<story><title>DOJ accuses Visa of monopoly that affects price of &apos;nearly everything’</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/24/doj-accuses-visa-of-debit-network-monopoly-that-impacts-price-of-nearly-everything.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>safety1st</author><text>Not saying this is who you are, but this is the argument I hear from Americans who have a vested interest in defending the illegal business practices of its cartels and monopolies. &amp;quot;This country is so big, that innovation is hard and will be slower.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe them. I think innovation is stymied either by monopoly, regulation or both. I think specifically we allowed monopoly to encroach in an unprecedented way since the Reagan era. I think there are a lot of rich guys breaking the law, the Sherman Act and its kin are real, the DOJ and the FTC have teeth again, America can be innovative in every field and it&amp;#x27;s time for action.&lt;p&gt;Enforcing antitrust law is the path to better products and services and maybe even a restoration of wealth equality to some degree, because historically starting businesses was what kept the fruits of the American economic pie more distributed than they are today.</text></item><item><author>hnav</author><text>Regulatory hurdles from incumbents aside, it&amp;#x27;s generally the case that a less developed, up-and-coming economy will have new stuff quicker. The US is arguably the birthplace of credit but was one of the last to get chip and then tap. Right now the US is putting internet relays in low earth orbit and teaching computers to generate text on the fly, but the wired internet offerings are inferior to some third tier city in Bulgaria and customer service is abysmal.</text></item><item><author>HAL3000</author><text>The US seems to be so far behind. For example, in Poland, Europe, you&amp;#x27;ve had online instant bank payments for over 10 years. You’d go to a merchant’s site, click &amp;#x27;pay with my bank,&amp;#x27; and an OAuth-like mechanism would log you into your bank to confirm the payment. Now it’s even easier with the introduction of BLIK, which lets you pay in shops, online, etc. Online payments are super simple: you click &amp;#x27;pay with BLIK&amp;#x27; on a merchant’s site, go to your bank app (web or mobile), click the BLIK icon, and get a six-digit code valid for 60–180 seconds. You enter that code on the merchant site, and your mobile app shows &amp;#x27;Do you want to pay [xxx amount] to [merchant Y]?&amp;#x27; You click yes, and that’s it.</text></item><item><author>cubefox</author><text>&amp;gt; Visa and its smaller rival Mastercard have surged over the past two decades, reaching a combined market cap of roughly $1 trillion.&lt;p&gt;In the US there actually exists (begins to exist) now a cheaper alternative to credit card payments: FedNow. See &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;FedNow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;FedNow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s an instantaneous bank transfer, without a credit card company in the middle extracting rents.&lt;p&gt;For dodgy&amp;#x2F;disreputable online shops, credit cards will still be better, due to the possibility of chargeback. And of course for actually buying things on credit. But for most regular cases, this shouldn&amp;#x27;t be necessary.&lt;p&gt;Systems like FedNow are already highly successful in India (UPI) and several other countries.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oooyay</author><text>A startup that I worked at that worked on municipal water infrastructure often had to sell to rural areas first because they didn&amp;#x27;t have a rollout of complex existing systems to decouple and migrate. I suspect that&amp;#x27;s analogous to what OP is describing; a situation where the entrenched system is difficult to replace because the operations of it are now engrained and well-understood.&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, I think you&amp;#x27;re both right to some degree.</text></comment>
<story><title>DOJ accuses Visa of monopoly that affects price of &apos;nearly everything’</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/24/doj-accuses-visa-of-debit-network-monopoly-that-impacts-price-of-nearly-everything.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>safety1st</author><text>Not saying this is who you are, but this is the argument I hear from Americans who have a vested interest in defending the illegal business practices of its cartels and monopolies. &amp;quot;This country is so big, that innovation is hard and will be slower.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t believe them. I think innovation is stymied either by monopoly, regulation or both. I think specifically we allowed monopoly to encroach in an unprecedented way since the Reagan era. I think there are a lot of rich guys breaking the law, the Sherman Act and its kin are real, the DOJ and the FTC have teeth again, America can be innovative in every field and it&amp;#x27;s time for action.&lt;p&gt;Enforcing antitrust law is the path to better products and services and maybe even a restoration of wealth equality to some degree, because historically starting businesses was what kept the fruits of the American economic pie more distributed than they are today.</text></item><item><author>hnav</author><text>Regulatory hurdles from incumbents aside, it&amp;#x27;s generally the case that a less developed, up-and-coming economy will have new stuff quicker. The US is arguably the birthplace of credit but was one of the last to get chip and then tap. Right now the US is putting internet relays in low earth orbit and teaching computers to generate text on the fly, but the wired internet offerings are inferior to some third tier city in Bulgaria and customer service is abysmal.</text></item><item><author>HAL3000</author><text>The US seems to be so far behind. For example, in Poland, Europe, you&amp;#x27;ve had online instant bank payments for over 10 years. You’d go to a merchant’s site, click &amp;#x27;pay with my bank,&amp;#x27; and an OAuth-like mechanism would log you into your bank to confirm the payment. Now it’s even easier with the introduction of BLIK, which lets you pay in shops, online, etc. Online payments are super simple: you click &amp;#x27;pay with BLIK&amp;#x27; on a merchant’s site, go to your bank app (web or mobile), click the BLIK icon, and get a six-digit code valid for 60–180 seconds. You enter that code on the merchant site, and your mobile app shows &amp;#x27;Do you want to pay [xxx amount] to [merchant Y]?&amp;#x27; You click yes, and that’s it.</text></item><item><author>cubefox</author><text>&amp;gt; Visa and its smaller rival Mastercard have surged over the past two decades, reaching a combined market cap of roughly $1 trillion.&lt;p&gt;In the US there actually exists (begins to exist) now a cheaper alternative to credit card payments: FedNow. See &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;FedNow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;FedNow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s an instantaneous bank transfer, without a credit card company in the middle extracting rents.&lt;p&gt;For dodgy&amp;#x2F;disreputable online shops, credit cards will still be better, due to the possibility of chargeback. And of course for actually buying things on credit. But for most regular cases, this shouldn&amp;#x27;t be necessary.&lt;p&gt;Systems like FedNow are already highly successful in India (UPI) and several other countries.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SlightlyLeftPad</author><text>Coincidentally, this point came up in another HN thread about California enacting a rule that forces companies to make subscriptions cancelable with one-click.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=41644315&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=41644315&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>