11-08-2016, 08:30 AM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/201...ir-charge/
Quote:Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs debuted an online retail service designed to offer loans to consumers searching for an alternative to credit card borrowing. The move adds yet another competitor to an industry already struggling to add new customers. Late in the economic cycle, credit card companies usually rely more on interest payments than on additional debtors. But today’s frozen credit cycle has experts worried that credit cards are experiencing all the costs (defaults) with none of the benefits (revolving interest charges). Worse yet, a large share of Generation-X and Millennial consumers simply doesn’t use or trust credit cards.
The credit card industry encompasses a wide range of players who assume various roles in a transaction. First, there are the issuing banks—like Citigroup, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Capital One—that issue credit cards to consumers. Then there are the acquiring banks (overlapping with the issuing banks) that process payments on behalf of the merchant. And finally there are the networks—Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover—that act as middleman skimmers between the issuing and acquiring banks...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/201...ir-charge/