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.
I work for an American credit card company, and my advice is to ditch credit and debit cards entirely. Use cash.
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.
Good info from the inside, thanks. I had some money in a Digital Payments ETF but I recently dumped it and moved the money to a European fund instead. This makes me feel a bit better about that decision.
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.
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.
There also is no middle-man with cash.
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 …
The Guardian published a story today about how Sweden’s move to a cashless society is backfiring on them.
Canadian debit cards are very different than American cards.
Ahh, so as an American my only option is cash. 😔
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.
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 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.
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.
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.”
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.
Add interac and keep fees in Canada slogan
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’ve given up taking visa / Amex / Mastercard. My business now only accepts Interac e-transfer and cash.
Interac is hands down the most secure way to pay for something. I never have to take a card from a customer, the customer never has to take on additional debt, the money is automatically deposited into my account within seconds, and it costs me absolutely no money to do this and I have to pay no money to a merchant to make it happen.
I wish I could do this at more places.
It’s not all or nothing as you have options folks:
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If you still want to use credit cards to increase your credit rating and to receive the cashback you can just Interac/cash/direct deposit for small businesses and charities then use the credit cards for the big guys.
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You can also just boycott Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover for the duration of the trade war or the Trump presidency.
Sometimes incremental change is the way to go.
Additional information from Goodsuniteus on the political contributions of the credit processors:
Visa: 51% democrat / 49% republican / very high contribution level.
Mastercard: 56% democrat / 44% republican / very high contribution level.
American Express: 56% democrat / 44% republican / very high contribution level.
Discover: 72% democrat / 28% republican / very high contribution level. (May be acquired by Capital One)
Capitol One: 48% democrat / 52% republican / contribution level very high.
PayPal: 66% democrat / 34% republican / contribution level high.
Apple Pay: 85% democrat / 15% republican / contribution level very high.
Google Pay: 85% democrat / 15% republican / contribution level very high.
Samsung Pay: 63% democrat / 37% republican / contribution level medium. (At least South Korean)
Just FYI, you don’t need credit cards to increase your rating. Just keep up on your loans. Although hence, it does require a loan or two
Good post. This is pretty much what I do.
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When I was paying at a local shop recently, I mentioned to the owner I’m trying to pay cash now rather than card because Visa is a US company and he he thanked me, since using a credit card costs them money.
Cash is a good idea. With my bank I have unlimited CC transactions, but I’m limited on my DC transactions before a fee kicks in. Time to start putting pressure on Canadian banks. Anyone out there good at creating a petition? I would definitely sign!
So in regards to payment cards etc… the CC’s basically have three primary benefits to them: 1. They can do ‘quick’ settlements for in person POS services. 2. They are generally accepted for online payments far more than other methods. 3. They provide access to credit / funds that the customer/user may not normally have access to, in exchange for a high interest rate on amounts owing each month. This also allows people to make larger purchases periodically, and pay off the purchase price over a slightly longer period.
For item 1, the physical cards are not that different than the regular debit cards that get used. There’s nothing ‘technically’ stopping a debit card from being mapped to a line of credit account on a banking system – such a card would be able to get used anywhere debit cards can get used, so pretty good market penetration off the bat. Only thing potentially stopping the tech side would be ‘paper’ agreements with interac etc… but those are ‘easy’ to change with enough demand. So you’d potentially need some adjustments from industry to accommodate this, across the payment switch providers and back end orgs.
For item 3, the availability of credit on those cards / accounts is entirely do-able through a small FI – historically, they offered lines of credit based on ‘signatures’ / ‘a promise to pay’ and good general payment standing at a credit bureau. Canada’s regulators changed much of that, forcing industry to heavily preference real estate backed loans – debt servicing risks for cc ‘personal’ locs are generally offloaded onto the credit card company directly. So the govt would likely need to relax their regulations on this front, otherwise its untenable for a small FI to provide credit based on signatures. In some ways this would likely be better for the end user, in terms of rates and limits, as a smaller FI, especially one that’s cooperative in nature, is less likely to push exploitative rates/conditions.
To clarify how that’s controlled by regulators: in BC as an example, the BC FSA regulates Credit Unions, and it also oversees the Credit Union Deposit Insurance Corporation – the thing that insures the CU’s deposits. Credit Unions pay premiums to CUDIC based on the “risk assessment” of the FSA. The FSA rates you very risky if you do signature loans / stuff not backed by RE or other ‘fully funded’ types of securities (eg. a $5k line of credit, ‘secured’ by a $5k term deposit). The annual cost difference can eat up like 30% of the small FI’s profit, if they’re deemed risky. Unless there was some way to ‘make up’ that loss via the ‘risky loans’, it’s not a viable business decision for CUs to take – especially when you add in the need for slightly increased monitoring for more ‘fluid’ payment accounts. Best to keep the regulators happy, to keep your insurance costs as low as possible. So you’d need govt to change its approach.
