs a government (or similar kind of body) to manage its stability, by printing (and buying) money. Otherwise, we'll see wide fluctuations in value like what happens with Bitcoin.

You better don't look into how banks make money on your savings.

>It’s like if you gave your buddy $100 to give to his room mate, and he decides to wait a week and gamble it on Kalshi

Or treasuries.

Its actually a minor part of rheir business.

And frankly who cares given that its a sustainable system. I pay on credit and then someone else pays. I dont give a shit of they are betting on how many times Al Roker says Trump on New Years Eve.

middlemanning is the most american of business ventures

> and it does not require anything close to that to maintain their network.

If it's so easy to disrupt visa/mastercard payment network, they wouldn't be able to charge this much. Payment is a highly competitive business. We witnessed so many payment companies went under or were bought out, but these two stay for years and are still profitable.

The truth is their moat is considered very durable and hard to build. A global n banks to n banks payment network is not as simple as how people thought.

That 0.35% feels more reasonable in 1976 or even maybe 2001 than it does today because technology changed so much. But maybe I'm wrong about that

If you're an American that 2% is a much bigger problem for your society. That's a direct funnel from the poor to the wealthy, it's not as a obvious a problem as "Trump gave the ultra-rich a tax cut" but it might structurally be more significant.

Credit card companies are mostly parasitic middle men but I have a credit card that I use for most payments and pay off the balance every month and effectively get 2% cashback with no interest costs.

Goods (and services) are priced at what the customer is willing to pay. In this case, the alternative is cash or cheques, both have much higher loss rates. That’s why vendors are eager to take visa over cash.

Europeans have alternative payment networks already. For example, CH has Twint.

They are actively being unified into a cross-border payment network.

Of all the things to complain, this is the one where they are actually doing something…

As someone from an EU country: the only place where I use visa/MasterCard is at Amazon. Everything else I use my country's payment system, which is now joining with Italy's own and probably more in the coming years.

Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647444 - June 2026 (376 comments)

European Parliament committee backs digital euro - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645468 - June 2026 (2 comments)

Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415217 - June 2026 (235 comments)

Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207004 - May 2026 (777 comments)

Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038965 - February 2026 (132 comments)

Europe's Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)

Unofficial Wero Adoption Tracker - https://www.werotracker.eu/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

ISO 8601 is just a timestamp format. Surely Visa must be using timestamps internally, but that couldn't possibly be their service.

ISO 20022 looks more like it.