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#debit-cards — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #debit-cards, aggregated by home.social.

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  1. “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor”*…

    We’ve become a nation of credit and debit card users. As of this year, Pew reports, 42% of Americans don’t use cash for purchases in a typical week (up from 24% in 2015); another 46% use a mix of cash and plastic; only 12% use mostly (or entirely) cash. The Federal Reserve reports, unsuprisingly, that cash remains the dominant mode for the elderly and the poor; debit cards, for lower-to-middle-income households.

    NBER unpacks one little-understood consequence of this shift…

    Every time a consumer swipes a credit card, the merchant pays an interchange fee—typically around 1.9 percent of the transaction value—most of which funds the rewards that cardholders receive. Because merchants generally charge the same prices regardless of how customers pay, consumers who use cash or debit cards effectively help finance the rewards enjoyed by credit card users. In Who Pays for Payments? (NBER Working Paper 35067), Mark L. EganGregor MatvosAmit SeruLulu Wang, and Vincent Yao use novel merchant-level data from Fiserv—one of the largest US merchant acquirers—to measure how the payment system redistributes resources.

    The primary dataset contains establishment-level payment data from 2006 to 2022, including total payment values, transaction counts, and interchange fees paid for different card types…

    … The researchers’ analysis using these datasets suggests that interchange fees transfer approximately $30 billion annually from cash and debit card users to credit card users. Cash users lose about 96 basis points of purchasing power, and regulated debit card users lose roughly 47 basis points, while basic and premium credit card users gain approximately 48 and 59 basis points, respectively. Because credit card use rises with income, the system generates an estimated $9.2 billion annual transfer from households earning less than $150,000 to those earning more.

    Two forces moderate this redistribution. First, the tendency for cash, debit, and credit card users to shop at different merchants limits the overlap necessary for cross-subsidization. Second, where overlap does occur, such as at large grocery stores and gas stations, interchange fees tend to be lower due to sector discounts and negotiated rates. Together, these forces reduce the transfer by approximately 25 percent relative to the transfer that would occur with homogeneous consumers and merchants.

    The researchers also examine the redistributive consequences of two specific developments in the payment system. The first is the Durbin Amendment, which capped interchange fees on debit cards issued by large banks. The authors show that one perhaps unintended consequence of the amendment was that it primarily benefited credit card users through lower retail prices at the expense of regulated debit card users, who lost approximately $9.6 billion in rewards and free checking benefits. This was a net transfer from middle-income to higher-income households. The second development is the rise of premium credit cards, which grew from 15 percent of credit card volume in 2006 to 60 percent by 2022. This has also been a regressive development. While premium cardholders gained about $7.9 billion, debit card users—not cash users—bore the largest dollar losses because they shop most frequently alongside premium card users…

    The rich getting richer: “Who Ultimately Pays Credit Card Interchange Fees?” from @nber.org.

    Pair with Annie Lowrey on another burden– a “time tax”– that falls disportionately on the neediest: “How American Bureaucracy (Literally) Steals Years From Your Life“:

    Washington currently estimates that Americans spend 12 billion hours a year filling out government forms, meaning the average person spends six 8-hour workdays filing their taxes, signing up for Medicaid, renewing their driver’s licenses, and applying for government loans. At prevailing wages, this uncompensated labor is worth $430 billion a year. If Washington were to create a Department of Bureaucracy to take on the paperwork it shunts to citizens, the agency would require 5.9 million employees, making it four times the size of the active-duty military. The DOB’s payroll would be larger than that of every other federal department combined.

    The nation’s paperwork regime frustrates every resident, and particularly lower-income residents who use more government programs and interact more frequently with public officials. The political scientist Elizabeth Cohen has done seminal work exploring time as a potent, if obscure, form of political currency. “The devaluation of a person or group’s political time is a structural obstacle to equality,” she writes. Yet we can’t measure time and effort as easily as we measure dollars, and we don’t even try. The 12-billion-hour estimate is an undercount, and an egregious one…

    * James Baldwin (see also Terry Pratchett’s “Boots theory“)

    ###

    As we second-guess secreted subventions, we might spare a thought for Jean-Baptiste Colbert; he died on this date in 1683. A French statesman who served as First Minister of State under the rule of King Louis XIV from 1661 until his death. His lasting impact on the organization of the country’s politics and markets, known as Colbertism, a form of the mercantilism so popular in the Trump Administration today. Colbert also helped craft the Code Noir, a legal instrument that sanctioned an intentionally brutal system of torture and repression to enforce institutional slavery in the French colonial empire and restrict the enterprise of free Black people.

