Credit card company Visa is calling for a ban on the surcharge fee some merchants charge card-paying consumers at the point of sale.

The Commerce Commission was undertaking a review of card charges, and considering cutting the regulated interchange fee card companies can charge banks by as much as 75 percent, for example.

Card interchange fees were in turn passed on by banks to merchants at whatever rate the merchant can negotiate, meaning that some pay much more than others.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 days ago

    Hey I have an idea. Why don’t we invite some competition to the marketplace. Maybe Alipay or Wechat. Even better why don’t we start using premined crypto coins. Even better why doesn’t the government mint it’s own premined crypto and set up some servers to handle the transactions.

    The mere threat of any of the above should get Visa to back off.

      • @[email protected]
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        18 days ago

        It’s just technology. It’s just a kind of a database. There is no reason the government can’t create it’s own currency and run it’s own transaction servers. It’s all open source so it could literally be done in a week if we really want to.

          • @[email protected]
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            16 days ago

            Cost would be minimal and the benefit would be very low transaction costs for vendors and customers and not needing Visa to conduct every day financial transactions.

            • @[email protected]
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              16 days ago

              But each transaction is still significantly more expensive in processor (and thus electricity) and slower than a normal database is right? Don’t get me wrong alternatives to VISA & MasterCard are more than welcome, I just don’t think crypto is it.