[dr_dshiv]

When I moved to the Netherlands, I was at first irritated that my credit cards weren't accepted anywhere. But as the debit (maestro) card transactions are often free [1], paying 3%+ to a card service does seem exorbitant.

For online payments, the Dutch use the IDEAL system, which is even easier than online credit cards. This also prevents vendor lock-in, like Amazon. And, the banking apps make it super easy to send money to friends.

Looking back, I have to imagine that this 3%+ tax on all American transactions must put a weight on the system.

[1] https://www.ing.nl/media/ING-rates_for_business_transaction_...

[Reason077]

Merchant fees for both debit and credit cards are significantly lower in all EU countries (and UK), compared to the US, thanks to the interchange fee regulation (IFR) that caps interchange fees at 0.2% for debit card and 0.3% for credit cards.

This translates into much lower merchant fees. Even a tiny startup with zero transaction volume can easily get less than 2% on their physical card transactions (using something like iZettle or SumUp). Big retailers will be paying well under 1%.

Also, merchants are banned from adding surcharges for debit and credit card transactions in the EU & UK.

[c12]

Due to Brexit merchant fees in the UK are no longer capped.

Visa for example, plan to increase the interchange fee on digital payments made between European customers and British businesses from 0.3% to 1.5%. Other providers will surely follow.

Still lower fees than in the states but probably not for long.

[Reason077]

> "Due to Brexit merchant fees in the UK are no longer capped."

No, they are absolutely still capped in the UK. The IFR regulation has been mirrored in the UK so the same caps still apply to UK cards and UK banks.

The exception you are referring to is when a UK card is used for an online ("card not present") transaction at an EU merchant. In this case it is now considered an inter-regional transaction and a higher cap applies: 1.15% for debit and 1.5% for credit cards. (but note, even here there is still a cap!)

[stephen_g]

Interesting. In Australia you can charge a surcharge, but only what the interchange fee cost you. So airlines especially used to charge large fees, like $12 or something, and now can only charge a few dollars.

[nicoburns]

Before this law in the UK it was mostly small businesses (e.g. local independent grocery stores) charging 50p per transaction. I think the law was probably to encourage uptake of contactless payments which are targeted at these small transactions.

It's still legal here to have a minimum transaction value for paying with card, which some businesses use. But since the pandemic it's become more common to find businesses that don't accept cash than the other way around.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I occasionally had disagreements with shop owners because I didn't have cash and I wanted them to add the payment fee manually so I could pay by card and actually - you know - buy stuff.

A lot simply wouldn't - like I was attempting fraud or something.

[oarsinsync]

I once tried to buy a beer in a small corner shop. The beer was 2€. The minimum charge for card payments was 5€. I agreed to pay 5€. The shopkeeper refused to charge me 5€.

I walked out without my beer, sad, and wishing I'd remembered to carry some cash that day.

[KptMarchewa]

Couldn't you buy three? I mean, if you're already price insensitive to pay 5 euro for one...

[NullPrefix]

You're trying to use the workflow outside of the happy path.

[rendaw]

How do the IFR caps work with small transactions? Like < 1 EUR? Maybe I should move to Europe.

[jsilence]

"Also, merchants are banned from adding surcharges for debit and credit card transactions in the EU & UK."

Any pointer to this legislation would be appreciated.

The local swimming pool lately started adding the transaction fees to the ticket after the sale.

[Reason077]

In the UK, the relavent legislation is the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 (amended by the Payment Services Regulations 2017).

The ban on surcharges for credit & debit cards has been in force since January 13th, 2018.

Further details here: https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/pricing-a...

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharge...

[gfxgirl]

Sure, but then add in 21% VAT tax. Not defending the US but a 3% fee + (0%-11%) added sales tax doesn't seem like it would be a bigger "weight on the system" than a 21% VAT tax

[unglaublich]

The 21% is used to evolve and invest in a country which ultimately will lead to further economic growth whereas the 3% is used to enrich CC companies.

