This is a very us centric view. Most of the europe is so much ahead of US in payments that it is funny. There are dozens of alternative payment methods in the Europe. Especially in the Nordics card payments are on a big decline. There are basically two "tracks" to move money - card networks and bank to bank. Most new payment methods use bank transfer as the method of moving money. In the Nordics, every country has a mobile payments system where your bank account is attached to your phone number, any anyone can issue a payment to your phone number and you receive it to your bank account. You can use this also in brick and mortar stores etc. Not to talk about all the bill-payment based companies like Klarna... And how about China? They don't use cards either, just look at Alipay.
Just to clarify, the Danish mobile payment system (cleverly named: MobilePay) is based on debit cards, not bank to bank transfer.
The system that was designed to do bank to bank, without the card systems being involved failed horribly. It was late to market and the launch has horrible mismanaged and covered in unnecessary secrecy. MobilePay had already launched and crabbed a large share of the market, the secrecy was completely pointless and I believe it was partly to blame for the massive failure of the solution.
> Just to clarify, the Danish mobile payment system (cleverly named: MobilePay) is based on debit cards, not bank to bank transfer.
This is incorrect. MobilePay started out as a layer on top of Dankort (Danish debit card), but after gaining sufficient volume they made a deal with all Danish banks to enable direct bank-to-bank transfers (without using the Dankort infrastructure).
The only difference between Swipp and MobilePay is that Swipp started out only supporting bank-to-bank transfers (thus only supporting a few banks) while MobilePay started out using Dankort (thus supporting all banks). And, as soon as MobilePay had sufficient volume, all banks were interested in circumventing the Dankort network.
Yes this is a good point! Same story with Finland.
It's interesting that it uses card tracks to move the money, but the identification and recipient is not based on card numbers, so the card stays anynomous for the recipient.
Mastercard and visa have recently been very open to this kind of methods, and also issuing virtual one-time-use cards. These new use cases for their network are quite healthy to the payments ecosystem.
While it is true that we have more options, I do not agree that non credit card mobile payment options are a primary payment. These still lack a lot of usability improvement in comparison to the now widespread mobile credit cards supported by almost all banks too. So I still recognise visa and their support for Apple Pay helps maintain this power.
Heres to hoping that Apple Pay (and Android) will open up directly to banks or solutions such as Mobile Pay, which bridges to direct bank transfers for member banks and then utilise credit cards as a backup for unsupported banks.
Of course Visa and Mastercard still have a big role, especially in the brick & mortar. But when looking at e-commerce, the share of card payments is 40%. I don't think it is very relevant to discuss "duopoly" and say that they have the power to censor user content - because they don't. If they ban you, you still have many other options. AFAIK the point in the article was that we should break the credit card duopoly because they have too much power. I don't think that is the case here.
Do you think that the credit card companies having too much power is a big problem in the Nordics?
I'm not sure about the other Nordics countries, but Denmark still have its own card solution "Dankort". It's not nearly as popular as it once was, and I would say that most cards are now dual-branded as VISA/Dankort, where the card will work as a VISA card, if Dankort isn't supported.
Our politicians and banks probably don't see it this way, but having a local alternative can help keep MasterCard and VISA in check. If they become to expensive or unreasonable most people already have a competitor in their wallet, one for whom fees are strictly controlled.
Klarna is a bank that is connected to the Visa network. So, inherently, it is bound by the same rules as any other bank. So, in the context of this thread, they are not a competitor to Visa/MasterCard.
That's correct only in NA, where Klarna issues virtual credit cards and transactions happen via card tracks. In EU, or at least the Nordics, the transactions are bank-to-bank and there is no virtual card. That means they are a direct competitor.
In Sweden they issue regular credit cards (my friend has one).
Also, AFAIK, in Nordics they offer virtual card payments to merchants who don't integrate with them directly.
Sure, they have plenty of collaboration with both major card schemas. AFAIK, they do both acquiring and issuing. I don't think collaboration means that you can't compete with each other? Their most successful products in the EU are not using card tracks.
There is also a huge difference in b2b payments. Cards account a very small percentage of B2B payments in Europe. I don't know how it is in the US, but I've understood that a much higher share of B2B payments go the card-track?
Hmm well, fair point. The society is moving also away from cash and many places don't accept it anymore. You are left with credit card... Which is also a spying device. So no payments without data collection for you!
I don't think that is essentially a bad thing. Forcing a digital signature for every transaction makes criminal activity difficult. Modern AML works much better because there is always a digital fingerprint for every transaction.
But I think that these are two distinct issues? Some crypto -things could somewhere in the future solve the privacy issue... But no society wants that, because real privacy makes criminal activity and money laundering possible. But that has nothing to do with credit card duopoly?
A cashless society is another debate entirely. I do think it's a dictator dream and the best way to kill diversity and innovative social behavior.
But the matter here is card vs phone. Your card do spy on you, but it doesn't have your contact, a microphone, the history of where you have been, etc.
You can easily give your card away to a friend for the day. Your card doesn't need an update. It's not connected to internet all the time. It won't die if it falls, if it rains or of it's too hot. You can have a replacement easily as well.
It's also way more accessible. My grandma can use it. A blind man can. They all work the same way.
A phone is only a good card alternative when every thing goes right. But I value resilience in my paiement system.
