Buy Canadian

Ahh, so as an American my only option is cash. 😔

I work for an American credit card company, and my advice is to ditch credit and debit cards entirely. Use cash.

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

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.

For this to work, Interac needs to incentivize using it like credit cards do.

All types of loans require a credit score of some kind, and credit cards are one of the best ways to build this. Additionally, credit cards usually offer some kind of return.

Also because of poverty, a lot of people have a dependency on credit or payment plans.

Interac needs to make a Canadian answer to the credit card.

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.

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.

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...

This is a brilliant strategy. Thank you for sharing that.

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.

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.

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. The ONLY crypto that's actually treated and used as a currency, rather than a stock like btc, and actually has any real world use and offers privacy.

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.

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)

Nationalize them! Bring this back under societal control and eliminate that tax.

Then SpaceX, Twitter, and Amazon.

Of course this assumes we defeat the fascists and fix the Supreme Court first.

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

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.

What happens if your card is Interac and Visa debit?

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

Please understand that there are also many third party card processors. That is the company that takes the transaction from the merchant to the payment system. The payment system then takes the transaction to the bank.

Don't be discouraged, but someone may need to become card processors to vendors.

Pressure on Visa and MasterCard may work, but the boycott will need to overcome license fees.

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.

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.

I have the same question as sloppychops. If my interac debit card is also Visa, how would I know whether the payment terminal is routing through Visa or Interac?

I am one who offers to pay in cash sometimes to small businesses, treating it like an additional tip. But more and more businesses in the Vancouver area use Clover (A Canadian subsidiary owned by Wells Fargo) and Square (American fintech), and either take card only (which they get their cut with Interac debit too), or the staff get a little impatient when I rummage around for cash in my wallet.

It's not in any way a tax. It's a fee you pay for a service you wish to use. It's as much a tax as the money spent on a doughnut is a tax.

The rest of your idea is great. Wish I had access to something like that.