11 ms·

Money Horror

• arkanciscan 6y ago
  > we have an vending machine where you can pay with a credit card > I have no real world use for this kind of card Seems to me that he does.
  • oltdaniel 6y ago
    Fair enough. But I don't pay 2€ per month for a credit card from my local bank to buy stuff from a vending machine. The overall point is, that I have not enough use cases to make resonable use of it in the real world over my current free debit card.
    • webstrand 6y ago
      In the US, many, if not most, credit cards don't charge a monthly fee. Is it different in the EU?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • oltdaniel 6y ago
        I have not many experiences as I am 19 and haven't switche banks, but my current bank requires a fee. See https://www.lzo.com/de/home/privatkunden/kreditkarte.html https://www.lzo.com/de/home/privatkunden/kreditkarte.html
        • adrianN 6y ago
          INGDiba and Comdirect both offer free credit cards. Probably many more banks do as well.
          • 4ad 6y ago
            Doesn't seem to be the case for ING: https://www.ing.nl/particulier/betalen/creditcards/index.html https://www.ing.nl/particulier/betalen/creditcards/index.htm... Comdirect does, but he is in the Netherlands.
      • Scarblac 6y ago
        In the Netherlands with my bank at least, yes there is a fee. There is also a fee for having a bank account with its included debit card, but you can't do without. Credit cards are of very limited use.
    • djmobley 6y ago
      Are there really no free credit cards available in your country? In many countries paying with a credit card gives you greater legal and fraud protection. Also helps build your credit rating.
      • Legogris 6y ago
        I'm curious if there's anywhere else outside the US where "building your credit rating" by accumulating debt history from e.g. credit cards is a thing and makes a difference. I haven't heard it mentioned as a US-specific thing, but I've also only ever heard Americans talk about it.
        • djmobley 6y ago
          In the UK it is absolutely a thing. Why would it not be a thing?
          • pwinnski 6y ago
            The cost of rigorous consumer protections is sometimes monetary. I have this discussion with European friends regularly: No, I don't automatically get a three-year warranty on everything I buy. I don't even want such a thing, sometimes. And in return I pay much less for everyday items.
            • quietbritishjim 6y ago
              The parent comment and the one it's relying to are about keeping a credit card to build credit history. I don't see what your comment has to do with that. Am I missing something? Did you think they were still talking about paying a fee for credit cards? Typically in the UK there's no fees for credit cards, the cost is just in the interest if you don't pay it off in time. In fact there are usually less fees for financial services in European countries e.g. checking accounts and ATMs usually don't have fees. (I mean there isn't usually a fee just for having a checking account, but there are of course fees for doing certain things with it such as a CHAPS transfer.)
          • 6y ago
    • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      In the same vein, I have no reason to use my debit card which is directly connected to "my money" than to use a credit card which is "not my money".
• rsync 6y ago
  "Yes transactions are paused on the weekend. Thats like google would do a break on the weekend." This is correct. The correct response to payment and settlement "pauses" for silly things like weekends and holidays is derision. Contempt. Ridicule. These settlement timelines are based literally on horse and buggy schedules from the 1800s. They have no place in our modern workflow.
  • SQueeeeeL 6y ago
    I feel like there's an argument to be made for having an actual human monitoring large transactions. If you're trying to take out a $600,000 mortgage at 3 AM on a Sunday, that probably shouldn't go through, or at the very least have some human verification. Humans tend to work 9-5 Monday to Friday
    • Pt_ 6y ago
      Surely anomaly detection is better done by a machine? I guess there's a certain level of human "intuition" about these things but is this not what most banks anti-fraud systems do already?
      • SQueeeeeL 6y ago
        I imagine the problem with this is it becomes a game-able system if it's purely automated. Sort of like the stereotype in Law and Order where they always pay hitmen $9,999 because "the IRS only monitors transfers over 10k."
        • Pt_ 6y ago
          I think its game-able automated or not. Fraud exists today and is playing on these exact systems.
        • kevinventullo 6y ago
          On the other hand, maybe this is a kind of perverse benefit of opaque ML systems.
• fenwick67 6y ago
  I once tried to rent a car at an airport rental car place while my car was in the shop. They wouldn't let me do it without a credit card. They wouldn't accept my debit card, they said, unless I had flown in (despite that my card can be ran as a credit card). Lyft happily accepted my debit card and probably cost less in the end anyway.
