2023-11-27 Acquired.The Complete History & Strategy of Visa

Refer To：《The Complete History & Strategy of Visa》。

Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)

Ben: It's funny. When we picked this episode, I was like, oh, this is going to be pretty down in the middle and easy. Of course, as we get into the research as always, it's like, oh, nope. Big story here.

本：这很有趣。当我们选择这一集时，我想，哦，这将是相当中规中矩且简单的。当然，当我们像往常一样进行研究时，就会发现，哦，不对。这里有个大故事。

David: Yup. There's always a story.

大卫：是的。总有一个故事。

Ben: Welcome to Season 13, episode 4 of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

本：欢迎收听第 13 季第 4 集的《Acquired》，这是一档关于伟大科技公司及其背后故事和策略的播客。我是本·吉尔伯特。

David: I'm David Rosenthal.

大卫：我是大卫·罗森塔尔。

Ben: And we are your hosts. Today, we tell the story of an absolutely incredible system. You can show up anywhere in the entire world with a piece of plastic and transact for anything you want in any currency.

本：我们是你的主持人。今天，我们讲述一个绝对不可思议的系统的故事。你可以带着一张塑料卡片出现在世界任何地方，并以任何货币进行任何你想要的交易。

The merchant doesn't need to know you or trust you, and you do not need to know or trust the merchant. Visa, along with just one other competitor, MasterCard, has tirelessly spent decades stitching together all the banks, merchants, and the relationships with consumers to make this possible.

商家不需要了解或信任你，你也不需要了解或信任商家。Visa 与仅有的一个竞争对手 MasterCard 一起，几十年来不懈地将所有银行、商家以及与消费者的关系整合在一起，使这一切成为可能。

This is just the rosy side of the story. Merchants may harbor far less rosy feelings about Visa—given how much of their profits go to interchange fees—but the duality of the story is what makes it so interesting to understand.

这只是故事光鲜的一面。考虑到他们的利润有多少流向了交换费，商家可能对 Visa 怀有远不如光鲜的感受，但故事的双重性正是使其理解起来如此有趣的原因。

Today, we will explore how the whole thing came to be, and try to understand the value that the credit and debit card system creates compared with how much it captures and by whom, in what situations.

今天，我们将探讨整个事情是如何形成的，并尝试理解信用卡和借记卡系统所创造的价值与其捕获的价值及由谁在何种情况下捕获的价值之间的比较。

Here are some astonishing stats on Visa. It is the 11th most valuable company in the world. It is worth more than any bank in the world, including every bank involved in creating it. Visa's brand is among the very most trusted in the world associated with reliability and security. But that said, if you ask most people what Visa does, they could not actually articulate it.

以下是一些关于 Visa 的惊人统计数据。它是世界上第 11 个最有价值的公司。它的价值超过了世界上任何一家银行，包括参与创建它的每一家银行。Visa 的品牌是世界上最值得信赖的品牌之一，与可靠性和安全性相关联。但话虽如此，如果你问大多数人 Visa 是做什么的，他们实际上无法清楚地表达出来。

专业化的公司更容易做强、做大，Chubb就有这方面的问题。

Visa does not extend credit. They do not issue cards. They do not work directly with merchants. They do not work directly with consumers. They are not a bank or a financial institution. They don't ever bear any risk. They are merely a network connecting banks to other banks. David, it is insane.

Visa 不提供信贷。他们不发行卡片。他们不直接与商家合作。他们不直接与消费者合作。他们不是银行或金融机构。他们从不承担任何风险。他们只是一个连接银行与其他银行的网络。David，这太疯狂了。

David: This is such an insane story. I can't believe we're all the way in season 13, and we haven't talked about this company yet. But as we will get into, it's always been overlooked and underrated.

David：这真是一个疯狂的故事。我不敢相信我们已经到了第 13 季，但我们还没有谈论过这家公司。但正如我们将要讨论的那样，它总是被忽视和低估。

Ben: Perhaps not underrated the last decade or so.

