Visa and Mastercard are American companies, and they essentially tax everybody by taking a percentage of purchase prices for themselves. Not exactly a small percentage either, 1.2% to 2.65%. Ever wonder why so many merchants say they don’t accept American Express? That’s because they charge quite a bit more to merchantes, 50% more than Visa or Mastercard. Anyway, we’re letting American companies tax us and we love them because we get rewards when we use cards. But it’s just a shell game because we pay more up front because businesses need to charge more to make up for payment processing charges. They get to sit in the middle and rake in the money.
Now the alternative in Canada is Interac. Interac charges a set amount per transcation. How much? 2 to 5.5 cents. Unless you’re going through Apple or Google Pay, and then it’s a percentage again.
Interac is also Canadian.
Want to stick it to Trump? Stop using credit cards (and Google Pay or Apple Pay) and switch to Interac. Want to make Canada better? Stop using credit cards and switch to Interac. Is it going to be inconvenient? Yes. Online shopping will be much harder but I have seen online Interac payments before and we can ask our favourite Canadian merchants to accept Interac online.
In Brazil, there is no alternative :(
For a huge chunk of the internet there isn’t one either. If Visa/Mastercard suddenly decide they don’t want to do business with you anymore, you’re fucked.
is this the same interac corporation that won’t do anything about their god awful etransfer system? no app like venmo or cashapp? how many years did it take them to implement autodeposit? why do etransfers sometimes take 1 hour?
You’re complaining about something Interac does that credit cards can’t even do? I’ll wait while you send money with Visa by text.
I nearly asked “What about American Express?”. Sometimes I wonder how I graduated kindergarten.
It’s okay, there are 35(?) countries I believe in America. 1 that gets talked about a lot. Being that they are discussing this from Canada in America, I’d say it’s safe to consider maybe American Express could have been from Canada. Mexico, Argentina, Brasil, and most other large countries in America aren’t English primary, so it would be harder to pass them off.
From my experience, all countries in North and South America (except the U.S.) refrain from referring to anything they do as American because they would 100% be assumed to be U.S.
Indeed, it took me a while to realize the other person meant “The Americas,” aka North and South America and not the US, aka “America.”
Mine as well. I also used to spell Brasil with a z, but since Bubba Gump tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico I’m avoiding our naming conventions.
I actually need the cash back I get from my credit card though, it’s more than 1000 per year
But you do understand that if credit card cash backs didn’t exist, prices would likely fall by more than the cash back?
Yeah that makes sense
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No one has enough money, and this trend will get worse as this trade war goes on. Unless you can replace the credit buffer this initiative is a non starter.
To many people are living partly on a credit card, we need to ether replace it with an non american credit card, some other form of credit (LoCs are harder to get at the moment) or find a way to get more money to Canadians.
Cryptocurrencies?
I mean, how long would it be until the next fascist Canadian prime minister?
Better to just get the government out of our wallets.
crypto doesnt help, because all of the crypto coins can easily be captured and influenced by big tech. most of them are also super heavily reliant on US tech
looking for a technological solution to a systemic problem is a bad idea really
if you really want to change things, we need to end capitalism
3 times in my life I took out a consolidation loan to corral all those costs and pay them off. Credit cards are both a blessing and a curse. Gov’t should provide credit services at a reasonable, non-compounding, interest rate.
Between credit card companies, finance companies and the banks, the interest they extract yearly would put all the space billionaires to shame.
YES, I ain’t even Canadian but been saying this since day, those 2 companies are such a huge factor in how much leverage this 2 party dictatorship has over majority of the world, that and Microsoft, Apple, Google etc. This is why Cash is King, and using American payment processors just feeds their power and leverage over global finance.
You can see how its affected Russia when US payment processors halted operations as part of sanctions. The only viable alternative is using Monero for online transactions and physical cash.
Monero is the only realistic and promising way of paying people online without relying on the two largest payment processors on the planet, fully under the control of the US. The ONLY crypto that’s actually treated and used as a currency, rather than a stock like btc, and actually has any real world use and offers privacy.
See, not using Google Pay is something even I, a non-Canadian, European person can do. doingmypart.jpg!
It’s been convenient to use my phone to tap and pay for things. But like, only slightly more than pulling out my debit card. Just got a new minimalistic wallet with a card ejector too so it’s kinda fun to use.
The Canadian banks are big enough to build a wholly Canadian credit system for global use, especially if they could get everyone in Canada (and maybe elsewhere) to switch right now.
