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Let's stop playing around and talk about ditching something big: Visa and Mastercard - Lemmy.ca
lemmy.caVisa and Mastercard are American companies, and they essentially tax everybody
by taking a percentage of purchase prices for themselves. Not exactly a small
percentage either, 1.2% to 2.65%
[https://money.ca/credit-cards/how-much-are-canadian-merchants-really-charged-by-visa-mc].
Ever wonder why so many merchants say they don’t accept American Express? That’s
because they charge quite a bit more to merchantes, 50% more than Visa or
Mastercard. Anyway, we’re letting American companies tax us and we love them
because we get rewards when we use cards. But it’s just a shell game because we
pay more up front because businesses need to charge more to make up for payment
processing charges. They get to sit in the middle and rake in the money. Now the
alternative in Canada is Interac. Interac charges a set amount per transcation.
How much? 2 to 5.5 cents
[https://www.interac.ca/en/payments/business/understanding-fees/]. Unless you’re
going through Apple or Google Pay, and then it’s a percentage again. Interac is
also Canadian. Want to stick it to Trump? Stop using credit cards (and Google
Pay or Apple Pay) and switch to Interac. Want to make Canada better? Stop using
credit cards and switch to Interac. Is it going to be inconvenient? Yes. Online
shopping will be much harder but I have seen online Interac payments before and
we can ask our favourite Canadian merchants to accept Interac online.
Currently there are only alternatives online like Klarna (and iDeal in the Netherlands). The only way to do it in store is paying cash sadly
Klarna has american connections. One of the biggest shareholders are “sequoia capital” 'merican
What’s so “sadly” about it? It’s a solution to a problem, it’s easy, and it’s simple.
Cash is insanely inconvenient, cannot be used at self checkout (which is the only reason I don’t despise doing groceries), is more risk carrying big amounts and not even accepted above a certain amount in most stores.
We just need an actual Visa/Mastercard EU edition.
If you are building a CC network, look at blockchain as the method, specifically Monero or XMR. It is anonymous and so far had been unbroken so is currently untraceable. If EU supports anonymous purchases then even better, just feed cash into the ATM to load your XMR-backed account.
I would rather use cash than ever touch something using blockchain technology
Because many times I leave home with just my phone.