[bakuninsbart]

VAT pays for our free schools and healthcare, transaction fees go into banks coffers. For you as an individual, some things are more expensive to purchase in Europe, sure, but I think equivocating the two is false.

E: I didn't read the guy you were answering closely enough. In the context of his comment, yours of course makes perfect sense.

[HappySweeney]

Canada also banned said fees, and retailers with high-priced/low-margin goods (ie: computers) simply gave cash discounts to compensate. nb my info is at least 20 years out-of-date, though.

[xur17]

> Looking back, I have to imagine that this 3%+ tax on all American transactions must put a weight on the system.

I 100% agree. It's pretty absurd that all merchants have to pay a 3% fee on the vast majority of their transactions with no real alternative.

And I realize crypto gets a bad rap around here, but I really do think stablecoins offer an interesting way around this. It's an open standard that anyone can build on top of and integrate with which means we could have a healthy market with many payment processors, and wallet providers. Even if we ended up with the likes of coinbase, kraken, etc custodying the majority of user funds, the fact that users would have options, and any startup could integrate would help a ton with maintaining a competitive arena and driving prices down.

(and before someone yells "crypto fees", there are already solutions that can drive these well below $0.01 if we're just sending payments between 2 parties)

[helen___keller]

> (and before someone yells "crypto fees", there are already solutions that can drive these well below $0.01 if we're just sending payments between 2 parties)

Can you specify what you're referring to? As someone who frequently yells "crypto fees" my understanding is most low-fee options either (a) require transfers within a centralized ecosystem, (b) aren't likely to scale effectively as a system (e.g. bitcoin's lightning network, or a shitcoin network of choice that's never experienced heavy usage) (c) are exciting but hypothetical future ideas, such as sharding on Ethereum

[xur17]

A lot of scaling solutions for Ethereum focus on being fully EVM compatible, and as such are forced to store every transaction on a widely distributed, permanent datastore, which in my mind is never going to be "cheap". Since we just need to move money around, payment channels [0] allow us to move the funds by just committing an entry and exit transaction to the widely distributed, permanent datastore, and once we "enter" this network, transactions can be very very cheap.

In terms of implementations, Bitcoin's lightning network is probably the biggest active version today, but this only allows you to move Bitcoin around, and hence is a non-starter for a widespread consumer adoption.

Which brings us to payment channels on Ethereum. It doesn't feel like there has been as much focus on the payments use case yet, and none of the solutions have as much adoption as Bitcoin's lightning network, but there are a few options I know of. Raiden network has been around for a while, visa is supposedly creating a "universal payments channel" [1], there's xdai [2] (not payment channels, and I'm not super familiar with this solution), and there's connext [3].

There's a long list here [4].

Basically it boils down to - payment channels are the solution, and it'll probably be a mix of self custodied wallets and custodial providers, all integrating with an open standard.

[0] https://hackernoon.com/how-we-built-the-largest-payment-chan...

[1] https://decrypt.co/82233/visa-universal-payment-channel-stab...

[2] https://www.xdaichain.com/

[3] https://connext.network/

[4] https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/state-channe...

[robcohen]

Payment/State channels exist today. Is there a difference between your (c) hypothetical future ideas and hypothetical future scaling problems? Lightning works today. Try Breez Wallet https://breez.technology/ or Strike https://strike.me/ and tell me what your experience is like.

[helen___keller]

> Is there a difference between your (c) hypothetical future ideas and hypothetical future scaling problems?

Hypothetical future ideas require development. Hypothetical future scaling problems block current development.

For example, suppose that Amazon Marketplace wanted, as soon as possible, to have all customers pay through bitcoin including through lightning network). The question is, would the average fee per transaction average 1c or less?

I claim the answer is no. Lightning channels require broadcasts (though much less frequently than 1 per merchant transaction) on the main network. Let's suppose someone does 100 transactions with amazon per 1 broadcast to the bitcoin network, which seems generous to me. A google search[0] suggests that the current average transaction fee on bitcoin main network is about 2.5 dollars, which then averages to 2.5 cents per lightning transaction with Amazon. This is close to the desired goal of 1 cent per transaction, under the listed assumptions.

