How to get rid of Mastercard and Visa?
How to get rid of Mastercard and Visa?
Hey guys!
Visa and Mastercard are the 8th and 15th biggest companies in the world, worth more than 1.1T USD (!!!).
For any purchase made with a credit or debit cards and you give them 2-3% of your money.
That's one the biggest waste of money from EU you can imagine.
I'm trying to find viable alternatives but except paying cash it seem there is no real alternative. Even in where I live there is an alternate payment service but they take the money from my mastercard, duh...
And the idea would be to have something even my grandma can use, not some nerdy solution, any thoughts?
Edit: Bitcoin would be a solution if widely adopted, but more realistic would be something accepted by every cashier machine, and if possible using the NFC of your phone, a kind of "Apple/Google" Pay, that goes directly from your bank to the bank's shop. Where I live all debit cards are either visa or mastercard...
Edit2: There is an EU initiative that seem to be starting with WERO, never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative
Edit3: It seem that Paysafecard and Skrill are EU solutions and sometimes proposed in the payment method, but not with STRIPE payment solutions
Wero will become the replacement over time.
But for now, you're stuck with Visa and Mastercard if your country doesn't have a local alternative.
Just get the cheapest option.
Wero can win if the banks offer it with no additional cost to stores and, and this ia crucial, it offers credit and the blocking of funds for stuff like car rentals.
It needs to be as easy a visa/MasterCard and cheaper / easier to run with the same features. I have hope, but that is a tough order.
It will take a while to replace Visa/MasterCard
For now it's only trying to replace PayPal no?
Awesome! Did not know of this. Will investigate.
China has UnionPay, Japan has JCB, Russia has MIR. Europe should have its own credit card network
"EUROCARD"
Sounds nice as well
Make it blue with stars on it and the globe displaying a space picture of earth with europe
Also used to be a thing already https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocard_(credit_card)
Have you looked into American Express?
<checks community name> oh shit, nevermind.
Clearly Discover is the solution. Oh wait, that's not an option either.
Discover network is up for sale. Capital One is trying to grab it. But if that doesn’t go through, a Canadian or European bank could try bidding for it.
And the idea would be to have something even my grandma can use, not some nerdy solution, any thoughts?
Use cash
A sensible stopgap solution, but doesn't really work for big purchases or online shopping.
For big purchases it doesn't, indeed. But for online shopping, would it work if you select payment on delivery at checkout, maybe?
A local debit card is your best bet
In Canada we have Interac. Works great.
Bitcoin uses way to much energy to use as currency like that. gridcoin or any other one that uses proof of stake would be better if accepted but its a bit nicer if the energy put into it results in a useful product which gridcoin does.
How does production of physical cash and movement of money between accounts compare to crypto?
creation of physical cash's cost are not inflated and get changed based on cost and necessity. Using cheaper materials to reduce cost but adding advanced elements which increase cost. Again though it does not have an artificial inflation mechanic causing it to use more energy over time and is just based on method and materials. A big thing in this is how long it functions. coins cost more than paper mostly but one thing people don't take into account is how long they last versus paper. So you typically see things about a penny costing more than a penny but whats not taken into account is that it is least lasting coin at 25 years while most paper under 50s last less than 10 years but longer lasting denominations are usually used less. It comes down to how much value physical money gets in its lifetime vs its cost to make. So you add up every transaction and average out the value for a particular currency type. Movement is done in the real world so its a bit apples to oranges. It does not require anything necessarily. If all computers and electricity. So its going to vary greatly if I give my brother a fiver for grabbing his oj than if I go deposit it at a bank to if I buy from a retalier to if I foolishly mailed it directly. I don't think physical money can be compared to much of any electronic equivalents honestly. That is in the realm of folks that believe in cashless system to ones who want some ability to have the physical ability.
This might not help you OP, but alternative to VISA and Mastercard is UPI. India and some south east asian countries use that for transactions rapidly. Also India also built Rupay (not the currency) to break visa and mastercards duopoly.
Interesting, from the wiki page it looks like some places in the UK accept it.
For any purchase made with a credit or debit cards and you give them 2-3% of your money.
I'm not sure I understand this. The stores would be the ones to pay this fee, no? Not you with your money. The price of some item doesn't change depending on whether you use cash or a debit or credit card. Not usually anyway, maybe a small local shop has done this to me once or twice in my life. Or maybe a fair stand or something.
