[ZooCow]

It's also a way for them to save on credit card processing fees by trading the fees of multiple (relatively) small drink purchases for one fee for the gift card purchase.

An often overlooked innovation of iTunes was delayed billing, which converted multiple separate song transactions into one bundled transaction to save on credit card transaction fees.

[Loic]

Highway tolls in France have been doing it for something like 20 years.

[hondo77]

The iTunes Store turns 20 in two days.

[cuteboy19]

The concept of weekly monthly settlement is ancient. Banks have been doing it for centuries

[capableweb]

Yeah, but not in the US so obviously it doesn't count as true innovation.

[rottencupcakes]

Believe it or not, Fastrak has been doing this for tolls in the Bay Area for something like 20 years.

[rcme]

E-ZPass, which does tolling in the north east, is 36 years old.

[hammock]

>delayed billing, which converted multiple separate song transactions into one bundled transaction to save on credit card transaction fees.

Uber and Lyft do it now. It ought to be illegal, or opt-in (with a discount to the customer). Delayed billing wreaks havoc on the majority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck

[jstarfish]

It is a discount to that customer demographic.

For debit cards, imagine your account has $0.01 in it and about to be overdrawn. Each transaction from here on out will net you a $35 overdraft fee.

Accounting for the fees, would you rather have 5 immediate charges of $1, or 1 delayed charge for $5?

For credit cards, there's no overdraft, just a hard cutoff.

[prirun]

> For debit cards, imagine your account has $0.01 in it and about to be overdrawn. Each transaction from here on out will net you a $35 overdraft fee.

Everyone using a debit card, especially if poor, should disable overdraft protection at the bank. The fees will eat you alive otherwise.

[baremetal]

be careful I disabled overdraft protection and my bank had an additional layer "courtesy pay" that also changed an overdraft and they didn't tell me about it. I found out the hard way.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Yep, same here - there is no escaping the predatory fees. Also, vendors go nuts if your purchase is declined for any reason now. They will cut you off. So you can't win for trying.

[Spooky23]

Nobody should ever use a debit card.

[sosodev]

Don't they authorize each individual ride and then bundle them up into a single transaction?

[TheNewsIsHere]

This thread is confusing to me. I am in the US and I use Uber. I’ve never had this experience. Every time I use Uber, I see one transaction per ride, and depending on when I remember (or see the prompt) to tip, that may or may not be another single transaction.

Edit: s/threat/thread

[hoschicz]

Do they? Only in the US? I ride with Uber in Europe and always see the charge from them immediately on my card.

[WastingMyTime89]

Most of the processing fees are capped by law in Europe. They are far lower (and I mean far - something like six times lower) than in the US and the cap is a percentage of the transaction so there is little point in bundling.

[xwdv]

It does not wreck anymore havoc than lots of separate transactions pushing them deeper into debt.

[BoorishBears]

Stuff like this reminds me of the bubble tech lives in.

There are a lot of people who aren't on top of their finances at all.

For them, a delayed transaction wreaks plenty of havoc because they're not keeping track of how much "ghost transactions" are affecting the account balance they see.

Now you could argue it's on them for not being on top of their finances, but Uber makes a lot of money from these people. The largest demographics are 18-24 yr olds, ie people who honestly can't afford overpriced delivery but do it anyways.

[youreincorrect]

I think you live in a bubble if you feel it necessary to exaggerate the effects and coddle people who aren't on top of their finances.

It's all a fairly pointless discussion because the simple solution is to suggest Uber, etc. just make this method of charging an optional feature that is easily toggled by their customers. Beyond that, it's an uninteresting discussion, and I don't care to hear people browbeat each other about how Uber is bad and wrong for rolling transactions into one because they didn't consider that their customers are mouthbreathing idiots whose entire financial world will come collapsing down on them if they can't get check their credit card balance for 100% accurate realtime information about their current financial state. Somehow if someone didn't think of this possibility, they are an inconsiderate jerk who "lives" in a "bubble."