• easymovet 6y ago
  Using Bitcoin as a settlement layer has enabled services to crop up that provide interesting crosswalks of other payment layers, see https://twitter.com/ln_strike https://twitter.com/ln_strike
  • hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    Bitcoin is probably the worst settlement layer there is.
• hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  To be honest, I always kind of lol at these kinds of rants. Wishing for the "one true payment system" is like thinking that everyone will switch over to speaking Esperanto in the near future. NEVER going to happen. Also, many of his gripes seem ridiculous. I don't know if the situation is different in Europe, but in the US I think pretty much everyone should have a credit card. You can use a secured card if you have bad credit, and most debit cards in the US can be swiped as a credit card. All of his non-existent problems seem like they could be fixed by getting a credit card. Credit cards also have better fraud protection, let you build credit, and usually have better rewards for consumers. There is virtually no difference in privacy benefits between credit and debit cards.
  • wolfgke 6y ago
    > To be honest, I always kind of lol at these kinds of rants. Wishing for the "one true payment system" is like thinking that everyone will switch over to speaking Esperanto in the near future. There always exists cash (except for internet transactions, of course).
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Even that isn't a universally acceptable solution; most countries will take dollars as well as local currency in some shops, but by no means all. And if you're from a non-dollar country your chances of international acceptance are much lower.
    • Legogris 6y ago
      Unfortunately, no. Cash is effectively getting phased out in Sweden; these days, there are more physical shops denying cash than accepting it. Trying to make either a deposit or a withdrawal of "large sums" (> ~1K USD equivalent is my understanding) cash at a bank will get serious scrutiny and may even result in funds being seized or frozen. Things have changed really fast, too. Just 2 years ago I don't recall ever being in a store which didn't accept cash. And yet, all solutions other than cash are from private banks, which have no obligations to take you as a customer. Unfortunately it seems like Sweden is far from alone in being on this trajectory, they're just a little bit ahead in this sense. I do think that there's a case to be made for permissionlessly operated cryptocurrency on a public ledger here.
• pjc50 6y ago
  This is a bit "don't do that, then"; almost all the vital things take debit cards, including through contactless. It would certainly be nice to have something like Vipps in more countries; EU Faster Payments is getting there but not quite as usable. And it's 24-hour. For any of the peer-to-peer solutions, you have to consider the fraud problems. The problem with micropayments is microfraud.
  • ben_w 6y ago
    One of the most surprising experiences of my most recent trip to the USA (18 months ago) was how few places seemed to cope with cards — and that those which did, mostly still used the magnetic stripe. The experience showed me why Apple Pay and Google Pay were considered worth developing, or using. The only places which could do contactless payment with my card could also do it with my smartphone.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• chkaloon 6y ago
  "Only with a credit card. I am a student, I have no real world use for this kind of card" Yes you do, that vending machine you're standing in front of
  • LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    You feel the need to take out a short-term loan for your soda purchase? The fact that a debit card isn't considered as good as (and further, that it's not assumed to be better than) a credit card is yet another bit of money horror.
    • gruez 6y ago
      >You feel the need to take out a short-term loan for your soda purchase? Yeah why not? It's interest free for at least 3 weeks
    • orev 6y ago
      The way the credit card system is setup is what it is. If you know what you are doing you can take advantage of it. One should almost never use a debit card, as if it gets compromised the money comes directly out of your account and the banks don’t have much incentive to help too much. With a credit card, that stolen money belongs to the bank, and therefore they have a big incentive to get it back, so using this kind of card allows you to wield the power of a large company for your benefit. As long as you pay off the full bill every month, you are getting this protection for free.
      • tener 6y ago
        Perhaps this is regional thing, but in my country I get exact same level of protection for both credit and debit cards. Regulatory pressure can be useful at times.
    • pwinnski 6y ago
      In the US, I haven't seen a debit card that wasn't also usable as a "credit card" (VISA/MasterCard numbers) in decades.
• adrianmonk 6y ago
  > we have an vending machine where you can pay with a credit card or cash. Well, there is the issue already. Only with a credit card. I am a student, I have no real world use for this kind of card I think you've just proven that you have at least one real-world use. It may still not be worth the bother, though.
