by oltdaniel on 4/3/20, 3:06 PM with 72 comments
by rsync on 4/3/20, 3:31 PM
This is correct. The correct response to payment and settlement "pauses" for silly things like weekends and holidays is derision. Contempt. Ridicule.
These settlement timelines are based literally on horse and buggy schedules from the 1800s. They have no place in our modern workflow.
by fenwick67 on 4/3/20, 3:36 PM
Lyft happily accepted my debit card and probably cost less in the end anyway.
by pjc50 on 4/3/20, 3:47 PM
It would certainly be nice to have something like Vipps in more countries; EU Faster Payments is getting there but not quite as usable. And it's 24-hour.
For any of the peer-to-peer solutions, you have to consider the fraud problems. The problem with micropayments is microfraud.
by chkaloon on 4/3/20, 3:49 PM
Yes you do, that vending machine you're standing in front of
by arkanciscan on 4/3/20, 3:30 PM
> I have no real world use for this kind of card
Seems to me that he does.
by hn_throwaway_99 on 4/3/20, 3:43 PM
Also, many of his gripes seem ridiculous. I don't know if the situation is different in Europe, but in the US I think pretty much everyone should have a credit card. You can use a secured card if you have bad credit, and most debit cards in the US can be swiped as a credit card. All of his non-existent problems seem like they could be fixed by getting a credit card. Credit cards also have better fraud protection, let you build credit, and usually have better rewards for consumers. There is virtually no difference in privacy benefits between credit and debit cards.
by eterm on 4/3/20, 4:20 PM
\* Faster (instant) payments 24/7.
\* All purchase transactions are generally assumed to be debit card, credit cards are never required and very much optional (I don't have a credit card)
\* Contactless payments are instant, easy and completely standard, everything from the corner shop upward has them. You don't need your PIN for less than £30 (£45 quid from next week).
\* A banking industry that is quick to refund anything from any fraud without asking, which makes for a low case of fraud because they pro-actively block odd transactions.
\* Up to £75k insured per bank
I've often heard stories about payments that I just can't relate to because it seems our payment industry is so good. We have no need for bitcoin and the trendy start-ups don't even gain much traction because the banks own apps are normally just as good anyway.
by GhostVII on 4/3/20, 4:06 PM
For me, the biggest problem is trying to move large amounts of money around, especially across borders. It took me like 3 phone calls and a trip to the bank to figure out how to move my money from my US bank account to my Canadian bank account without having to pay an absurd $40 wire fee. And of course currency conversion is a pain as well - if you are converting a large amount of money you either pay a tonne of fees through the bank, pay a fairly large amount of fees (~1%) through something like Transferwise, or pay no fees by going through the hastle of Norberts Gambit.
by grecy on 4/3/20, 4:11 PM
I emigrated to Canada from Australia, and it was exceptionally hard for me to get a credit card. Apparently no credit rating is the same as the very worst credit rating. It also took time to get paperwork like a drivers license and SIN number (a bit like an SSN), and without those there was no chance. I had to go a few years without one, and the number of things I couldn't do without one was immensely frustrating.
Visa debit sounds great, but I find it doesn't work for a ton of transactions that want a credit card.
In the end I had to put $1000 into a special locked-in account that I couldn't touch before the bank would issue me a $1000 credit card.
by Pt_ on 4/3/20, 4:08 PM
I seem to remember credit being a requirement for making purchases on planes for this same reason.
I'm curious because I live in the UK and pretty much all terminals here accept debit cards, although I think the UK in general has been a bit ahead in terms of payment standards (chip & pin, contactless etc.)
by adrianmonk on 4/3/20, 3:56 PM
I think you've just proven that you have at least one real-world use. It may still not be worth the bother, though.
by easymovet on 4/3/20, 3:41 PM
by throwanem on 4/3/20, 4:14 PM
by stiray on 4/3/20, 4:13 PM
Not that they know who are your contacts (android contacts synced, gmail contacts, images uploaded,...), where you surf (googletags, google analytics), what you search (google search), what software you use (google play, google spyware framework,...), now they also know where you spend your money.
Now this is real horror.
by wslh on 4/3/20, 4:53 PM