    Though Colbert was more competent and less crony-ish than the crew at “work” in D.C. over the last couple of years, his goal of a healthy economy was frustrated by a King whose spending out-ran (and whose favoritism undermined) Colbert’s efforts. In the longer run, many economists suggest that “Colbertism” has contributed to contributed to a lack of adaptability in French industry and a hostility to technological innovation.

    source

    #bureaucracy #business #cash #Colbert #Colbertism #creditCardFees #creditCards #culture #debitCards #economics #France #history #JeanBaptisteColbert #mercantilism #politics #redTape #time #timeTax #trade
  2. Tubefilter: Visa’s U.K. “creator card” aims to combat cashflow issues while upping TikTok Live payouts. “Creators based in the U.K. can now take advantage of a banking solution that serves their unique financial needs. Visa has partnered with TikTok to launch a debit card that offers a number of creator-centric perks.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/24/tubefilter-visas-u-k-creator-card-aims-to-combat-cashflow-issues-while-upping-tiktok-live-payouts/
  3. I just noted that #PlaceToPay is behind a two payment gateways in Chile:

    - GetNet (Banco Santander)
    - BanChile Pagos (Banco Chile)

    I'm not against it, but fuck, their implementation is lackluster asides from the typical "WebCheckout", let alone documentation.

    The worst thing, is that PlaceToPay supports almost everything you want. It's the implementors fault to offer something so miserable.

    #Payment #Latam #Latinamerica #Payments #Finance #Evertec #CreditCards #DebitCards #WebCheckout

  4. Looks like Venmo decided your debit card needed a little more… *incentive*. They're rolling out a cash back program, apparently because Gen Z is too cool for credit. Are you buying into this, or is it just more plastic in your digital wallet?

    #Fintech #Venmo #DebitCards #CashBack #GenZ
    techcrunch.com/2025/11/10/venm

  5. The only way to end VISA and MasterCard censorship is basically create a payment network that charges less.

    Banks will happily switch to something that makes their line go up by simply costing less.

    #VISA #MasterCard #Videogames #Gaming #Games #Censorship #Censoring #Censor #CreditCards #DebitCards #PlasticCards #Financing #Finances

  6. Kraken Teams Up With Mastercard to Introduce Crypto Debit Cards - Crypto exchange Kraken is teaming up with Mastercard to let crypto holders in the UK and ... - coindesk.com/business/2025/04/ #mastercard #debitcards #finance #kraken

  7. Mastercard enables non-custodial crypto spending in new partnership - Mastercard partners with Mercuryo to launch a euro-denominated crypto de... - cointelegraph.com/news/masterc #non-custodialwallet #self-custody #privatekeys #mastercard #debitcards #tonkeeper #mercuryo #payments #banking #crypto #ton

  8. Kids, make sure you explain to your parents what card skimmers are, and why it's a terrible idea to slide debit cards into gas pumps -- before it happens to them. If they *have* to use debit cards, always look for tap-to-pay, even if the gas there isn't as cheap as their favorite place.

    #skimmers #debitcards #scams #gaspumps

  9. @n_to

    Wie funktionieren diese #bezahlkarten eigentlich technisch?

    Sind das #debitcards mit NFC die eben nur Bezahlung an Kassen und eingeschränkte Bargeldauszahlung zulassen?

    Weil dann könnte man doch Kartenhüllen im Design von 'Goldkreditkarten' anbieten.

    Und ich stecke meine Karte in eine Hülle, die wie eine Bezahlkarte aussieht.

  10. Remember if you are asked to tip from a page like this, think again, companies such as square take a percentage on tips. So if you plan to tip someone, do it with cash. You can tip your uber drivers with a bit of dollars poking out of your door mat, give the worker over the counter some cash, But don't give it to mega #corporations Lets go back to #casheconomies Where we can see where our money is going more transparently. we are too dependent on #debitcards and on the #creditcard

    #corporategreed #finance #tip #cash #workers #economics

  11. KTM Berhad (#KTMB) had responded to the media regarding certain issue surrounding usage of cards at the #faregate.

    KTM Komuter now supports #MyDebit card (#debitcard issued by local banks in #Malaysia), requires an RM30 pre-authorization hold.

    #KTM does not yet support #debitcards issued outside Malaysia as well as all #creditcard, but they're working on enabling said support, which will take some time as those use different #backend system.

    #KTMKomuter #KTMKomuterUtara #rail #train #railway