You are feeding an unnecessary middleman taking another piece of the pie and in the end you are paying more for the same thing even if you don't see it right in front of you.
What we should have is an electronic cash equivalent operated by the central bank, no tracking of transactions and zero fees as we have with cash.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/22/fednow-instant-payments-cre...
> FedNow launch hints at payments wars to come
> Pix, the Brazilian instant-payments system, was nonexistent pre-pandemic. Today, per Matera, a Brazilian payments software company, Pix sees 8.1 billion transactions per quarter. That's more than the next two highest payments methods — credit cards and debit cards — combined. Credit card transactions have fallen by 20% in one year. “Pix shows how intuitive payments can be," says Matera CEO Carlos Netto. "It poses the greatest threat yet to credit card dominance."
> Americans will be slow to give up their credit cards. But if merchants get aggressive in pushing us toward something more instantaneous, they could end up saving tens of billions of dollars in interchange fees.
https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/fednow-could-sco...
> Walmart and Kroger are reportedly interested in using FedNow to give customers an alternative to card payments, according to Payments Dive, which cited comments from the retailers’ representatives during a panel at the Faster Payments Council spring meeting.
Soon.
Otherwise, consumers will continue to prefer using credit cards due to cash back, safety, and convenience.
I expect Walmart’s progress here to be a bellwether. Their consumers are price sensitive and they have the power to drive consumer behavior. Their success (or lack thereof) will drive the actions of smaller volume merchants. Walmart spends ~$3B on credit and debit interchange fees annually; they are highly incentivized to get off of expensive payment rails and specifically commented on this during the public FedNow comment period.
Anecdotally, my landscapers will only take Zelle or a check. I don’t blame them.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-car...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/30/credit-card-fee-fight-pits-p...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012866
https://www.federalreserve.gov/SECRS/2019/December/20191227/...
https://www.ft.com/content/c50a840b-394d-45e3-894d-301d9e1fa... | https://archive.today/m3qnH
> Payment consultancy TSG reckons between 5-10 per cent of 8mn card-accepting small businesses in the US now charge fees for credit card usage. That is up from 2 per cent five years ago. Underscoring the growing trend, TSG said about 15 per cent of new merchants who accept card payments have a surcharge policy.
> Business owners may feel they have no choice. Credit card fees, which average 2-4 per cent of the transaction amount, are most merchants’ highest operating cost after labour, says the National Retail Federation. Surcharges help cover the interchange fees that they would otherwise pay to card network and bank.
that means if you pay cash or card, the price is the same.
you are also not allowed to reject cards for small amounts.
Is it really impossible for people to envision even the small failure modes of such a system? What about the big, evil, malicious ones?
Did we forget the Wikileaks banking blockade already? How about the Canadian trucker protest? How about freelance porn models?
It's critically important that you retain the ability to pay and be paid when the state would really prefer that you not be able to.
Realistically cash has plenty of fees in the form of security and handling which are just baked in to the price of everything we buy. As cash becomes less common, these hidden fees start to go away.
Who's paying for this? What happens if I want to spend my money abroad? Why would you assume a central bank won't be tracking us?
Visa, Mastercard, Amex, et al are all extracting profit from fees and ad-intelligence, but only about half of this revenue results in net profit. Running these things isn't free.
> you are paying more for the same thing even if you don't see it right in front of you
By extension, I infer that you think cash is free to handle. It's not.
For a high-volume business (eg supermarket, big box store), cash is an absolute nightmare. Counting at the point of sale, counterfeiting, storing, balancing and float management. That has time cost, while mistakes at any point have direct monetary costs. A 2% card fee compares pretty favourably, especially if you go cash-free.
I welcome any disruptors, but we need to be realistic. Given the awful history of simple bank transfers in the US, I wouldn't be expecting the answer to come from them.
An even bigger middleman! :)
Hmmmmm
Well, define unnecessary. A car is also unnecessary to go 50miles. Still nice to have I would say. My point is, carrying a wallet around is not the greatest experience ever, especially when it's super hot.
>You are paying more
I'm not, Im curious to understand how your card works.
>Electronic cash
I agree that's a great idea actually. EU is working on it since years already. Let's make MasterCard/amex/visa unnecessary please.