For item 2, there are lots of viable options for online payments already – the issue is mostly user adoption and business standardization / app availability. For purchases that aren’t ‘in person’, having a slightly longer settlement time isn’t a big issue – if you’re buying a thing online, in general, who cares if the payment is ‘instant’, or if it takes 15 mins to clear. Things like the interac e-transfers are able to route payments to people in this fashion, and are heavily used in some areas currently – paying trades, paying rent, paying kids extracurricular, and anything where ‘cheques’ use to be a norm. AFTs are also still used for many ‘bigger’ bills/companies, but they’re decreasing in popularity – there are fewer millenials/genZ who are using AFTs for payments, and fewer businesses that go through the process of getting it setup on their end to allow for it. That last parts a similar impediment to adoption of etransfers more broadly – you see CC payment options for most online purchases, but you almost never see e-transfer options… even though they’re functional for regular person to person payments. Having a business email setup with an auto deposit isn’t too difficult – as noted, many small contractors go this route – but its not common at larger businesses… for no particular reason.
All that on item 2, is basically to say you need to get most businesses to adopt a ‘standard’ method for online payments. If every shop you went to had a different ‘payment app’ you had to download, create an account, transfer money to the account, to use the account… it wouldn’t have general end user appeal due to its burden. Credit cards have a simple, ubiquitous standard that’s got a ton of apps and plugins to accommodate – we’d need similar embracing of a, general industry/economy/nation wide approach.
All of these things are do-able, if there’s political will. But only if there’s political will. If you look at the financial industry, they’re generally in bed with US/foreign tech companies these days. Even our govt is run on Microsoft. Getting people to move away from American options would require clear messaging from regulators of “critical infrastructure” industries (like banking), and potentially options for government support as part of those tech migrations (tax breaks to hire specialists/retrain people/develop different apps). Like a positive step would be seeing the BC FSA charge huge “insurance” premiums for Credit Unions which are almost entirely in Microsoft’s cloud / US controlled infrastructure. We don’t see any of that currently – instead, we see regulators like the BC FSA shrugging as the industry debates whether online banking portals should be outsourced to a company in Portugal, one in India, or one in the USA (the Canadian CU Trade association, central1, recently walked away from this service area – with their CEO even getting a bloody business in vancouver award for abandoning it). We likely won’t see anything ‘material’ on this front until after the next election at the very earliest, is my guess. But even then, I doubt they’ll put the kind of urgency on it to avoid this sort of thing becoming a potential issue in trade talks.
There is hope. Here in Norway, we have a parallel system called BankAxept handling card and online payments within the country. Most/all debit cards are dual, and Visa is only used as a fallback. I believe lobbying for a similar system in other countries, or better yet for the EU as a whole, would be a good way to get started.
Just like tipping, a percentage system makes no sense. It’s the exact same work to bring me a $50 meal vs a $500 one. And for payment processing, a flat fee makes much more sense because there’s no difference in processing a $100 transaction vs a $10,000 one.
So why does a percentage-based system persist? Because workers want higher wages (understandable when restaurants refuse to pay them more and expect the customer to pay part of their income). And for giant corporations like Visa and MasterCard, it’s literally never enough for them. They can make more money, so that’s the only reason. It’s so dumb…
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.
I have a cash back VISA card. The week after Jan 20, I pulled my card info off every online service I use, stopped using the card entirely, and a few days ago canceled it completely. It was a tough choice. I generally earned about $600 a year cash back, but it’s time to free ourselves of America and forge our own path. I don’t really see the Can/American relationship ever being repaired at this point. Time to move on.
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.
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?
Here is the problem. You’re not going to get the general population to care enough to change their behavior, and then the only people who miss out are the people who are no longer getting their cash back off their whiny self-righteous protest that amounted to less than a rounding error.
Case in point: I live in one of the most liberal cities in the United States. There is technically supposed to be a one month long boycott (lol) of Target right now. Guess the parking lot of which local retailer is still as packed as it always is every day?
People won’t give a shit until they are massively inconvenienced with no alternatives.
This isn’t necessarily a market answer though. In a well functioning country, government could intervene to disrupt the status quo. For example, in Denmark, the government mandated a very, very low fee card system (imaginatively called DanCard) that basically ran at cost rather than profit. While it’s a fully private system now, regulation still governs a maximum charge which is far lower than the fee for using a Visa or Mastercard or, worse, Amex.
In a world where government works on your behalf, actions can actually occur to benefit the citizens.
Yeah that makes sense
At least where I’m from, some stores offer discount for cash greater than the cashback. I always ask :)
Yeah try offering a mechanic cash. It works well. Lol