Payment Providers

[James Laver]

On 2 Oct 2009, at 13:40, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> Yes, that's the old stuff. That's, um, not exactly something to be  
> proud of/
> not exactly a good advertisement of what we now can do.

Ah, well at least that's changed :)

> We had a chat at lunch, and (IIRC) Tom said that he thinks that  
> Amazon are
> now not taking Maestro. We're inferring that Amazon have said "We  
> don't do 3D.
> We aren't prepared to loose 6% of our business from it", Mastercard  
> have said
> "But to take Maestro, you must do 3D", and Amazon said "OK, we won't  
> take
> Maestro then"*

6%? I know of sites with much larger dropouts than that. And one day  
some of them will finally realise it's stupid and stop taking 3dsecure  
at all.

> If enough big sites take this attitude, then it will get the fate it  
> deserves,
> whatever the banks think or want, because customers won't use those  
> cards any
> more, because they aren't useful.

I'm hoping that'll happen too. HSBC ditched maestro in favour of visa  
debit a few months ago. I've found maestro to be shocking actually.  
Like the DVLA take Solo (which noone takes) but not Maestro (what's  
with that?). My natwest maestro card needed replacing about once a  
month because the chip kept rubbing off too (though I don't know if  
they have some centralised manufacture or what).

But then again, it's all about the liability shift. Smaller retailers  
rightfully look at the risk and say 'fuck it', not realising that the  
liability ends up with the customers (and probably not caring). Chip  
and pin did the same and the only bank I know of that instantly  
refunds you with a crime reference number is Barclays (in fact I had a  
rather long discussion with a Barclays manager about it after HSBC  
wouldn't let me take out cash in branch with my chip and signature  
card that they issued to me).

I hope 3dinsecure goes to hell.

--James