However, Amazon adopting bitcoin for all transactions would drive a ridiculous amount of traffic to the bitcoin network. If we go to recent history, march-april 2021 saw about $20 average transaction cost (or more - peak at $60). Going back to our same calculations, $20 per broadcast puts us at a fee of 20c per amazon transaction, far beyond our goal of 1c per transaction. Furthermore historical data has not yet seen Bitcoin as a primary transaction network for a large commerce site like Amazon, so it's reasonable to speculate we could see per-broadcast fees average above $100.

In simpler terms, while Lightning network greatly decreases the fee per real-world transaction, it's not enough to handle large scale adoption unless ratio of real-world transactions to bitcoin broadcasts increase in direct proportion to the fees on the bitcoin network. Realistically, if a large amount of US commerce occurred on the bitcoin network, the most optimistic access pattern would have users broadcast to true-up their channel liquidity roughly in line with receiving paychecks - maybe twice a month.

The simple fact is that if you take millions of humans and have them broadcast twice a month on the bitcoin network, the bitcoin network would not be able to handle it (bitcoin volume is roughly 10 million transactions per month[1]). Forget even hoping to scale to billions of humans.

[0] https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem#/m...

[ValentineC]

> And I realize crypto gets a bad rap around here, but I really do think stablecoins offer an interesting way around this. It's an open standard that anyone can build on top of and integrate with which means we could have a healthy market with many payment processors, and wallet providers.

I looked at stablecoins for a stingy friend's side gig (they were using Square Cash for payments until they got shut down), but it was too complicated just trying to explain and onboard a bunch of regulars with varying financial circumstances onto a single service.

[lotsofpulp]

> It's pretty absurd that all merchants have to pay a 3% fee on the vast majority of their transactions with no real alternative.

No, they do not have to pay a 3% fee. Debit card fees are basically negligible. Sellers can also impose additional fees for credit card users if they wish. For example, Winco grocery stores in the western US only accept debit cards. Many government agencies also charge a card fee if you want to pay via card rather than ACH.

Sellers in the US choose to pay the extra processing fees because they earn more than that from people who pay with credit cards.

See:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/new...

> A PCN cannot stop you from offering your customers a discount or another incentive for using a certain method of payment, as long as you offer it to all your customers and disclose the offer clearly and conspicuously. For example, you can offer your customers a discount or a coupon if they pay with cash or a debit card rather than a credit card.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressions_Hair_Design_v._Sch...

https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/11/expressions-hair-design...

[Scoundreller]

Even better, many PayPal payments are from PayPal funds, Checking acct debits or EU/AU/NZ cardholders with capped charges, so PayPal pays 0% or under 1% to visa/MC for those transactions, but charges the same 3%+ to vendors. Plus additional charges for cross-border payments (even if there’s no forex) and terrible rates for forex which they probably self-settle anyway.

[danlugo92]

They can afford to do this because "it just works"(r)(tm).

[tinus_hn]

The problem with iDeal is that there is 0 consumer protection. If you pay for an order using a credit card and it’s a scam, you do a chargeback. If you pay for an order using iDeal and it’s a scam, the money is gone the moment you pay. There is no way to get the money back.

[semi-extrinsic]

I love how Americans are totally fine with paying a tax on every transaction they make in order to protect random people from occurrences of financial fraud, yet are vehemently opposed to exactly the same system for healthcare.

I mean, rationally you would expect the opposite: people typically don't do $10k+ transactions using credit cards, so a worst case consequence of fraud you're not protected from is quite small.

But for medical emergencies, the worst case cost is orders of magnitude larger, so a system that protects everyone (financially) is much more beneficial.

[patentatt]

Oh, you’re giving us Americans too much credit, credit card fraud happens all the time. It’s like a constant thing you have to watch out for, and I’d estimate happens once every couple of years for most people. Either straight up fraud and theft, or just a recurring charge that will not stop no matter what. So the system is super broken and relevant to individuals, which is why people accept all the fees maybe. It’s not a sign that Americans are ok with a communal approach to anything, we’re just as selfish as always with this one. Sometimes it does feel like a third world country.

