this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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The US have a monopoly on credit card payments with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners Club, etc.

Even with online payment systems like PayPal, GPay, Apple Pay.

The only Canadian option that I know of is the new Shop Pay, which is owned by Shopify. (And we all know the founder CEO, Tobias Lutke is a far-right fascist traitor who loves the idea of being a 51st state.)

Right now Visa and Mastercard are controlling what stores can sell, and what services can be provided. Censoring online content, like asking Steam and Itch.io to remove certain games.

What are examples of alternatives in other countries? I know that Japan, for example, has their own independent ones, I think?

Do you think they might be refused by American companies in order to keep their monopoly?

I'd like to know what you think.

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[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Eh, sorta.

We have digital payment cards in Interac. A bunch of the chip components come from other countries though, and are part of an integrated supply chain, if that matters. You're right though, that a chip card / payment card, is 'technically' functioning very similarly to a credit card these days.

Where they're different is in the settlements and insurance side of the transactions. Debit cards are nearly instant settlements in most cases, and require funds to be present in accounts. Credit cards allow for delayed settlement based on statement reviews -- so you can challenge bogus payments later, at your convenience, in theory. Both provide a degree of insurance, but generally the CC is better on that front -- this is also likely why they're much more broadly accepted in online payments.

Debit cards can theoretically be sync'd up with a personal loan, to function similar to a credit card in that you can "spend" money you don't "have" -- but doing so would require adjustments to Interacs terms, and likely trigger non compete clauses with Mastercard/Visa for anyone tryin to go that route. In terms of that 'credit' though, on a debit card it'd be entirely the liability of the bank/credit union issuing the card -- with a proper 'credit' card, that liability/risk is essentially offloaded to a larger company that can accommodate larger risk, albeit with higher % interest across the board.

Another fun one though, if you're thinking credit cards.... is that Canada should have its own Canada-focused Credit Bureau. Using US companies like Equifax, means all your credit information is already in the hands of the US Government, even if they have "canadian" wings, due to the US's Cloud act. Same goes for our government / institutions continuing to use things like Microsoft clouds -- all that data is just exposed, and Canada's doing/done nothin about it. There're fairly clear reasons the US considers Canada their bitch, I mean, our own government/regulators literally cannot function without US tech companies supporting them / providing them with service.

*just an edit to add another fun situation to watch in the financial area -- all the Credit Union mergers goin on, and what's happening in that space. Canada's credit unions are generally outsourcing their online banking applications to either the USA, or India. Even more hilarious, is that mergers are being effectively 'forced' by CEO's chasing golden parachutes. I know of at least one medium sized CU in BC who's CEO is an absolute idiot when it comes to outsourcing, and is well known as such by many -- for a smaller CU, she started emulating the outsourcing habits of big financial institutions she was hoping to merge with for that golden retirement package like a decade ago. Literally doing onboarding to such products with those big future merger partners, because it was a done deal before it ever went off for a vote to the membership. She picked up ridiculous operating expenses, which the CU couldn't really control -- like paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for Salesforce, with its 6% YoY increase, is 'surprisingly' not a sustainable smaller business thing to do. But she turned around and used that OpEx to go to the membership later and say "We can't possibly continue to operate, look at our ballooning OpEx! We need to merge with bigger CUs!". It's sorta a 'starve the beast' type tactic, done to the disservice of the membership, and for the personal profit of the CEO. And our regulators are cool with it -- hell, our regulators are encouraging this sort of thing, just like they're encouraging selling every Canadians online banking login authentication process off to the USA/India, at least one of which is a country totally not known for any kind of fraud industry what-so-ever, no ethical concerns, and who's never been connected to assassinations on Canadian soil. I mean, when I bank with my local Canadian community credit union, I obviously expect the USA or India's government to get access to my data.... and that's LARGELY because the BIG credit unions like Vancity want it that way, and have forced it on every other CU. There's even at least one BC CU that's given an India-based AI company access to practically all their member information from the sounds of things.

Like the trade association (Central1) is controlled by those big CUs, and it handles most settlements. Rather than maintain their geo-distant data-centres on different sides of the country, they're just sticking it all into Microsoft's cloud. So even all the cheques and payments that get processed, are within reach of the US govt due to the Cloud act. Regulators are 100% cool with it, cause the regulators are literally in Microsoft's cloud too, exposing all the personal data they take from the industry to US interest already. The BC regulators literally demand all private information for every person that has an account at a Credit Union, for vague "risk" reasons -- they post that openly on their BC FSA website, in guidelines/requirements for industry; I've previously poked the OIPC about it, and the Privacy Commissioner apparently doesn't see anythin wrong with it. And this shits literally happening like this year, while the govt is busy pretending to be all "elbows up"; they're continuing on with rampant rubber stamping of the outsourcing of core / critical canadian functions to foreign interests.

[–] cyborganism@piefed.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My chequing account is tied to a credit margin. Any overdraft is added to the credit margin which I can pay off later.

The other thing about CCs is the security of having extended warranties, travel insurance, fraud protection, etc.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Interac has things like extended warranties and fraud protection, it's just not 'generally' as good. Like here's one from a mid sized CU in BC, community savings, talkin bout some of the perks. The extended warranty part reads as:

Extended Warranty doubles the repair period on a manufacturer’s authorized Canadian warranty up to two extra years for purchases made worldwide. It covers products with a manufacturer’s authorized Canadian warranty of five years or less.

That coverage is better than some CCs from what I can tell, as many CC's cap it at one extra year.

[–] cyborganism@piefed.ca 1 points 2 days ago

That's pretty damn good!

[–] fourish@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

A few years ago I made the choice to switch all of my purchasing from debit to a credit card. So far it’s been entirely the right decision for me. Besides the safety of never using my own funds directly, I earn points and perks on my purchases.

Disclaimer: I pay the card off completely every month so there are no interest charges, and it’s resulted in both my credit rating and available credit skyrocketing far more than I’ll ever need. Comforting for emergencies.