My understanding here is that the main objective is to break up the MasterCard/Visa duopoly. I guess breaking up duopolies is always a win for the general public, no?

In the UK and I thought in most of the EU you can just use your Bank's app to send money into someone else's bank account.

So not replacing MasterCard/Visa especially as that requires a lot to be able to accept payments.

Anecdotally, privacy is actually something that people care about today. I used to think that it was mostly software geeks that cared about privacy, but during the past few years there's been so much discussion about various privacy issues, as well as discussions in my community etc.

Young people in particular care way more about privacy that us older people. In fact, young people feel way more anxiety around things that are tied to your identity.

But even despite them, I feel like even in my extended family privacy issues are increasingly very important to people. Everybody knows somebody who has been scammed.. even lost a great amount of money.

Your average user is caring more and more about security and privacy.

Re: being anonymous, I don't know. I suspect the anonymity part is more related to privacy for most people.

The other benefits of this of course is that you can make your own payment system and integration, and you won't need to be dependent upon VISA/Mastercard for your payments. Cheaper transaction fees ultimately helps lower product prices, enables microtransactions and more - I wouldn't discount how much of a big deal this would be.

I'm sure once they've finalized the whole thing, Misa/Vastercard will have employed their lobbying powers to the fullest to inject themselves into the final spec, but here's hoping.

Most people don't care at all about privacy, or at most veery selectively. There are tons of services that'd have way less users otherwise. And just a few years ago, two referenda (peoples' vetoes) against new surveillance laws in Switzerland failed miserably. In one case, we weren't even able to get the needed 50k signatures.

If it’s equally convenient and cheaper, people could easily use this. It may even be their bank who sets it up for them when they pay for something.

I know at least one person employed in banking who thinks it’s insane that Visa and Mastercard get a 2% cut of any transaction.

> Visa and Mastercard get a 2% cut of any transaction.

They don't. In the EU, the intercharge fees is capped at 0.3%. Even in the US they only keep a fraction of the fees, the rest goes to card issuers.

The EU solved that in 2015, the fee is capped at 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards. Call up / write to your representative in whatever country you live in and ask why your country hasn't done that yet.

Debit and credit cards are not popular everywhere. In Germany, their market share is below 50% in e-commerce transactions. In retail it's just above 50%. If you look at the overall volume, 82% of their transactions are made in cash.

Now, would they swap cash this solution? I doubt it... Privacy is a reason but not the only one.

Germany is particularly weird for that. Visiting Germany from the UK or Poland paying for stuff feels like going back in time like 15-20 years.

I have a strong memory of going to a cafe next to my hotel in Berlin and ordering a coffee and being completely shocked I couldn't pay for it by card. I hadn't even considered that I might need cash. After some conversation the nice lady in the cafe told me keep the coffee and to come back the next day with the cash. They really hate card payments for some reason.

On the other hand in Poland I've been unable to use my card in a couple of places because they only take mobile payments/Blik. The contrast is wild.

I absolutely care about privacy. Also, if I can pay the kebab shop with less fee with my phone(hopefully) rather than them putting up a note that “only cash”(because CC charges large fees), it’ll be an immediate win for me to avoid carrying wallet full of heavy coins and cash everywhere like medieval times.

If you believe that kebab shops, or any shops, that put up such signs are really about card fees then I have bridge to sell you...

They do though. I have been to several who refuse cards for payments below a certain (pretty low) amount.

Minimum amount for card payments , indeed because of fees, is not the same as refusing card payments altogether like the person I replied to wrote.

Cash only is not really about card fees...

But if you only sell low value items, it may not be worth it, especially if you won’t loose many customers because most customers have cash at hand.

Let's spell it out, then: Cash only is about tax, not card fees.

...and, as quoted by sunshine_reggae, lower transaction costs.

as an average joe on the consumer end I don't care about transaction costs. at least here in germany that's the vendor's problem.

the vendor factors them in the final price, especially if you're buying something below 10 euros

not to mention online micropayments such as donations which could allow people to just send 1 dollar without fear of fees taking up most of it

Especially while having to pay 19-25% VAT on most purchases...

