<story><title>Visa, Mastercard Agree to Lower Swipe Fees, Settling Long-Running Lawsuit</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/visa-mastercard-agree-to-lower-swipe-fees-settling-long-running-lawsuit-d6e5f0a8</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>losvedir</author><text>As someone who recently went down a rabbit hole into trying to optimize credit card rewards (and opting for cashback in the end), I&amp;#x27;m still kind of perplexed how it all works. Like, who&amp;#x27;s paying for the flights? Consumers, merchants, airlines, banks?&lt;p&gt;Is there a good primer on how all the pieces work and what the various incentives are and such? I found patio11&amp;#x27;s post[0] and this Fed investigation[1], and both were interesting but left me wanting more.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bitsaboutmoney.com&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;how-credit-cards-make-money&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bitsaboutmoney.com&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;how-credit-cards-make...&lt;/a&gt;
[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.federalreserve.gov&amp;#x2F;econres&amp;#x2F;notes&amp;#x2F;feds-notes&amp;#x2F;credit-card-profitability-20220909.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.federalreserve.gov&amp;#x2F;econres&amp;#x2F;notes&amp;#x2F;feds-notes&amp;#x2F;cred...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Visa, Mastercard Agree to Lower Swipe Fees, Settling Long-Running Lawsuit</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/visa-mastercard-agree-to-lower-swipe-fees-settling-long-running-lawsuit-d6e5f0a8</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cornholio</author><text>The likes of Swipe, Venmo, Revolut, Wise etc. should get together and establish a new online payment standard they control, completely outside the reach of the credit card companies. The fees could be near zero and they would still cover the actual costs of running the infrastructure.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s incredible this day and age I have a more intuitive, user friendly and secure payment workflow for crypto - just scan a QR code - while for fiat payments I have to jump through hoops, manually copy static numbers and worry that someone else might steal and abuse the static password that secures access to my own money.</text></comment>