They probably get too many incentives from Visa and Mastercard to find it enticing though, which is why they’re always pushing credit cards and offering cashback and airmiles, etc.
I think there is a European alternative being developed. Perhaps we can get in on that.
The Canadian banks are big enough to build a wholly Canadian credit system for global use
lol Canadian banks don’t even do their own credit analysis, and they rely on interac… they can’t even rollout the basics
I work for an American credit card company, and my advice is to ditch credit and debit cards entirely. Use cash.
Credit cards (when used correctly) is one of the few pro consumer products we have left.
Most cards come with fraud protection, something you cannot get with cash, checks, or gift cards.
Similarly, most cards come with purchase protections like extended warranties. I have a credit card that gives me free damage protection on my cell phone so long as I pay the monthly bill with it.
I’m not saying cash isn’t great but there are good reasons to use a credit card. At least for now.
I don’t think those benefits are worth it when you consider the cost of having your purchase history and personal data for sale to anyone who wants it.
Yeah one of the few fixes to our shitty situation is to end surveillance capitalism. It’s deconstructing our behaviors trending them and exploiting them vs ourselves and the people around us.
Cash becomes a component of a healthy surveillance free (ish) lifestyle. But you probably wouldn’t be posting on any internet site if you were all in on it enough for swapping over to cash to matter. haha.
Eh, the job comes with certain expectations, they don’t even have cash tills in the cafeteria.
I use my credit cards just enough to generate a plausibly normal profile, and cash for everything else.
I’ve been looking for a more ethical job, but the market for tech work is real fucked up right now…
As another American who works in the industry, it’s a wedding cake of frighteningly bad software piled on top of well-intentioned but poorly implemented mandates piled on top of willful ignorance frosted with solving problems people don’t actually have. And the little couple on top are both the capitalist pigman from a 1930s Soviet poster that we all recognize thanks to Hexbear :`(
I prefer cash too.
I would love to hear your side of things. Cash is better for curbing impulse spending and it is of course anonymous but it is inconvenient. I feel like there’s a target on my back when I walk around with more than a couple hundred dollars.
If enough people know you’re carrying that much cash for it to be a potential issue, you’ve got other security issues that should honestly be your priority.
My personal opinion is that the convenience isn’t worth the unspoken costs, much less the overt ones. Credit card processors already charge merchant fees on top of the interest charged by the banks that issue those cards, but they also get all your personal data associated with that card. It’s more than enough to be worth selling to advertisers, so anyone who cares to spend a few bucks can buy your purchase history and build a profile. Name, address, contact info, the coffee shop you visit regularly and when you can be found there, the daycare you send your kids to, etc. It’s very not-safe, especially when the government decides your type of person is now unpersoned.
More fundamentally though, I think the problem comes down to money itself. The use of any form of currency as both a store of value and a medium of exchange creates a multitude of perverse incentives to the detriment of society. Families work best when money isn’t coming between them, and I think that principle is generalizable to our species as a whole.
Well, when on business trips, I can’t just have a bunch of cash with me, so I could pay for hotels and every eventuality
Is there any way around that?Best I can think of is taking a traveler’s check to a local bank or currency exchange.
Hm…ok, thanks
I’ll evaluate my alternatives
Also, sometimes buying something online, because I quickly need the hardware, only really works with credit cards.
All though real time money transfers at least start to speed up the traditional way …
There also is no middle-man with cash.
Checkbooks exist for a reason.
Ok now, let’s not go bringing back that nonsense. Cash is fine. You’re no more likely to be robbed than usual because you’re carrying a lot, and you can do what I do. If you need to carry a lot of money in cash, put $49 in your wallet and the rest in your sock.
I have carried $100-500 sometimes as high as $2k in my wallet for decades without a problem. Usually on the lower end of the 100-500 range unless I think I’ll need it.
This might be a problem for someone who can’t hold onto their belongings and leaves a trail of lost things everywhere they go. It might also be a problem for someone who lives in an area with high petty crime where they can expect to get jumped every once in a while. This is unlikely to be a problem for most people in the US states and European countries I’ve spent time in. Even in Argentina, which is not the safest place, I use cash exclusively.
As others have mentioned, when it starts getting into that $500-$1k range, you always have checks, wire transfers, Western Union, etc. I’m not selling out my privacy for a $5 bagel if I can help it.
Canadian debit cards are very different than American cards.