Won't the vendors just design their prices in a way that it's economically feasible for them - they just include the transaction costs in the price?

yes, but they're not allowed to charge different prices depending on payment method. so they may factor those costs in - but everyone pays them. doesn't matter if they're paying cash or visa. so as a consumer I don't care about taler's lower transaction costs because I still have to pay the full price. so why should I switch? I'm happy with my visa on my apple watch.

You can't pay your average person with a Debit or Credit card

Edit: yes I am familiar with the various 'sending money to people' systems in Europe, but they don't rely on a debit card for the most part, rather, your bank account

Across a lot of Europe there are systems/companies which already fill this role. I'm familiar with Blik in Poland which in addition to letting you buy stuff online and in person pretty also lets you send money to an average person using only their mobile phone number.

In Scandinavia we do exactly that via the Vipps platform and mobile app.

In the UK I can use my bank's app/website to send money to another person's bank account.

What do these 'sending money to people' systems do more than that?

To send a normal person money using blik you just need their phone number, this is usually more streamlined to obtain/deal with than the traditional identifying numbers for bank accounts.

To buy something online using blik your bank's app generates a 6 digit one time code which is valid for something like 2 minutes. You enter that on the website of whoever you're trying to pay rather than give them your card number and cvv. This is nice because in addition to being a lot shorter to enter than a card number a nefarious person can't reuse the code to perform more transactions at a later date (since they don't have your card number).

So in this case the two parties both need to be registered with the app and then can exchange money that they easily know e.g. the phone number.

The phone number is an id into the bilk system.

With bank transfers both parties do not need to be register with an app they just use the id that they have already for other reasons the bank sort code and id. So needs less extra infrastructure but the user interface is more unfriendly (people don't remember their bank account number).

Now if banks linked your phone number to the account number and sort code.....

The way it works in Poland is that the banks which participate in the blik system (which I think is all or most of the banks with large usership) take care of the link between phone number and account for you. You don't need to register for anything special just provide your number when you open your bank account.

There is no separate app for blik (at least as far as I'm aware) the functionality is integrated into my bank's app.

Ah thanks - so why is this not more common in other countries.

I do know why it is not in US as giving bank account details to others allows other to withdraw from your account.

This is not true in the UK so why no similar system here?

I don't think the lack of such a system in the US is for the reason you think - all you do is tell your bank to send money to the account attached to whatever phone number you enter so it should be technically possible.

As a former resident of the UK my feeling is that the lack of such system there is because most bank apps have traditionally been shit. Its probably better today but back in 2015 (when Blik launched) I would not have expected to do anything useful with my bank's app.

For something like blik to work well you need every participating bank to already have a decent mobile banking app and for them to be willing to put in some time/money into integrating the new functionality with that app. Blik started because a bunch of the biggest Polish banks got together and between them founded a company to launch the service. Its really hard for me to imagine the 6 biggest banks in the UK getting together and doing that.

Poland's banking industry also skipped a bunch of "cruft" that we have in the UK because it started after we'd already progressed past those things being relevant. My Polish bank card doesn't have a "sort code" to identify my home branch (because who the hell cares about that in 2024), Poland briefly had cheques but stopped having them in 2006 because everyone was already using cards. In tech-industry terms the UK banking system has a bunch of "technical debt" it has to work around.

My Bank's app has been useful and easy to send money since it come out pre 2015.

But the bank never had any branches and was phone only from the mid 1980s and then had a web front end I think in the 90s.

Thus they knew what people needed before they wrote the app.

I would guess that your bank wasn't one of the 6 biggest banks in the UK in 2015.

Well part of one.

My bank is First Direct - which is owned by HSBC.

However the website functionality was always better than HSBCs 9I do have an HSBC account as well)

Dutch debit cards cannot be used for online payments abroad. So the benefit is being able to make payments to, eg: Germany.

Credit cards are terrible. One has to share a few secret numbers with the merchant and the merchant then takes money out of the cards account. It relies on fully trusting every single merchant to have perfect honestly and security.

Plus credit cards have a transaction cost that is paid to foreign companies. It’s quite ridiculous that a Dutch person buying online in Germany ends up paying a tiny transaction cost to a third country.