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I would like to show you the national payment system in Norway, BankAxept[0]. It's used in 8/10 purchases in physical stores. The system verifies the card has a sufficient balance before the transaction is verified, and charges the account instantly on purchase.

The subscription to the network is 150 NOK/month, with each transaction costing 0,21 NOK each, before volume rebates. 1 EUR/USD is worth roughly 10 NOK at the time of writing, so about 15/0,021 for the subscription/transaction cost. I don't know much about VISA and MasterCard costs, but I would hazard a guess they're higher.

I think the only time I ever use VISA is when purchasing things online, and even then I'm not quite sure it's always VISA. Fun fact, BankAxept stopped accepting the magnetic strip in 2011. Now chip & pin or NFC are the two main ways of paying, with NFC transactions under 500 NOK not requiring the PIN to be entered, except periodically for verification.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept



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