The CEO of Steve Jackson Games, which makes board games and card games, says that the 54 percent tariff on goods imported from China that will go into effect on April 5th is a “seismic shift” for the board game industry and that “prices are going up.” “At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing […]

Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
TikTok tests TikTok for Artists, which provides musicians with analytics and fan engagement tools, in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia  —  - Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)  —  Music Ally NEXT 2025: Early Bird tickets on sale now - at a special discounted rate for a limited time!

Following up on the previous item, here’s a WSJ report from October on Visa’s dominant position in the payments industry:

Visa, based in San Francisco, has built its network over more than 60 years — going back to clunky manual credit-card readers and carbon-paper copies of receipts. It accounts for around 60% of the total dollar amount of U.S. debit-card purchases and about 50% of U.S. credit-card purchases, according to the Nilson Report, a trade publication. Its closest competitor, Mastercard, accounts for around 22% and 23%, respectively. Visa’s profit totaled $17.3 billion in its 2023 fiscal year, after more than tripling in the last decade.

Amex accounts for about 19% of U.S. credit card transactions (and doesn’t support debit), and Discover is down around 3 or 4%. I really thought Visa and Mastercard had comparable market share, but it turns out Visa is far bigger, and it’s Mastercard and Amex that are around the same size.

AnnaMaria Andriotis, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

The Apple card is up for grabs because Goldman Sachs, the bank behind it, is getting out of the consumer lending world. For months, big banks including JPMorgan Chase and Synchrony Financial have been vying to take over as issuer. What hasn’t been known is the equally fierce fight playing out between the networks to win Apple, with Visa and American Express trying to unseat Mastercard, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple is expected to select a network for the card before it picks the bank to replace Goldman Sachs. Networks provide the plumbing that transmit information between the banks that issue consumers’ cards and the merchants’ banks.

Visa, the largest network, has made an aggressive pitch to win the card, including offering the kind of upfront payment to Apple that’s normally reserved for the biggest card programs, the people said. Visa offered a similar payment when Costco was selecting its network about a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal reported.

American Express is also in the mix, trying to become both the issuer and network of the Apple card, the people said. Goldman had approached Amex to gauge its interest in taking over the card in 2023, the Journal earlier reported.

I’ve always thought Visa and Mastercard were interchangeable. I can’t recall ever once in my life seeing an establishment where one of them was accepted but the other wasn’t, and they both seem to be accepted everywhere that accepts credit cards at all. If there’s a reason to prefer one over the other I’ve never heard it.

Amex is different because it’s accepted at fewer locations because they charge merchants a higher fee, which they get away with because they offer their customers superior service. I wrote back in 2023 that they share an affinity with Apple: both are built around the idea of offering a premium experience and charging higher prices for it.

But I already have a regular Amex card. One of the things I like about Apple Card being a Mastercard (or if they switched to Visa) is that it’s a card I can use anywhere that doesn’t accept Amex.

Warner Bros. dropped a new sneak-peek teaser for James Gunn’s Superman on Thursday out of CinemaCon, and it’s mostly just the same trailer we saw back in December, with the same quick-cut looks at Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Guy “worst haircut in the ’verse” Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), a giant […]