This is not what a "free market" means. Paypal is not remotely a monopoly, nor is Patreon.
Obviously, they do have more market power than purely competitive environments but they do compete a lot on rewards which cut into the profitability of those interchange rates. I cannot find any source to measure the interchange fees - rewards profitability but I did find one that shows most of their profits don't come from those but instead interest rates [0] and I'd bet they don't make so much after the rewards (I get minimum 1% cash back on my cards and sometimes up to 5%).
[0]: https://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/04/13/this-is-how-cre...
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-s...
And yes, it makes it so much better. True monopolies can slack so hard and yet still rake in boatloads of cash because their customers have no other option. Google cannot sit around on their search engine or other companies will steal all their customers. Just look at how duck duck go is growing in popularity.
Duopoly when you are in Europe. Discover card and American Express is not really a thing here.
Most adults will be using credit cards, unless you haven't proven to your bank yet that you are trustworhty (i.e. just moved to the country). Debit is usually younger people, below 18 (at least in DK). Both are still Visa or MasterCard.
It would still be a problem, if as a merchant got banned by Visa/MasterCard, since now they have no other way than to accept cash, which obviously doesn't work if you are an online shop.
This really depends on the country. In Germany, most day-to-day payments happen with cash or over the Girocard network. I got by for most of my adult life without a credit card. The only thing that's kind of tricky is booking a hotel without one (international hotel chains have standardized their registration systems around credit cards). I only got a credit card last year because it's free with my current checking account.
So, by definition, this is a problem.
We would no longer have a problem if we get to the point where a single company censorsing your transactions is no big deal because a dozen others will immediately step up in their place.
But we don't live in that world, and so because of this we have to recognize that there is indeed an oligopoly problem.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-18/visa-mast...
The are a lot of ways to not have to accept MC or Visa.
> IBAN transfers...Transferwise
Obviously incredibly slow and a lot of work.
> Diner’s Club, Amex, Discover, JCB
Haven't seen these in Europe.
> Apple Pay (Apple Pay Cash)
Limited to banks that support it. In e.g. Denmark, that's only two of the minor ones, meaning far from the majority of people.
Amex is a small card processor. According to the Nilson report [0], Visa and MasterCard made up 80% of global transaction dollar amount in 2016. Amex, Discover and JCB combined made up 5%.
You may know of Amex but they are a very small card, especially outside of the US.
Not the person of whom you're asking, but I sometimes quote substantial parts of text to which I'm replying for three basic reasons.
The first is that in a large thread if can sometimes be difficult to find the original. In that case it's useful to have the comment there, not least because if you want to see the original you have the exact text to search for.
The second is that in some other forums it's the usual behaviour, and when it's a habit, and regarded as a "Good Thing"(tm) in other forums, that behaviour can carry over. I find it a natural thing to do, and sometimes have to think twice to stop myself from doing it.
And thirdly, in the past I've seen replies that genuinely don't seem to make sense, only to discover subsequently that the original text was edited. I fully appreciate that on HN the unethical editing of text to make replies look stupid is not "A Thing"(tm) but it does make the habit a useful one.
On the flip side, if we did get new laws, why would the goliaths not use their country-size budgets to lobby for the laws to just ensconce them as the government-approved monopoly (maybe not directly, but for example by throwing up legislative barriers to entry against would-be competitors)?
There's already regulations (or industry rules) regarding money laundering, credit card processing, credit card charge backs, international money transfers, etc, etc. That alone creates a decent barrier to entry.
Then there's other issues such as merchants lying, customers lying, refunds, stolen accounts, etc. PayPal closes accounts (and so on) as a consequence of trying to deal with all these issues.
I'd posit that PayPal does not suck because it's PayPal but because of the product itself and anyone who tried to fully replicate it would run into the same issues (and thus suck just as much).
https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s...
Long twitter thread on the relation between MasterCard, Visa and Patreon and how the credit card cartel is attempting to minimise political risk.
Specifically, what's stopping a competitor
from eating Paypal's lunch right now?
I only hear people bitching about their paypal account being locked once or twice a year, whereas I assume paypal deal with hundreds of attempts at credit card fraud, chargebacks, complaints about ebay goods and suchlike every day.
Jordan Peterson (if you know him) has partnered to solve the problem of PayPal and Patreon deplatforming people, and is starting a competing service that doesn't depend on traditional payment circuits.
No one knows much about how it will work, but it might prove to be a good alternative to avoid being at the mercy of these companies.
If that small group of creators finds a better alternative, and tells their audience to support them at the alternative rather than Patreon, they will go there.
SubscribeStar was enjoying a good amount of success as a Patreon alternative once a few users who got banned move to it, (but then PayPal cut SubscribeStar off).
Only time can tell.
We have to wait and see.