I still have to pay the higher transaction costs even without a credit card, because the credit card companies require that vendors have the same prices for card or cash, resulting in higher prices for everyone.
Reduced prices for cash used to be against the Visa/MC merchant terms. They lost a lawsuit over it, but it's fairly ingrained by now.
You'll see cash discounts at some gas stations, and the occasional small coffee shop or takeout place will have a $10 minimum, but otherwise it's gonna be the same price most places.
We've warned you before about personal attacks, so I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
The card companies charge merchants for transactions. The merchants raise their prices to cover those transaction costs: For a very long time (and still, in a few places) it was against the card company's terms of service to have a card usage surcharge. A very few places now have 'cash discounts' or don't accept cards at all, but these are by far the exception. As a result, /everyone/ ends up paying for credit card rewards, even those who don't use credit cards.
Debit cards? The other option is to use a Credit Card but pay off at the end of the month. Why is that so difficult? That’s literally like a Debit card except for the additional “buffer” of safety and security from your bank account.
That's true, I am not too familiar with the finance system, how come a debit card needs a middle man such as VISA? They help with the transaction between two banks?
The situation is that there is a network called Visa Debit that some banks use for their network for debit transactions. It may seem new, but it evidently dates back as far as 1982.
I'm in Canada. With one exception, no bank client card I have had (which were all usable for debit) had any Visa logo on it. That includes current ones.
TD is one of the banks that offer Visa Debit. This TD client card is also Interac-branded, so I'm guessing that the card will use the Interac network for domestic transactions, and in that case its Visa Debit personality does not come into play.
Those are not the only two networks for debit/ATM in Canada. There is also "The Exchange":
(used by a lot of smaller banks and credit unions).
The Canadian Credit Union Association also runs an ATM network called AccuLink.
It's important to know which network your card uses if you want "ding free" transactions. E.g a "The Exchange" card can be used at an "Interac" ATM, but there will be a fee.
That doesn't make it any less of a duopoly. The whole point of the article is that visa/mc have too much power and there is a lot of systemic risk by having only two competitors in this industry in particular.
Even if they aren't extending credit they're still facilitating the transaction - it's not like the visa sticker is on there for marketing purposes
That's what I was talking about - even if they aren't charging fees, they're involved.
There's plenty of cases in technology where "but we don't do anything with your data!" is not a good enough excuse. Many of us still argue for decentralization or federation or user controlled data, etc. Similar concerns I have for visa.
> Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash-access programs to their customers.
Everyone in Europe uses debit cards. You don't have debit cards in the US?
It's a plastic card, it is issued by your bank, it's still using the visa/mastercard network, but instead of credit, it is tied to actual funds in your bank account.
I don't know anyone personally that owns a "credit" card. Virtually nobody uses them here in France and I think in the rest of Europe, it's always debit card. Never had an issue with renting cars.
It is a common issue for French people renting cars outside of France - search on Google, there are hundreds of angry people who ended up with no car because agencies in other countries refuse debit cards (debit immediat)
I should have been more specific, In the past few years I have rented cars in Europe, in the US, in South Africa and in Australia. Never had an issue. I generally use Avis or Budget, sometimes a local company.
Other than renting a car or a hotel room, it seems you can conduct most if not all of your affairs without a credit card. Credit cards can be relegated to those limited transactions.
I think if you monitor the code running in prod for a while, it can give you confidence that the code is not used. I am proposing a tool that would help you narrow down logic that is not used, and to automatically create PRs that are manually reviewed/approved i.e. not taking the dev out of the loop.
Electricity is pricey here, and it can be tough to negotiate with your landlord to take the window out and properly secure an ac unit.
Besides, offices, shopping malls, gorvernment buildings... none of them usually have ac.
I hate walking in my town‘s Rathaus it’s always so hot and stuffy in there. I don’t know how the people working there real with it all summer long. And it’s a brand new building too.
You don't understand Switzerland. More people rent in Switzerland than elsewhere. Switzerland also has an oceanic climate and usually doesn't have hot summers. AC units aren't a thing in Switzerland, however this is changing slowly.
Lots of buildings in Europe are somewhat old and have controls over what you can or can't do with them (I live in England in a property that was built in 1820 and is gradeII listed, which means we're restricted on the kind of work we can do without getting permissions). The age of the buildings also means that AC is harder to install (getting ducting installed can be really difficult) and is less efficient. I have single-pane sash windows with large gaps.
In England there are 22m households. Domestic heating is a significant source of CO2. Adding aircon on top would be pretty concerning.
There's a lot of poor quality housing built in the 1970s and 1980s that should be knocked down and rebuilt, and if we did that we could have much better insulation, and shutters over windows, and so on. But this is hard to do.
I’m grateful AC are frowned upon in Europe. Putting a band-aid by consuming even more energy is insane in large scale, with the perverse effect of hiding the problem and delaying awareness.
Heating freezing temperatures to livable takes more energy than air conditioning. Logically, we should frown upon living in cold places with extended winter more than we frown upon living in places that require air conditioning.
Sure, I‘m not debating AC vs Heating, but that installing AC alone in the majority of the millions of European homes that don’t have it because it’s starting to get too hot in the summer is not only not a solution to the general problem but can have perverse short term effects. My point about being grateful is that I hope it’ll push more awareness and starting action now, compared to the US where prevalent AC might hide the issue longer. But that’s just a thought.
Heating does as well. Perhaps the Swiss should forgo that too. They are some of the richest people on Earth, having benefited more than most from the fossil fuel age.
Remember, Russian oil oligarchs, Saudi oil barons, and all other anonymous nasty fossil fuel producers have parked their money in Switzerland for a very long time.
> At this point it is the alarmists arguing against evidence and actual data, now that we have some. It is rather amusing to behold.
You were also the one claiming US deaths will be under 60K per your imaginary CDC projections, but these are 56K right now and there are still 1K deaths per day.
And, no, 99% of deaths in Italy are not over 65. That's also imaginary.
So, your ability to make up data and then "reason" with it seems strong.