[lotsofpulp]

> It’s like a constant thing you have to watch out for, and I’d estimate happens once every couple of years for most people. Either straight up fraud and theft, or just a recurring charge that will not stop no matter what.

Not in my experience. I probably have 10 to 15 credit cards for over a decade, and only once have I had a fraudulent transaction. And even if there was, you simply call the bank, dispute it, and that’s the end of that. Same with recurring charges.

It is even less of a problem going forward since EMV and contactless have become standard.

[Grimm665]

This seems overblown, I've had credit cards for over ten years in the US, using them in person and online, and the only time I've ever had a fraudulent transaction was an hour after my wallet was stolen, which like yeah, kind of expected.

I'm not sure what you mean by "happens once every couple of years for most people."

[smaryjerry]

Your personal experience is not statistically relevant data. It is a major problem here in the US, not just fraudulent transactions, but people signing up for credit cards in your name since the equifax data leak, people creating fake ids to be used to reset your accounts in person, constant phone calls attempting to scam people, and even letters in the mail withhuge print saying “last notice - important - pay now” with very small print saying “this is an offer not an invoice” or like that tricks the elderly and those not careful. All of these and more cause massive amounts of fraud in the US.

[Grimm665]

Well the post I was replying to specified credit card fraud as the rampant issue, the list your provided seems to just be general financial fraud. I agree that financial fraud in general in the US, and probably globally, is a huge problem.

Maybe I'm wrong and all of that can be blamed on credit card fraud, but I'm not so sure.

[mint2]

I’ve had at one card # stolen each year for the past 4 years.

I’m pretty sure it’s gas stations and airport merchants. But it could be hacked online stores.

Amex is good at catching it.

Pnc bank on the other hand wad bad. My work card got used shorty after flying from sfo and PNC bank let them ring up 2,000 of hotel fees and didn’t flag any of it, and due to how the work cards work I didn’t find out until a month or more later

[throwaway473825]

Note that high fees aren't a prerequisite for consumer protection. European credit cards offer full protection, despite having capped interchange fees.

[op00to]

Do they? Can I get an immediate refund for anything if I don’t like the item? I can with my Amex. No questions asked under $1000.

[crtasm]

That doesn't sound like a feature I'd want to pay fees towards enabling but I'm likely missing something - what kind of up-to-$1000 purchases are you making where you might not even like the item?

[op00to]

I have used it multiple times for headphones. “Return protection”. Generally they’ll cover restocking fees if you make a claim.

[Broken_Hippo]

How many places globally are going to accept the Amex? If you are in Europe somewhere, are you going to be able to use it to buy groceries?

Probably not, and almost definitely not at the small retailer. Amex charges are more for the retailer, so they often simply don't accept it.

Other than that, though: I'm not sure how often you even need that $1000 'no questions asked' policy. Second, return policies through the EU market (plus at least one country) are pretty good without credit card protections. It just really isn't a big concern. Finally, the culture around returning goods differs in different areas. Folks here (Norway) seem way less disposed to returning items - especially for simply not liking an item and would rather do some research upfront. (Not working as desired, defective, and things like that are a bit different, but folks still hesitate).

[nomercy400]

From what I understand amex is different from Mastercard or visa in Europe. The European limit on fees does not count for amex, or the fees are much higher. I'm not sure exactly. This usually means support for amex is lower than Mastercard or visa.

[belltaco]

>I can with my Amex. No questions asked under $1000

So you don't try to return the item for a refund first?

[op00to]

That is an obvious step 0. So I suppose there is one question asked: “did you try to return it”. It is of no consequence. If the vendor takes it back I’m happy. If not, I collect from Amex’s insurance.

[op00to]

This is so far off topic, but just like Americans are guilty of seeing the rest of the world as a homogenous entity, you are making a huge miscalculation on what “Americans” want.

[jokethrowaway]

Americans really don't have a choice, the merchants are making the rules and offering a service.

