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Comment by fasterik | Hacker News Reader

According to economic theory, price controls produce shortages. It's likely that capping transaction fees would have unintended consequences, for instance excluding customers from being able to get a credit card in the first place. I'm not against all regulation, but I think we should prefer market-based solutions that remove barriers to entry and that allow more companies to compete in the space.

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Europe offers a useful counter-example. They (EU? Most countries? I don't know exactly, but it's immaterial) cap transaction fees, and there's absolutely no shortage of "ways to pay by card". In my experience there are, in fact, more - and, their middle-men have been earlier adopters of both security and convenience features (PIN codes, tap-to-pay, and rapid settlement among them) in which the US sometimes still lags.

What there aren't are rampant cash-back rewards for using a particular card. Or easy access to credit cards with usurorious rates. I think missing out on those is a societally good outcome.

If you cap price then quality will probably suffer, i.e. less fraud protection, warranty extension, accidental damage coverage, etc.

> warranty extension, accidental damage coverage

What does that have to do with CC fees? In the EU, you get all of these with any payment method, and in many EU countries credit cards are the least used payment option because there are better alternatives.

It costs something to provide these services.

These things have long been solved through consumer protection legislation in the developed part of the world. Despite responsibility for card fraud, including debit cards, being placed banks and payment processors, northern Europe has a healthy consumer banking market. Vendors being required to warranty purchases for up to 5 years also hasn't killed off commerce or smaller and tiny actors. The home content insurances strike a decent balance for accidents. Sure, the total cost might not be that different in aggregate (you pay for consumer protections through versting being slightly more expensive), but at the same time it's difficult to envision cutting out or severely limiting a profit driven middle man overall being more expensive.

This is the argument that was used in Europe when Europe put a very low hard cap on these fees (0.2%). Do you know what actually happened? Nothing happened, everyone kept using cards as normal, actually more people did because it was cheaper, the card companies cried because they got less profit but kept operating because it was still positive, there were no shortages.

Dan why can't I post more comments?

It’s so funny to me (and a little sad) how as soon as it’s suggested that unfettered capitalism be reigned even slightly that some kind of Laissez-faire economic theory like this suddenly comes into play.

I could make this exact same “price controls” argument about sketchy loan sharks that charge 200% interest.

Perhaps ensuring widespread access to credit cards isn’t actually as important as making sure credit cards are fair? Alternatively, perhaps your theory that credit cards would become inaccessible if transaction price controls were implemented wouldn’t play out? Perhaps we would discover that Visa and Mastercard and Chase Bank and Capital One would be perfectly happy collecting 0.5% of every transaction on the planet plus revolving interest charges?

I will reiterate my overall point: we have tried market-based solutions and the end result is that capital is concentrating itself at the top at alarming speed. Credit cards represent a huge oligopoly business. There is no free market situation where a new credit card company will enter the market. It is no longer possible. To the contrary, the market has only consolidated. E.g., Capital One purchased Discover Card in 2025.

How much longer do we let the market work itself out before we decide we’ve had enough trying the same ineffective strategies?

The credit card companies make the vast majority of their revenue on interest charges. The transaction fees are at least in part returned to the cardholder via rewards programs. That said, I agree that competitive market solutions are better than regulation, where they work.

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