[ZooCow]

It's also a way for them to save on credit card processing fees by trading the fees of multiple (relatively) small drink purchases for one fee for the gift card purchase.

An often overlooked innovation of iTunes was delayed billing, which converted multiple separate song transactions into one bundled transaction to save on credit card transaction fees.

[Loic]

Highway tolls in France have been doing it for something like 20 years.

[hondo77]

The iTunes Store turns 20 in two days.

[cuteboy19]

The concept of weekly monthly settlement is ancient. Banks have been doing it for centuries

[capableweb]

Yeah, but not in the US so obviously it doesn't count as true innovation.

[hammock]

>delayed billing, which converted multiple separate song transactions into one bundled transaction to save on credit card transaction fees.

Uber and Lyft do it now. It ought to be illegal, or opt-in (with a discount to the customer). Delayed billing wreaks havoc on the majority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck

[jstarfish]

It is a discount to that customer demographic.

For debit cards, imagine your account has $0.01 in it and about to be overdrawn. Each transaction from here on out will net you a $35 overdraft fee.

Accounting for the fees, would you rather have 5 immediate charges of $1, or 1 delayed charge for $5?

For credit cards, there's no overdraft, just a hard cutoff.

[sosodev]

Don't they authorize each individual ride and then bundle them up into a single transaction?

[hoschicz]

Do they? Only in the US? I ride with Uber in Europe and always see the charge from them immediately on my card.

[xwdv]

It does not wreck anymore havoc than lots of separate transactions pushing them deeper into debt.