Anyway Americans pay pretty high taxes, they're comparable to Europe (albeit not as high as crazy countries like Italy, Spain or France, I have no idea how those countries can even survive). I'm sure they'd be more than happy if the government were spending less and letting them to pay less taxes and buy a private insurance instead.

The problem with the US healthcare and higher education is not being private, it's being too expensive - tldr thanks to government intervention some actors got away with massively raising prices with no competition

[mint2]

The main problem with healthcare is prices are not transparent and the customers don’t have the ability to shop around even if the prices were known.

[AdrianB1]

In term of insurance systems, the 2 are extremely different, so the comparison is not justified.

[the-dude]

Have you ever done a chargeback in NL? Which card? Which bank? What kind of proof was required?

ICS requires you to snailmail them printouts of your purchase etc. within a small time window.

[unglaublich]

There is no customer protection because the payment system is not broken and insecure by design (e.g., hand your secrets over to an unverified entity and allow them to charge random amounts of money), plus there is no insane 3% fee. All those "benefits" that CCs argue to offer do not add up to the value of 3% of all your transactions.

[Sander_Marechal]

Yes there is, talk to your bank. Consumer protection is way better in the EU. I use the same Dutch bank that the OP uses (ING) and I can revert many transactions from right inside the app.

[tinus_hn]

You can revert automatic transactions (as these are unauthorized and can be done by parties that know just your account number) but it is impossible to revert iDeal payments.

[krageon]

> as these are unauthorized

It is mandatory to request authorization, but the banks do not have a way to verify that outside of a little flag that says "yes I definitely asked".

https://gocardless.com/guides/sepa/mandates/

[apexalpha]

This isn't true. There is a delay between the iDeal transaction and the money being transferred. If you call your bank immediately, like my mum after being scammed, they can revert it.

[kolinko]

Yeah, in Poland it’s similar. Since ~2001 we’ve had wire transfers that take up to a few hours to arrive (or instant) and cost 0-0.25$ to send, regardless of the amount. It made PayPal or Venmo kind of pointless over here.

[Reason077]

People use PayPal, Venmo, Revolut, etc mostly for convenience. You just need a phone number or email to send a payment, compared to a bank/wire transfer where you first need to obtain the account number you’re sending to.

All of these services (including PayPal) charge no fees for personal payments. Just to merchants for commercial transactions, which often come with buyer protection, free credit/payment plans for the buyer, etc.

[dr_dshiv]

My bank app, ING, lets me send a payment request link as a text, via whatsapp, etc. Which is a nice way of not needing account numbers to send money.

[mariushn]

But does it offer an API to do this? No. So it's useless for merchants who'd like to offer it as an alternative payment method.

I believe this would work, but I'm not an influencer: https://medium.com/@mariusandreiana/open-letter-to-banks-ple...

[stephen_g]

Yeah, the banking regulator and the banking industry alliance added that as a feature with the New Payments Platform in Australia. You register a ‘PayID’ with your bank (can be a phone number, email address, company number etc.) and then you just share that with people to do free real-time transfers (between basically any Australian banks).

[jokethrowaway]

PayPal is used because of customer protection.

Revolut is used because they hide their low forex exchange fees (despite their claims of nearly no fees, you'll find cheaper transfers elsewhere).

Venmo may be convenient in the States. I've never seen anyone in Europe using it. Banks have some system to send money to a phone number, though, which serves the same purpose.

[danieldisu]

One of the key features of these apps is that you only need the phone in order to make transfers, that allows you to avoid asking for the account number to anyone.

[oneplane]

On the other hand, account numbers are not a significant 'secret' or something like that. They are just as 'safe' to share as phone numbers.

[fragmede]

For anyone in the US, if I have your bank account number, I can steal your money. I strongly advise you not to share your account number with me or anyone else. I have to commit fraud in order to steal your money, making it a crime, but stealing's a crime in the first place, so that's not going to deter thieves.

