The US have a monopoly on credit card payments with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners Club, etc.
Even with online payment systems like PayPal, GPay, Apple Pay.
The only Canadian option that I know of is the new Shop Pay, which is owned by Shopify. (And we all know the founder CEO, Tobias Lutke is a far-right fascist traitor who loves the idea of being a 51st state.)
Right now Visa and Mastercard are controlling what stores can sell, and what services can be provided. Censoring online content, like asking Steam and Itch.io to remove certain games.
What are examples of alternatives in other countries? I know that Japan, for example, has their own independent ones, I think?
Do you think they might be refused by American companies in order to keep their monopoly?
I’d like to know what you think.
And it is orders of magnitude cheaper for retailers than credit cards.
The problem is there’s no incentive to use it, as you don’t get the kickback your credit card provides. I’m not sure how the CC duopoly tricked us into disallowing retailer cash/debit discounting.
The discounting part isn’t really true as of 2022.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/credit-card-surcharge-faq-1.6610356
The only significant revenue streams for most credit card issuers is Interchange fees, Annual fees and Interest. As only a lower flat network fee exist for Interact, merchants are the only ones that would logically offer anything for customers using them. But the difference really doesn’t seem to be worth them bothering giving people 2-3 tier level pricing.
To put it into numbers at $100 transaction it’s like 6 cents for a interact and $1.5-2 fee for a credit card.
I use debit whenever I can. The incentive is to not hand over 2 to 3 percent of my economy to foreigners who contribute nothing.