Ahh, so as an American my only option is cash. 😔
Cash is better for privacy too. Don’t be paying for that abortion, gun, or donation to environmental cause in this climate with Visa.
Not denying that. Most card purchases my family has is for groceries or clothing anyways.
A book here and there.
Ah yes, groceries. Link up a 100% accurate list of all the specific items you buy with your name. I thought some American stores did this for a while but am not sure.
I don’t have much experience with American cards. I know debit cards are more common down there. Do they have the same merchant fees?
They’re usually also managed by visa and such. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but they have a higher initial fee and a lower percentage for a purchase.
I’m on board for this but this proposal is up against a familiar devil: the network effect.
Shops support Visa and Mastercard because customers use them, customers use them because shops support them. This creates a powerful network that is extremely difficult for an upstart to unseat.
So while it’s a good idea to encourage people to take individual action on this — and you’re doing a great job doing so, and I’m taking it to heart for my own actions — we also need to accompany this with a policy solution to help overcome the network effect.
You’re right and the network effect would be very hard to overcome for this. It would need a lot of media attention just like liquor and alcohol.
I whipped this up too.
This is super cool. And you’ve inspired this Canadian to start moving more payments to Interac. Love the message and I’m on board.
My suggestion to accompany this with policy is not an alternative to taking personal action, but complementary.
One piece of constructive feedback on the artwork— it might be helpful to stress the positive aspect front and centre. For example lead with Interac with a maple leaf, and the American systems in lower prominence by having them 2/3 sized and positioned below.
Please don’t misconstrue my feedback in your mind as an attempt to distract or demoralize you through bike-shedding or anything like that. You’re doing great stuff and it’s inspiring.
So glad I could inspire you! And I didn’t take any offense to your comments. I just kinda woke up angry this morning (my other pet peeve is unsynchronized traffic lights) and made this post. I suppose I could put some real work into making an image that can be shared. I like your ideas.
I feel you on that. I’ve been on a bit of a tear myself, spilling thousands of words on this site and Reddit and Bluesky in various posts and comments.
You have a point when it comes to online shopping (although I’d call it a simple monopoly), but there’s no such effect at physical stores. Interac and cash are already universally accepted, people can stop using visa/mastercard right now and not even have to think about it. Just grab a different card when you leave the house.
Needs to be a solution for those of us who are housebound and/or rural. Online is our only option.
You’re correct that it’s a monopoly, but the point I’m trying to make is that because of the network effect the monopoly will be difficult to unseat without accompanying policy.
I have never yet had a problem challenging and reversing a charge made to my credit card. Their fraud detection also seems to be superior. On the other hand, members of my family have had to jump through hoops when challenging fraudulent Interac transactions. They have felt like they are being seen as the more likely perpetrator, and meanwhile the money is no longer in their account while the process drags out. Very stressful.
In general, I prefer using cash because of less information being generated, but I agree that we shouldn’t pretend that CCs don’t also have advantages (if you’re not one to rack up debt). Smaller purchases where carrying cash is reasonable? Absolutely. Larger purchases where you need some insurance? CC.
The other day I made a purchase at a store and noticed I was charged for something I didn’t buy (not that something was charged twice, it was an entirely foreign item that wasn’t even physically there). The transaction had to be voided and then re-done. The cashier and the manager (who was needed to void the tx) both said it was good I had paid by credit instead of debit because it’s a lot harder even for them to return money via debit. I have no idea why, and neither did they.
Some years ago, Air Canada’s system said I didn’t pay for my flight when I tried to check in. But I was already on the manifest and had already been assigned a seat. How could I possibly have an assigned seat if I hadn’t paid? The desk agent was sympathetic but could not overrule the system, so I had to pay again for the seat that was already assigned to me. Air Canada could not refund the original payment because I supposedly had never paid it in the first place. I had to use a chargeback to get my money back. If not for CC chargeback, I would have lost that money entirely.
That airline sounds like the stereotypical corporate BS we’ve all grown used to now. Not asking in an asshole way, but because I want to understand: did you have a receipt?
I had a booking/confirmation number and everything. I even showed the CC statement from my phone, which also had the booking number, too, but the counter agent didn’t have the ability to change it even though he could see my name and seat on the flight. I had no time left, so I paid again and ran to security and then to the gate.
At least the the counter agent gave me a voucher for the trouble. I got myself a beer on the plane with it, because I needed it at that point!