If we wanted to stop giving Mastercard and Visa "our" money, we would have to all band together as a world community and boycott them. 😬
Please someone correct me if I'm wrong!
Edit: I mean, yes, of course the price of those small transactions are included in the price of the item. So we are all "paying" Mastercard and Visa money, even those who aren't using them. Which is still to my point that we need to all band together as a world community to boycott them, which seems futile in all honesty.
While the shop pays the fee, the fee is priced in and still the money ends up going to the card company based on your purchase.
We had this topic a lot with the tariffs recently. Yes technically the tariffs are paid by the importer or exporter. Doesn't change the fact that they end up being part of the consumer price (which is one of the purposes of tariffs)
You are absolutely correct
Now I just prefer my (or the store's money if you prefer) to recycle in the EU. We need it.
We do indeed. Although not gonna lie, Americans are also cash strapped. But Mastercard and Visa definitely don't need more money!
Just use cash.
I get that it can be a hassle to carry around, but it's the only "real" alternative if you want to keep third party companies from profiling you based on your spending habits and selling that personal info to advertisers.
That's not an option for a lot of countries that are going cashless. In Netherlands (we have our own payment service) a lot of merchants are cashless.
"Going cashless" is a scam designed to rake in payment processing fees from an entire economy. Cash is the enemy to these companies because it's a form of payment they can't profit from.
If it isn't an option, then you should refuse to do business as much as possible. Take your money out of their hands.
In store transactions via nfc and card almost always involves US companies (mainly Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay), all Dutch banks gave up on their own NFC interface. Online is a different story luckily for us.
In Italy we use satispay
Isn’t PagoBANCOMAT a good solution too?
Easy: iDEAL (which is a shitty system, but still..)
Doest that only work in NL?
iDEAL has been acquired by WERO which is an EU initiative for pan-European payment system. Wero is being rolled out by banks in France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemburg.
It's supposedly going to become EU-wide: https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-become-european-standard
If you don’t need a credit card, don’t get one.
If you have one, cancel it and use a bank card. If you can’t do that, pay off your debts then do that.
A lot of people suck with money because the idea of going into debt, taking loans, and paying interest is normal and sometimes good to them but really It’s weird and should be avoided for the sake of harmony.
it’s not about credit cards at all debit cards are also made by visa and mastercard
my point is: everytime you pay with something else than cash, you give money to the USA (arround 2% of your purchase)
Contact the ECB and demand a digital Euro
I'd like to know if something works for all of EU. Because that's the only reason for me to have Visa.
Everything in my own country can be handled with "Dankort" our national universally accepted debit card. We also have local Mobile pay which is also pretty universal here.But those don't work for purchases outside Denmark.
Use the Carte Bancaire network in France,we have that at least.
You mean Carte Bleue? Yes but unfortunately i'm not in France
No, Carte Bleue got bought out by Visa in 2010, I do mean that one : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_Bank_Card_Group
Here in Portugal we have MB Way which is handled on a separate network. I understand that it might interoperate with Bancomat (Italy) and Bizum (Spain) also just since November, but I haven't tried yet. Almost everybody in Portugal (except non-integrating expats) seem to use it, though there are spots here and there that refuse for reasons that are unclear to me.
Debit card maybe?
my debit card is mastercard...
Dang it. I had forgotten that most debit cards now have partnerships like that.
However, remember that debit card transaction fees are typically quite a bit lower (no exact numbers to support my claim, but for instance my hairdresser only takes credit for larger payments; small ones she only accepts debit, or she would just lose too much to the credit card company).
So you wouldn't NOT support MasterCard/Visa, but they WOULD receive less money.
As for non-American credit cards, someone asked a similar question on Reddit and got technically valid but unsatisfying responses.
For instance:
https://www.reddit.com/r/amexcanada/comments/1j31ir0/comment/mfwmz5y/
Like, when they say "don't encourage the US" people don't typically mean jumping to Chinese companies instead. Not to mention UnionPay is definitely not as widely supported as Visa or MasterCard.
And while Japan isn't exactly notorious for its human rights violations these days, I kinda doubt JCB cards would be very widely supported. And could you even get one if you're not Japanese?