[todipa]

Government's argument rests on the fact that Visa shouldn't acquire Plaid because of the potential technology they might create. This is a really dangerous argument.

This is a direct quote from the plaintiff's argument:

"While Plaid’s existing technology does not compete directly with Visa today, Plaid is planning to leverage that technology, combined with its existing relationships with banks and consumers, to facilitate transactions between consumers and merchants in competition with Visa. Like Visa’s online debit services, Plaid’s new debit service would enable consumers to pay for goods and services online with money debited from their bank accounts."

I'm not a lawyer nor an expert in payments but this seems like a stretch to me.

[tempsy]

What is “dangerous” about it? It isn’t as if the DOJ is the one speculating as to what the motive is or was, it’s that they have specific evidence of communication between Plaid and Visa that spelled out Plaid’s plan to basically “scare” Visa and Visa’s concern of their plan.

This feels like one of those situations where two parties were so conspicuous is making an anti-trust case that the DOJ could not do anything but prosecute.

[bigbubba]

I believe the word 'dangerous' has developed a new meaning; roughly "this doesn't align with my personal politics." Whatever my politics happen to be are assumed by me to be best for society, and consequently anything that doesn't go my way threatens to harm society. For instance, if I were a libertarian I might think that attempts to regulate corporations would create inefficiencies that would harm society by harming the economy. Or if I were a social democrat, I might think that failure to regulate corporations will harm society by letting corporations run rampant on people. In either case, very sure of my own beliefs, it seems self evident to me that those who disagree with me present a danger to society.

That is, unless, I have the humility to earnestly be cognizant of the possibility that I could be wrong about what I believe. If I have that humility, I might choose to temper my criticism of others.

[neolog]

Big companies preemptively block competition. The government is right.

[SpicyLemonZest]

The problem is that the Visa CEO allegedly believed the potential technology was coming soon, and allegedly told the Board of Directors to acquire Plaid so Visa wouldn't have to compete with its new technology. If the Justice Department were just randomly speculating, that'd be a different story.

[mitchellst]

- Plaid is hardly alone in its competitive space. Even if Finicity sucks and SynapseFi is mid-implosion, they don't have a corner on capabilities like this indefinitely. MX is pretty alright.

- That ignores FANG platforms that could implement similar money-moving features.

- Stripe trotted out their "Banking as a Service" APIs today.

- Let's not forget the Chinese giants that have obviated the day-to-day need for credit card networks in their country, whose strategists (and imitators) are eyeing global markets.

If Visa's approach to this competitive threat is really acquire-and-kill, I hate to break it to them but... not even they can afford it. With all the innovation and competition in the space, best case scenario is that they bought themselves a year. And it turns out that, oops, Plaid wasn't even the closest. Stripe was.

The case for monopolistic harm is slim. Even if there was monopolistic intent, it was probably incompetent.

[jjmorrison]

Plaid is still (for some unknown reason) the only company that is able to do real time ACH transactions that bypass credit card companies in the US. All other companies still require long verification processes or high transaction fees.

[sjtgraham]

Plaid doesn’t do ACH transactions, someone else does, e.g. Stripe, or Dwolla. They merely provide a means to verify account details instantly per NACHA rules.

Plaid is planning to do ACH payments themselves and have a private beta.

[sjg007]

They basically guarantee the funds to the merchant and reduce the likelihood that the cash won’t be there. The other side of the coin is providing insurance against fraudulent charges. This only really matters where physical goods are exchanged.

[sjtgraham]

No they don’t guarantee any funds whatsoever, nor do they provide insurance against fraudulent charges.

[Ericson2314]

If the fintech revolution is just around the corner, then how about we just delay these acquisitions a little just to safe?

(In reality, I think the only fintech revolution that might be around the corner is new services the federal reserve rolls out)

[jo6gwb]

In the meantime there is RTP https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

[fakedang]

Can you share a link of the new service by the Fed? I wanted to show it to somebody, but I don't know what it's called so it doesn't turn up on Google.

[jo6gwb]

FedNow - https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/what-i...