what s the role of visa in a world where CBDCs will exist?
- internetwork payments
- interbank payments
- fraud prevention and insurance layer
- retail consumer debt underwriting
- payments infrastructure and endpoint standards, security, and deployment
CBDCs do take away a fair amount of responsibility from existing private EFT, and I personally think can be a net positive, but they're a piece of the puzzle.
CBDCs are a substrate. There will always be integrations to the substrate.
Ideally protocols are as simple as possible and applications utilize them to build bespoke services. If the protocol itself is too customizable it becomes extremely difficult to interop.
I assume reasons will be similar to why many prefer credit cards to debit cards: cash flow issues, extra fraud protections, creating a credit history for future loans, rewards points, etc.
The value of debit cards will be significantly diminished, though.
"You didn't give me what I paid for" and "You didn't pay me for what I gave you" are fundamental parts of any purchase.
One could, but one would look very silly doing so, since documented payment disputes (in court records, among other places) are much older than credit cards.
> One could argue that payment disputes are an artifact of credit cards.
Yes, there was. Contracts, including sales contracts, where payment was in whole or in part conditioned on delivery or other performance long predate credit cards, as do disputes over whether the good delivery or other performance was provided and whether payment must be made.
As were, on the other hand, contracts where payment came first, and then later disputes over whether delivery or performance would occur and there would be disputes over whether payment made in advance must be refunded.
And, even without payment and delivery being separated in time, you can have payment disputes because whether the goods (or the instruments provided as payment) were as specified may become a dispute after both sides have exchanged and tentatively concluded the trade.
The idea that payment disputes didn’t exist before the fairly recent invention of credit cards is…amusing.
No, they are all payment disputes.
The evidence in court records is from someone taking advantage of legal recourse for such disputes, yes.
> But disputing a charge on my card means I don’t have to open a legal case against a company. The money is somewhat in escrow and it’s up to VISA/Mastercard to deal with the merchant.
Having a third-party middle-man handling some subset of payment disputes in the first instance before recourse to the legal system also doesn’t originate with credit cards; even the language you use to describe it references the older and more general concept of escrow.
And, of course, as a consumer on credit even before credit cards, and without an intermediary, you neither had to open a legal case against the seller or contact a third party in most cases for a payment dispute, you simply withheld payment. It was the seller who had to initiate a legal case against a purchaser on credit in the event of a payment dispute, and that largely remains unchanged.
Seriously asking
Having a bank account would normally means you get a card that could only withdraw money from an ATM. If you wanted a "debit" card that would cost more.
Credit card were something out of reach for many. Low income folks alternative for credit were to rely on general stores own credit bureau.
With the liberalization in the banking system and the many fintechs that disrupted the market, the unbanked number droped to a single digit in 2021, and with pix, many just skipped the debit card all together.
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370626/access-to-financ...
A CBDC just takes all the BS of having many different systems to process payments, manage bank accounts, etc. etc. and unifies it under one system.
Implying that "every penny" cannot be traced with the current systems we have is a misnomer.
There are plenty of nit-picky exceptions, but I know for a fact that I or anyone else can transact in complete privacy with cash if we take the most minimal of precautions.
If in fact the current system can trace every penny then our governing officials have a lot of explaining to do as to why human trafficking still happens with USD transactions.