[woodruffw]

My understanding is that this is no longer true: only a relatively small set of trusted entities can perform a direct debit (check or check substitute not present) from an account number without having to perform additional verification. The ones that I’ve personally seen are utilities and colleges; I tried to do the same with a friend once (so he could pay me back for something without having any fees) and our banks refused the transaction because our account names did not match.

[razakel]

Jeremy Clarkson fell victim to this. He published his bank details in his column to prove it was no big deal, and someone set up a £500 direct debit to charity.

[dr_dshiv]

Wow, I had no idea about Mr. Clarson's experience [1]. Is this also true in the USA?

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm

[oneplane]

Replying to myself here since the edit time expired: this does of course depend on where you live; in the context of the thread and the while fintech popularity in various places around the world and the EU not really having much use for that, this is because you can safely transfer money around without the risk of someone abusing your 'secret bank number'.

In the US and probably other places as well this is more like an SSN where just having the number allows you to do all sorts of (criminal) abusive things.

[jokethrowaway]

Up to a point. They may be used to create direct debit subscriptions (you just need account details and name), which can be annoying.

[ethbr0]

Think about it this way: a check is just an account number on some fancy paper, with a few more numbers.

[razakel]

Technically speaking you can write a check on anything. One company paid their tax with one written on a 150lb halibut.

https://mobile.twitter.com/barclays/status/77386310895160115...

[twoslide]

It's a bit of a stretch to equate Paypal with "all American transactions." There are of course Visa/Mastercard (variable but about 2%), debit cards, Venmo, and older bank transfer technologies (ACH).

[harry8]

A service that costs a fraction of a cent to perform but charges tax on total revenue plus a big old fee has a big barrier to entry or it has zero customers tomrrow.

"all american transactions" - who cares what proportion it is? It's the most vulgar display of market power imaginable. "We will tax this large chunk of the economy." And I'm not even seeing anyone saying they won't get away with it.

It's really quite astounding!

[twoslide]

Would you propose a national price cap on transaction charges? It would be hard to justify intervening in this way, given that there is plenty of competition and rates are not very different. Any transaction (even cash) has associated costs.

[throwaway473825]

I'm yet to find a European that complains about the EU's caps on interchange fees for debit and credit cards. Is a regulation like this unfathomable for most Americans?

[krageon]

Folks in the US are so used to corporations stepping on them a balanced discussion about this (where both parties agree that you being exploited is not okay, but maybe disagree on the solution) is no longer possible.

[unglaublich]

It's bizarre how in the US, companies unionize against consumers, instead of the other way around.

[dmantis]

There is already Bitcoin with basically free Lightning Network transactions, so it's more like people vote with their wallets that they prefer (at least for now) paying this 3% tax instead of few bucks per year for channels opening/closing. And it works in the same internet market (real life and cards is a bit more complicated because of existing payment infrastructure).

So nobody force Americans to pay, actually, they do that voluntarily.

[arnvald]

I like that, too. The only thing that bothers me is that Maestro cards can't be used for online payments, so if I buy something from other countries (where shops don't support iDeal) I still need to use credit card, and support for credit cards in NL is pretty bad.

Btw these high transaction fees are the reason why loyalty programs are so good in US while so bad in EU. EU caps credit card fees at around 1.5%, while in US it's much higher, so basically banks give people part of the fee in form of loyalty points

[krageon]

> Maestro cards can't be used for online payments

They can, for example ~15 years ago I used a maestro card to pay for a subscription to Sony. All they needed was a card number and an address (the latter for tax reasons, that is mandatory).

[arnvald]

That's interesting, are there different types of Maestro cards? I also had one years ago, but it didn't have CVV so I could not pay online. My current one does not even have a real card number, it has just my bank account number on it.

[krageon]

It is not a creditcard-compatible system. I was merely hooking into the thought that this was not possible at all, it definitely is. Most companies just choose not to support it (or use payment gateways that prefer not to).

[hakfoo]

It seems to be somewhat compatible.

I work in the card-payments space, but in the US. We can handle Maestro cards, so long as all parties are aligned to accept them. You need a shopping cart that doesn't scream "This card number looks weird" before even letting the customer submit it, a gateway that identifies it correctly, and a processor that's built to handle it. Probably the merchant account needs to be configured to accept it too, but that's outside my scope.

