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.

  • Hummingbird@lemmy.ca
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    1 hour ago

    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.

  • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.ca
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    7 hours ago

    It’s not all or nothing as you have options folks:

    1. 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.

    2. 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)

  • Sovereign@lemm.ee
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    13 hours ago

    Are you 14? This might be the dumbest post I’ve ever read in my life. Like, love the energy bud. Just use your fucking debit card.

    I have never seen the option to use or have ever heard of interac in my life.

  • The_Caretaker@lemm.ee
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    14 hours ago

    Even if we dumped all online transactions and used cash for in person transactions, there isn’t enough cash in circulation. Less than 3% of US dollars are printed on paper. The rest is just numbers on spreadsheets. There is no way we could function without electronic payments. This is true in almost every country that has a central bank that engages in fractional reserve banking.

    • devnev@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      Did you even read the post? Nowhere does it argue for ditching electronic payments. Outside of the west, alternative payment apps are widespread.

  • arankays@lemmy.ca
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    19 hours ago

    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?

    • Albbi@lemmy.caOP
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      18 hours ago

      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.

          • arankays@lemmy.ca
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            8 hours ago

            my point is that Interac is not without faults. They have an unfair monopoly over peer to peer transfers of money between banks.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    19 hours ago

    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.

    • bearboiblake@pawb.social
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      20 hours ago

      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

  • rabber@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    I actually need the cash back I get from my credit card though, it’s more than 1000 per year

    • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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      20 hours ago

      But you do understand that if credit card cash backs didn’t exist, prices would likely fall by more than the cash back?

      • joenforcer@midwest.social
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        8 hours ago

        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.

      • Slagfart@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        People prefer cards over carrying cash though, and you have to kinda work to collect the cashback. Most don’t bother, which is why the system is profitable overall.

        Honestly I think you’re better off extracting money from a large corporation you don’t like (if you can, it’s obviously difficult) compared to ignoring them.

        For example, if you really hate a company, flood their sales line with nonsensical calls. It’ll usually be a domestic agent for the sales line, and in Australia at least the average cost to answer a call fully loaded, charged by a call centre management company, is around $30AUD. You also increase demand for low paid workers. If you could figure out a way to do this en-masse for a company without annoying the individual agent, you could do some serious financial damage in a way that’s probably legal.

        Edit: If I hated a company, and I had a lonely/senile relative, I would give them a special phone where every button on the phone called the sales line. That way the elderly relative gets a chat and keeps their brain active, and you get to cost the company hundreds of dollars a day. The sales agent is also unlikely to be bothered by an occasional chat with a senile person to break up their day.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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    21 hours ago

    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.

  • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    22 hours ago

    I nearly asked “What about American Express?”. Sometimes I wonder how I graduated kindergarten.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 hours ago

      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.

      Discover though, who knows what they are doing

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
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        19 hours ago

        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.

        • LostWon@lemmy.ca
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          19 hours ago

          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.”

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    23 hours ago

    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.

  • Charlxmagne@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    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.

  • Randelung@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    See, not using Google Pay is something even I, a non-Canadian, European person can do. doingmypart.jpg!

    • Albbi@lemmy.caOP
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      24 hours ago

      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.

  • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • Victor Villas@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      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