No, most of the merchant's risk with credit cards is from the design of credit cards. You have to give your payment info to every merchant but if any one of them loses it then anyone who gets it can use it at any other merchant. Then some merchant you've never heard of has bad security, criminals get cards from there and use them to buy things from honest merchants and the honest merchants get chargebacks for having done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency does not have this problem because you don't have to give your private keys to everyone you pay and even if you fail to protect them yourself (something you, rather than someone else, is in control of), as long as you're not trying to use cryptocurrency as a store of value instead of a payment system, your losses are limited to the e.g. $20 you had in your wallet. Customers have no problem with systems that work like this, like cash.
Chargebacks are only an issue if the customer expects the merchant to be dishonest and the value of the purchase is large. If you pay $3 for something and get ripped off, the ability to do a chargeback isn't that relevant to your life and you're just not going to patronize them anymore.
The reason most customers don't use cryptocurrency is that the government made it high friction for ordinary people to buy it. "Why is this website I don't know asking for my social security number? I'm just trying to make a small purchase."
Presumably at the behest of the existing payments industry which wants to keep their vig.
Starting like that, writing that whole paragraph and you completely misread what I said. "No, merchants have risk with credit cards". That is literally what I said in the post you are replying too. Sloppy and rude.
>Cryptocurrency does not have this problem because you don't have to give your private keys to everyone you pay and even if you fail to protect them yourself
Credit card fraud isn't a problem for consumers because of chargebacks and insurance. If a criminal steals my card and racks up charges I am almost always getting my money back. All the risk is again on the merchants. Consumers like that balance. Trying to convince them to take on more risk just to benefit the merchants is not going to happen ever.
>Chargebacks are only an issue if the customer expects the merchant to be dishonest and the value of the purchase is large. If you pay $3 for something and get ripped off, the ability to do a chargeback isn't that relevant to your life and you're just not going to patronize them anymore.
This is also completely wrong. People do chargebacks all the time because of a poor outcome that has nothing to do with being dishonest. There are also cases like bankruptcy where a chargeback will get you your money back but if you paid in crypto you'd just be another creditor.
The reason most customers don't use cryptocurrencies is because they are stupid and pointless for payments. They make the process worse for consumers unless you're needing to hide your identity. Crypto is like mailing companies envelopes of cash. There is a reason no sane consumer does that anymore.
What you said was that it was moving the risk from the merchant to the consumer, but it isn't moving that risk, it's removing it because the consumer doesn't have to give every merchant something that enables that (very common) form of fraud to occur to begin with.
> Credit card fraud isn't a problem for consumers because of chargebacks and insurance.
It is though, because it raises costs, and therefore prices. This is indirect, but the merchant can make it direct by offering a better price for using a payment method that lowers their costs.
This is one of the reasons the credit card companies try to prohibit that price lowering to the extent that they can -- because they know that otherwise it would happen and be effective in reducing usage of their archaic fraud-prone system with high processing overhead.
> People do chargebacks all the time because of a poor outcome that has nothing to do with being dishonest.
This is called "chargeback fraud" and is dishonesty on the part of the customer. If you buy something which is accurately described and then don't like it, issuing a chargeback should be prevented.
> There are also cases like bankruptcy where a chargeback will get you your money back but if you paid in crypto you'd just be another creditor.
Which is another form of fraud by the customer, because in that circumstance you are a creditor. It's like going back to the store and taking the money you paid out of the till. You're not taking it back from the store, you're stealing it from their other creditors who are entitled to their proportionate share.
"Credit cards are good because they enable customers to commit fraud" seems more like an argument to make them go away.
> The reason most customers don't use cryptocurrencies is because they are stupid and pointless for payments.
They're a payment system you can't practically be denied the use of and isn't operated by an industry dedicated to capturing the government in order to keep you under surveillance and covertly extract a vig from everything you buy.
> They make the process worse for consumers unless you're needing to hide your identity.
What if you do want to hide your identity? It's certainly not a feature to the customer that credit card companies create a list of everything you buy and who you buy it from in the hands of a third party. Why should the customer want there be a third party keeping track of who buys politically sensitive literature or contraceptives or anything that reveals their realtime location?
> Crypto is like mailing companies envelopes of cash.
It's like paying for things in cash generally, which lots of people still do in various circumstances.
People don't typically mail cash because stamps are too expensive to use that for small purchases, there is a cap on claims if you use it for large purchases and the Post Office loses it, and mail is slow.
And even then, people will use it to pay for e.g. Mullvad.
That's true. How about if you're paying $3000? Would you like to pay with Bitcoin or a credit card?
Notice also that the argument I'm making isn't "you should never use a credit card", it's that cryptocurrency is sometimes better, and it wouldn't hurt if more places accepted it.
That's certainly not the reason I hear from people.
