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by bluejellybean 3944 days ago
2015 and they do not accept Discover cards.
2 comments

2015 and people still use Discover cards. Why?

I can think of several good reasons to use American Express, despite it being somewhat less widely accepted. But Discover doesn't seem to have any obvious value over a MasterCard or Visa.

Discover support has been top notch in my experience and after having a number of issues with other credit card providers they've been my goto for a number of years now.
Their value is providing competition to Mastercard/Visa. Without Discover, the duopoly would charge even higher transaction costs, etc.
What about American Express? They're doing pretty well. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use Discover, so I don't know how much competition they really provide.
Because they are an European company and Discover is just an American thing.
Discover has pretty great international support[1]. Fair enough if they can't though.

[1]https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/help-center/account/in...

Afaik they're mostly accepted in Europe via their partnership with the payment processing network of Diner's Club (vs. directly seeing a "Discover" sign). Diner's Club is moderately widespread but only in certain market segments, like restaurants and higher-end stores. Not many European ecommerce shops will take Discover or Diner's Club, not even big ones like Amazon [1].

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId... or http://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=50...

Diner's club is not used much here, it is occasionally accepted, along with the Japanese cards.