If the processor mentions Maestro at all, it's usually a corner-case line item in the documentation-- "Send field 923 = AA for Mastercard, and AB for Maestro, but everything else the same."

It's an interesting evolutionary divergence. We had/have "debit only" networks in the US (i. e. Star, Cirrus, Plus). They still exist but they are largely irrelevant for purchases because virtually every checking account provides a Visa or Mastercard badged card. There are a few situations where merchants can try to reroute the transaction to a debit network for lower fees, but it's a narrow interest at best.

They actually went through a legal tussle here because some merchants felt imposed on when the card networks said "If you take Credit Visa/Mastercard, you also have to take Debit Visa/Mastercard" back when the fees for doing so were higher.

[yarcob]

In Austria banks switched from Maestro to Mastercard Debit to make online payments easier.

[the-dude]

Just to add : iDeal is a flat fee, starting at about € 0,29 AFAIK. Depends on your contract.

edit : according to the document, ING charges € 0,25.

[scrollaway]

I like iDEAL. My bank is dutch (bunq) although i live in Belgium, i got to use it a few times.

I don't know if it's really easier than cards though given all the tools that are available for cards now, from auto fill to contactless.

To be honest, google pay / apple pay are just so damn convenient. Being able to just hold my phone and have payment happen in a second is fantastic. And here in Europe let's not forget visa and mc fees are capped at something like .7%.

[unglaublich]

Android supports contactless debit card payments too, depending on your bank.

[herbst]

Switzerland has a system called Twint. It exists as prepaid account or attached to one of the most popular Swiss bank accounts. Transactions are free (for end users) and instant, you can even chat with emojis under the transaction.

You can start accepting Twint without any hurdles. Or use a merchant gateway and pay like 0.3% or so.

[danlugo92]

There's Zelle in the US.

[xadhominemx]

> Looking back, I have to imagine that this 3%+ tax on all American transactions must put a weight on the system.

90% of the credit card take gets paid back out in the form of rewards, so it’s not really a tax

[Invictus0]

It's a tax on the people paying with debit, who finance the credit card fees by paying higher prices with no rewards paid back. Credit cards are regressive.

[xadhominemx]

Debit interchange is regulated, and much lower than credit.

[cm2187]

Everything is not so much more expensive in the US, not the least because this is dwarfed by the difference in VAT. Not that I am in any way in favour of the current duopoly in credit card payments.

[axelthegerman]

It's not about more or less expensive or higher/lower VAT.

It's about whether or not we should pay a 3+% cut to the payment processor when there are clearly other options.

Nothing in this world is free, question is who pays for it and how much.

Of course US credit card transaction fees also fund cashback and other reward systems

[Symbiote]

UK credit card transactions also used to fund cashback and rewards, but when EU rules from a few years ago limited the fees all that ended. Society no longer funds rich/middle-income people's air miles, which is an improvement.

[smaryjerry]

No one else is funding other peoples money in any significant way. The problem with cash back and miles programs is consumers don’t realize the business they just bought something from is paying the fees which then amounts to the cash back. Essentially forcing the consumer to pay a higher price but it’s their own money coming back to them later. In the mean time the banks hold more cash in their pocket and earn interest until you redeem your rewards and benefit even more when people don’t use their rewards and points, some people never redeem them, similar to gift cards. Then the banks want to seem like the good guys giving your own money from the fees of stuff you bought back to you. It’s all a big unnecessary loop when the price of goods could have just been lower in the first place.

[speleding]

One fee that Dutch banks have, and PayPal does not, is negative interest on your balance over €100K. So as a small business owner I park excess cash there, which makes up a little bit for the high fees when customers choose PayPal.

[AniseAbyss]

Dutch banks, unlike their American sisters, are not archaic. iDeal was a direct response to e-commerce and a preemptive strike against Visacard.

The Dutch banks all work together to prevent a US fintech takeover which they saw coming.