Hacker News Reader

Comment by asimpletune | Hacker News Reader

We may be talking past each other. If card processing costs a business money, that cost is passed onto the consumer. It therefore stands to reason that the converse is also true with savings. The question remaining is just at what time scale.

I think you’re taking about a single transaction in the near future, whereas I’m talking about the effects which are felt, in aggregate, over a long period of time. Absolutely things will get slightly cheaper.

View on HN

Currently, a cost of "something" is:

1. 100€ if paid with cash

2. 100€ if paid with sovereign-European low-cost GPDR-compliant ISO-certified processor

3. 100€ if paid with American expensive monopoly behemoth Visa/MC.

Currently, it stands to reason to pay with Visa/MC and not bother with carrying cash or switching from Visa/MC to anything else.

In the future, it might be that the cost of the same "something" is:

1. 99.5€ if paid with cash

2. 100€ if paid with sovereign-European low-cost GPDR-compliant ISO-certified processor

3. 102€ if paid with American expensive monopoly behemoth Visa/MC. (Note: Visa/MC explicitly prohibit this.)

If this is predictable and repeatable, everyone needs to change their customer habits. It stands to reason that the change would be to carry cash.

The price difference would have to be significantly more than 1 to 3% to justify the inconvenience of carrying around cash again for me as a consumer for the things I don't buy online. Also don't underestimate the benefits of not dealing with cash for the merchants either. After cash usage almost vanishing completely they made it mandatory to accept cash a couple of years ago in Norway in an attempt to keep the infrastructure on life support in case of crisis (but still illegal for big transactions like cars and houses because something something crime). At least one hairdresser chain notably resolved it by only accepting pre booked appointments, which you could only get along pre paying for them in an app.

YMMV, but I still carry cash and find no inconvenience in this. Cash is never out of battery, never out of software support, and unaffected by AWS outages, cellular outages, or electricity outages. I also don't install apps that are supposed to make life convenient for others but not me. WRT that hairdresser chain, I suppose I'd simply use a different hairdresser that would accept both walk-ins and cash, and I'd hope there's no shortage of such.

Well that is one way, but how about this?

It currently costs 100€ to buy something. 90% of their customers pay card and the rest cash. Their profit margin is 5% and the payment processor takes 2%, leaving 93% other costs not part of this discussion.

Now, the same item is still 100€ but some Europeans are paying with their cards by these cheaper payment processors. They charge only 1% per transaction. Also half of the card payers use these rather than the status quo. Therefore the merchant gains a percentage of profit on 45% of their transactions.

They can now lower their price to compete better. So the new price becomes something like 99.55€ for everybody: cash, visa, European cards.

Then, visa and Mastercard will lower their prices, to not lose customers in Europe, matching them, and now the price has fully gone to 99€, for everyone.

In Italy the price is the same by law regardless of how you pay. So it stands to reason savings go to the merchants and eventually the customers, rather than having a multi-tier price.

Too many things have to line up exactly the way you imagine for this to happen, and I think your scenario is too optimistic as a result. Specifically, the merchants "can now lower their price" but they might not do it, especially considering that the costs of integration with this system are probably non-zero for them.

Wizz is a Hungarian (so: European) airline (since 2003) and girocard is a German (so: European) instant low-fee payment system (it's been rebranded in 2007 from EC-Karte that existed since 1960s). At this moment, as far as I'm aware, you cannot pay for your Wizz ticket with girocard (they only accept Visa/MC/Amex or "co-branded" girocards.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com