[BoorishBears]

There's so much self-indulgent angst oozing out of this comment that it's hard to pick out the intended signal but I'll try:

- It's not about credit cards, it's mostly debit. It's a large driver of the 15 billion dollars in NSF fees banks pick up yearly.

- Having 100% up to date information on your money makes it easier to not overdraft, the emotional smokescreen deployed doesn't change that.

- I don't know anyone with any level of financial literacy who would prefer less accurate data on their money: so your suggestion for a switch that makes your transaction history less accurate is questionable to say the least.

Overall you sound insecure about living in a bubble. I didn't paint people as jerks for being in a bubble, but I rightfully pointed out that you're clearly unfamiliar with a challenge in some people's lives.

If self-loathing makes you feel like a jerk for being in a bubble I can see how you could misconstrue that.

[xwdv]

Indeed, im pretty sick and tired of people making excuses for others lack of financial planning.

Perhaps seeing a big bill dropped on them all at once for their past purchases is the exact wake-up call some people need to track their finances.

[BoorishBears]

If instead of taking uninformed pot shots you took just a moment to check, you'd see overdrafts come from a tiny slice of customers who get hit by overdrafts over and over again.

No one made any excuses for anyone, it was a simple statement of fact that batched transactions save a marginal cost for the good in question and affect the age group that's using them the most.

—

It might even be profitable for them to eat the processing fee and call out the fact there are already X dollars pending to users who have had at least one NSF in the past year as they check out. Why give the bank $20 out of your most captive customers pockets, to save .03 cents on payment processing?

There seems to be this weird idea that it can't be profitable to do things that help your users.

[1123581321]

Not a bubble thing. Many people living paycheck to paycheck watch their accounts. They often know everything that’s hitting and on what day, for several days in advance, and what they need to do, or will try to do, to keep it positive. Transportation costs especially.

It’s the same mental power you have, but for a variety of reasons they’re having to apply it to stave off problems instead of to grow their assets as is more typical among software engineers.

[NoZebra120vClip]

I never learned how to balance a checkbook. At this point, it's moot, because the bank does that tracking for me.

But it's still difficult to stay on top of finances when you run dry every month. You need to account for all the different ways a transaction could come in: a check you wrote; a recurring payment that you send out, a recurring payment via ACH, debit, whatever; your own card purchases while out and about.

So it easily becomes overwhelming and then you're in NSF territory.

I used to donate $3 at a time via check to some religious sisters. They were very appreciative and sent me nice tokens and letters, but they waited long intervals to deposit those checks, so there were unfortunate times when the checks bounced, and they rightly objected, because their fees already outstripped the amounts I was donating to them. I just felt kind of helpless at that, and sad that a good relationship was soured over $3.

[NoZebra120vClip]

I will also add that I vehemently disagree with authorizing recurring debits on my account, (AutoPay), and I will avoid that wherever possible, in favor of doing my own automated Bill Pay from the bank interface.

I think it is unprecedented in history, and absurd, that a company can just reach in and scoop out as much funds as they want on a regular basis. I mean, many things I set up AutoPay have a variable billing amount. They can just increase the bill and they're still hunkydory to remove that amount in the coming months! Please keep consumers in the loop and in control here, folks.

Bill Pay from the bank is, unfortunately, sometimes perilous and difficult to manage, and you may wish for AutoPay after you've had a few mishaps. I recently received a PAST DUE LATE FEES APPLY notice because of a penny. If Bill Pay can't generate an electronic transfer, then it cuts a paper check to mail out (at no charge, which is great) but with all the pitfalls of floating checks (for a poor person who lives close to $0 balance, you don't want a lot of float!)

[SketchySeaBeast]

If you're watching your credit card to know how much money you have left won't the Uber rides not reflect until they do a mass bill?

[xwdv]

That’s not how credit cards work. A credit line isn’t “money you have left”, it’s the max you can borrow.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I'm not confused how credit cards how work. If someone was checking their balance so that they can properly budget a company delaying the charge would deprive them of that insight.

[inyourtenement]

I don’t think they wait very long. I used Lyft recently and they only combined charges within a single day.