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0cf8612b2e1elast Friday at 11:44 PM10 repliesview on HN

I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not think it is Valve).

Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.


Replies

kabdibyesterday at 12:22 AM

IBM was not able to. Story from a friend-who-claimed-to-be-there:

In days of yore, Visa did processing on IBM iron. The iron in question took a while to boot, and time is very definitely money to Visa and they wanted to speed up reboots (e.g., after a crash). Saving seconds = $$$.

Visa to IBM: "Please give us the source code for the <boot path stuff>, it's costing us money."

IBM: LOL

Visa to some big banks: "Please tell IBM to give us the source code for this, it's costing you money."

IBM, a little later: "Here's a tape. Need any help?"

AdieuToLogicyesterday at 12:34 AM

> I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not think it is Valve).

Visa is a clearing house whose members are banks. Think of it like a payment router between issuers (banks) and processors (banks).

Only sponsored organizations can directly use the "Visa rails", where "sponsor" is defined as a bank, a bank subsidiary, or an entity previously sponsored by one of the other two.

This is also the case for MasterCard and Discover. "Traditional" American Express is different though.

> Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.

Those merchants use banks or one of their subsidiaries for processing credit card transactions. Most large merchants do as well in order to minimize their discount rate as well as other transaction fees. Smaller merchants often use ISO's or VAR's for business specific reason, knowing both ultimately transact with a bank or one of a bank's subsidiaries.

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ijkyesterday at 12:57 AM

Other payment processors, mostly. So other credit card companies (e.g. JCB [1]), government run payment services like Pix in Brazil [2], theoretically crypto, etc.

[1] as a random example: https://archive.kyivpost.com/technology/japanese-payment-sys...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)

TkTechyesterday at 2:17 AM

Any coalition of banks can. Replacing Visa is a daunting task, but rolling out PoS support and the technical challenges are peanuts compared to actually getting banks onboard. Visa itself was started by a single bank, and Mastercard was started by a coalition of banks. They can do it again.

Interac[1] is Canada's debit system, originally created as a non-profit by our largest banks way back in '84, and these days is supported everywhere. The large banks are already used to bullying their way through political or bureaucratic challenges, and a single Canadian bank typically has trillion(s) in managed assets - they _can_ bully Visa.

Zelle[2] (2016) is a limited (etransfer only) clone for the American market, UPI (2016) in India, UnionPay (2002) in China, carte Bleue (1967) in France, etc etc. What's missing is cooperation between national systems like these, as well as lending as they typically only do debit instead of credit.

Any cooperation between these systems would likely get spun out as a separate entity, which would eventually just turn into a new Visa or Mastercard - but 3 choices is better than 2.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

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nottorpyesterday at 8:49 AM

> Amazon, Walmart, Target

Those are all US companies so subject to the same puritan pressures. Their cards would still be good for buying ultra violent games but not sex games...

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nipponeselast Friday at 11:49 PM

Likely Apple currently has the deepest finance industry roots.

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zhivotayesterday at 5:08 AM

It will be an ID number based payment service built on top of FedNow. In other countries similar services are used with QR codes to do easy payments.

fendy3002yesterday at 12:38 AM

Though unpopular, I'd say China is able to

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loegyesterday at 12:36 AM

Only the USG.

carlosjobimyesterday at 12:05 AM

Mastercard?