VisaMastercardCriminalNetwork (2010-06-24 18:07:53)

An example of how a UK bank charged +10.6% more from the balance than the merchant received. (We asked the cardholder if this is the same as the previous record holder, HSBC). As a comparison, advertised card fee is now 2% (used to be 2.5% at the time of this transaction).

When one pays with card internationally, it happens the following way (see WebShop/CardTransactions for more details):

And finally, the merchant sometimes gets some part of the settlement amount.

The visa/mastercard criminal network paid about 50000 USD less in 2009 Q4 (it's just to our small business) than they charged from cardholders.

And on the top of that, there is basically noone to sue, because they work via proxies (merchants don't contract with Visa/Mastercard, the gateway is a different legal entity).

With all the small-letter text the visa/mastercard processing gateway is not responsible for totally fucking up the transactions (eg. not completing the settlement

for sales type transactions - while the charge is already gone from the cardholder - not available for spending).

How smart is the legal system to protect fraud committed via proxy-method like that ?