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 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.
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.”
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.