Let's stop dicking around and talk about ditching something big: Visa and Mastercard
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.
There is a long road before we make crypto friendly for small Internet transactions for the general public. Interac is 80% there already. 5 % of the job is having Internet infrastructure accept Interac and big players like Shopify can make it work in a heartbeat. Transactions outside of Canada won’t support Interac for the foreseeable future. The last 15 % is a law, in Canada, that protect fraudulent transactions up to 75$ / the ability to reverse a charge if you don’t get what you payed for.
Any suggestions and ideas should be aimed at solving the second problem. An incomplete fix would be a dedicated account that your bank won’t connect to your main account outside of your self initiated transfers. Having the ability to reverse a transaction and some level of fraud insurance will involve higher fees. Canadian banks can make Interac as attractive as Visa if they want, but only for domestic transactions.
That's literally what I thought Insta-gram was for. I only knew of it because dealers used it and I thought it allowed you to get a gram delivered almost instantly.