Let's stop playing around and talk about ditching something big: Visa and Mastercard - Lemmy.ca
lemmy.ca
Visa 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.
  • Tuukka R@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    4 days ago

    What’s so “sadly” about it? It’s a solution to a problem, it’s easy, and it’s simple.

    • Kualdir@feddit.nl
      1·
      4 days ago

      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.

      • notfromhere@lemmy.one
        0·
        3 days ago

        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.