• GhostVII 6y ago
  I think most day-to-day problems are easily solved by just getting a credit card, there are lots of no-fee cards that pretty much anyone can get. They work everywhere, and have fraud protection (edit: In North America at least). For me, the biggest problem is trying to move large amounts of money around, especially across borders. It took me like 3 phone calls and a trip to the bank to figure out how to move my money from my US bank account to my Canadian bank account without having to pay an absurd $40 wire fee. And of course currency conversion is a pain as well - if you are converting a large amount of money you either pay a tonne of fees through the bank, pay a fairly large amount of fees (~1%) through something like Transferwise, or pay no fees by going through the hastle of Norberts Gambit.
• Pt_ 6y ago
  Would it be correct to assume the vending machine only accepts credit as it likely doesn't have a direct connection to a banking system to authorize the payments at time of purchase? I seem to remember credit being a requirement for making purchases on planes for this same reason. I'm curious because I live in the UK and pretty much all terminals here accept debit cards, although I think the UK in general has been a bit ahead in terms of payment standards (chip & pin, contactless etc.)
  • 4ad 6y ago
    The author (who seems to use his cards in Germany) is most likely confused. The problem is not with debit cards vs. credit cards. Every terminal I've seen in Austria and Germany supports both (but see below). The problem is that Austrians, Germans, and perhaps other EU countries think that Mastercard/Visa means credit card, and Maestro/Giro/whatever means debit card. This is exacerbated by the fact that until very recently you couldn't even get a Mastercard/Visa debit card in Austria (1). These terminals support Mastercard/Visa cards, plus more recently contactless. Mastercard debit cards certainly work. Btw, if you are an american visiting these countries, and you want to pay with a debit card, when the cashier asks if you pay with a debit or a credit card, answer credit card. They don't care whether it's credit vs. debit, they need to know if it's Mastercard/Visa or the local crap card, to push the correct button on the PoS. If you answer debit, it will NOT work. 1. Austria recently started replacing Maestro cards with Mastercard debit cards... but they seem to be some kind of funny Mastercard cards, not "real" enough for these terminals (except in contactless mode)... But at least you can pay for your plane ticket.
    • Pt_ 6y ago
      He specifically mentions that he's in the Netherlands in the article. And based on the writing in the "banking standards" paragraph it appears he understands the difference between debit / credit cards and that banking network they operate on doesn't determine the type of finance they provide
• grecy 6y ago
  I feel his pain. I emigrated to Canada from Australia, and it was exceptionally hard for me to get a credit card. Apparently no credit rating is the same as the very worst credit rating. It also took time to get paperwork like a drivers license and SIN number (a bit like an SSN), and without those there was no chance. I had to go a few years without one, and the number of things I couldn't do without one was immensely frustrating. Visa debit sounds great, but I find it doesn't work for a ton of transactions that want a credit card. In the end I had to put $1000 into a special locked-in account that I couldn't touch before the bank would issue me a $1000 credit card.
• stiray 6y ago
  There is just one thing, that he has forgot about it. He feeds a huge survailance capitalism machine with his data. The horror is not where he envisions, the horror is in, f.i. google tracking all his expenses. Not that they know who are your contacts (android contacts synced, gmail contacts, images uploaded,...), where you surf (googletags, google analytics), what you search (google search), what software you use (google play, google spyware framework,...), now they also know where you spend your money. Now this is real horror.
• throwanem 6y ago
  I like the optimism of imagining, in April of 2020, that the mild inconveniences of various payment systems will continue to qualify as "money horror"!
• eterm 6y ago
  This makes me glad to live in the UK, where it seems to me we might just have the best payments industry in the world. \* Faster (instant) payments 24/7. \* All purchase transactions are generally assumed to be debit card, credit cards are never required and very much optional (I don't have a credit card) \* Contactless payments are instant, easy and completely standard, everything from the corner shop upward has them. You don't need your PIN for less than £30 (£45 quid from next week). \* A banking industry that is quick to refund anything from any fraud without asking, which makes for a low case of fraud because they pro-actively block odd transactions. \* Up to £75k insured per bank I've often heard stories about payments that I just can't relate to because it seems our payment industry is so good. We have no need for bitcoin and the trendy start-ups don't even gain much traction because the banks own apps are normally just as good anyway.
• wslh 6y ago
  Use a stable coin... USDC if you are worried about regulations and risk.