[brainwad]

Credit cards give me cashback, worldwide acceptance and peace of mind. The country I live in, Switzerland, has a very widely accepted QR-based payment system... but credit cards (in mobile wallets) are more convenient, safer, faster. The only time I use the QR codes is when a merchant doesn't have a card terminal.

[henry700]

The cashback you are given back is taken from a fraction of the fee levied on merchants by the Payment Processing company they use. The only thing holding this system together is the lobby (also funded by a part of the aforementioned fee on merchants) by the Payment Processing industry to uphold laws that prohibit more expensive payments for more expensive payment methods, and also the extensive marketing (funded by guess what). It's an extremely simple yet ingrained system, and the only way to topple it and stop paying hidden costs thinking you're getting an extremely good deal on cashback, is to peel back the curtains and realize it, and make most of the politically-active part of the country's population to do so too.

[brainwad]

Credit card isn't more expensive than its main competitor, cash, though. It's just the costs of credit card acceptance are transparently added to each transaction, while the costs of cash are distributed over the whole day's cash transactions and so more opaque.

Merchants have a psychological (and in some countries, legal) barrier to charging more for cash than other payment methods, even though it's the least efficient. Given this, cash-back is the best way to share the efficiency gains with the end user. Maybe if Pix or Twint or debit cards or what-have-you are so efficient, they should also give consumers cashback.

[jowea]

Cashback is just giving part of the profit margin of the fees charged on the transactions to the customer. I would rather that profit margin gets split between the customer (lower prices) and merchant. Also, didn't the EU eliminate cashbacks by precisely price capping transaction fees?

I've seen merchants giving a discount for payment with Pix. And a few stores refuse credit cards and only accept debit and Pix (and cash?).

Also, isn't the main competitor to CC the debit card? And now in some countries instant payments? Is debit that rare in the US?

Although to be honest I'm not 100% sure if it isn't some tax evasion thing.

[miltava]

It could give cashback if it cost 3% of the transaction. But it’s it’s actually much cheaper. For credit cards you have to pay for the brand, the issuer and the acquirer. And each gets a nice cut.

[brainwad]

Reducing merchant fees seems like a mistake if you are in competition with both cash (which has high intrinsic merchant costs) and credit cards (which has low intrinsic costs, but which are padded so they're closer to the costs of cash, with consumer cashback coming out of this padding). I'm certainly not going to _choose_ to receive less cashback, as a consumer.

[miltava]

Pix costs are very low and the fee for the merchant as well. They pay less for it and get the money instantly. That’s why many small merchants only accept pix and some big merchants offer discounts for payments using it.

[brainwad]

Discounts for Pix vs cash sound cool and a fine alternative to cashback via the payment system. Though I can imagine this might be hard in some countries, where there is a strong pro-cash lobby.

[disgruntledphd2]

I mean, the cashback is paid for out of the fees you pay for the service. In a world with low capped charges (EU etc) then you'll just pay less, which is equivalent to cashback and much fairer.

[brainwad]

So long as the price is the same for cash and card (and Pix?), then you should pick the one that gives you the best kickbacks. I don't think capping CC fees will actually lower prices for consumers much (because merchants prefer round prices for psychological pricing). For evidence, see the fairly uniform pricing of products sold in euros between countries, despite varying vat rates between eurozone countries.

[dv_dt]

I don't think you mean transparently - credit card costs are invisibly added..

[ivape]

But, who do you get to call in a world like that? I think the West really likes customer service and security.

[miltava]

Why do you think PIX doesn’t have customer service or security? It’s regulated by the central bank but operated by private companies.

[henry700]

Suspicious transactions are a legitimate use-case for payment processing. If you don't fully trust who you're buying from, the scam preventions, chargebacks, refunds etc. work fine. But buying lunch or small chocolates, cigarretes etc with credit cards is INSANE.

[miltava]

Yes. But credit cards have high costs for the merchant. Thats why they get to give us cashback. It depends on the country, but the cut rate goes from 1% (in europe) to 3% in Brazil.

And the merchant gets the money after a long time. It is possible to advance the payment but the rates are much higher (10%+).

So, i dont think we can even think of credit cards as instant payment. And it has mich higher costs that, in the end, go back to the consumers.

[azlev]

Bear in mind that Brazil is a poor country. Cashback and worldwide acceptance is not what 90% brasillians need.

You are right about convenience, but here, 1% fee makes a huge difference to make both ends meet.

You can give alms with pix, to show how widespread pix is.

[vouaobrasil]

Brazil is actually a pretty rich country. It's just that the wealth is exceptionally highly concentrated at the top. Brazil has enormous resources and potential, but all that potential gets sucked up by the big boys in their club. Although I know what you mean, it's important to distinguish Brazil from a genuinely poor-all-over country where there is not much wealth anywhere. Even in poor or average neighbourhoods in the big cities, you can see a person with nothing and then another person drive by in a BMW.

[miltava]

It’s more like 3% if you receive the money after 30 data and 10% if you get it in the best day.

[closewith]

> Credit cards give me cashback, worldwide acceptance and peace of mind.

That's because you (and everyone else in Switzerland, even those paying cash) is eating a 2-3% merchant fee markup. In the civilised world like the EU, where credit card interchange fees are capped of 0.3%, those cashback benefits (which is, again, your money you've just paid) don't exist.

> worldwide acceptance

For now, at a huge economy-wide cost. That skimmed 2-3% is what Trump is trying to protect.

> peace of mind

That's also country-dependent. In many countries, credit card transactions have no additional protections and chargebacks aren't the magic bullet they are in some.

> more convenient, safer, faster.

Pix is more convenient, safer (much, much safer and lower risk of fraud), and faster than credit cards. Cheaper too.

[brainwad]

Switzerland has interchange fees of 0.4% for consumer credit cards (by contactless, only slightly higher by chip+pin): https://www.visaeurope.ch/content/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unite..., https://www.mastercard.com/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/.... And yet banks offer 0.33% cashback cards: https://certo-card.ch/one.

And let's not forget that cash acceptance costs an order of magnitude more than this anyway; if anything businesses should charge surcharges for accepting cash, not the other way around, and given the social constraint of no surcharges, cashback is a fair mechanism to reward efficient payment methods.

[closewith]

> Switzerland has interchange fees of 0.4% for consumer credit cards

Only since Wednesday of this week due to COMCO action, so no-one knows if cashback will persist, but it will be a lot less than .33%.

> And let's not forget that cash acceptance costs an order of magnitude more than this anyway;

In the EU, it's .5% for cash vs .3% for cards, but the situation falls back into favour for cash once fraud is accounted for.

[brainwad]

> Only since Wednesday of this week due to COMCO action

That Visa fee table is dated July 2023?

[closewith]

Right, but prior to this week, the merchant account providers just raised scheme fees to compensate.

[somedude895]

Yeah but Twint is a piece of crap. Maybe Pix or Alipay are faster to use. But I agree, Apple Pay is pretty much perfect in terms of UX for in-store and especially for online payments.