本：也许在过去十年左右没有被低估。

If you, listeners, want to know every time an episode drops, you can sign up for email updates at acquired.fm/email. Two new fun things: (1) Emails now include little hints and some teasers about what the next episode will be. If you want to play the guessing game, sign up at acquired.fm/email. And (2) the emails have another new feature we are including follow ups from previous episodes when we learn new things from you after the release.

如果你们这些听众想在每次有新剧集发布时收到通知，可以在 acquired.fm/email 注册电子邮件更新。两个有趣的新功能：（1）电子邮件现在包括一些关于下一集内容的小提示和预告。如果你想玩猜谜游戏，请在 acquired.fm/email 注册。（2）电子邮件还有一个新功能，我们会在发布后从你们那里学到新东西时，包含之前剧集的后续信息。

Come talk about this episode with us after listening at acquired.fm/slack. If you want more from David and I outside of these big, long main Acquired episodes, check out ACQ2, our interviews on a second podcast feed.

听完后，来 acquired.fm/slack 和我们一起讨论这一集。如果你想在这些大型、冗长的 Acquired 主节目之外了解更多关于我和 David 的内容，请查看 ACQ2，我们在第二个播客频道上的采访。

Without further ado, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. David Rosenthal, where are we starting today?

事不宜迟，这个节目不是投资建议。David 和我可能在我们讨论的公司中有投资。这个节目仅供信息和娱乐用途。David Rosenthal，我们今天从哪里开始？

David: We are starting actually with a big thank you to Dave Stearns, author of what is undeniably the very best book on Visa and its history, Electronic Value Exchange. We owe a thank you to Dave, both for writing the book and for talking to us as we researched and helping us sift through everything as we're preparing here.

大卫：我们首先要向戴夫·斯特恩斯表示衷心的感谢，他是无可争议的关于 Visa 及其历史的最佳书籍《电子价值交换》的作者。我们要感谢戴夫，不仅因为他写了这本书，还因为他在我们研究时与我们交谈，并在我们准备时帮助我们梳理一切。

Ben: A fellow Seattleite and the book, which is so wonderfully esoterically named Electronic Value Exchange was his, I think, PhD thesis that they turned into a book.

本：一位西雅图同胞，这本书名字非常奇妙地叫做《电子价值交换》，我想这是他的博士论文，他们把它变成了一本书。

David: Correct. 大卫：正确。

Ben: All right, take us back in time.

本：好吧，把我们带回过去。

David: Dee Hock, the founder of Visa—who we will talk a lot about as we go along here—told this great story of how after his time at Visa in his older age, he would start his speaking engagements with a little thought exercise for the audience.

大卫：Visa 创始人迪·霍克——我们在这里会多次谈到他——讲述了一个很棒的故事，讲述了他在 Visa 的岁月之后，在年老时，他会通过一个小的思维练习来开始他的演讲活动。

He would get up on stage. He'd hold up his Visa card, and he would ask, how many of you recognize this? Of course, every single hand in the room would go up, as I assume all of you listening are going up now too.

他会上台。他会举起他的 Visa 卡，然后问，有多少人认得这个？当然，房间里的每只手都会举起来，我想你们现在听到的每个人也都会举手。

Many would say, okay. Now, how many of you can tell me who owns this company? And every single hand in the room would always go down? He would say, how did this company start? No hands. Who runs it and who governs it? No hands. Where is it headquartered? No hands.

很多人会说，好吧。现在，你们中有多少人能告诉我这家公司是谁的？房间里的每只手都会放下。他会说，这家公司是怎么开始的？没有人举手。谁经营它，谁管理它？没有人举手。它的总部在哪里？没有人举手。

It's just as wild as we were saying in the intro how important this company is. And yet, still to this day, I think maybe a few more people than in this time know the answer to these questions, but not many.

这就像我们在介绍中所说的那样疯狂，这家公司是多么重要。然而，直到今天，我认为可能比那时多了一些人知道这些问题的答案，但也不多。

Ben: It's one of these things too. It's one of the only essential pieces of financial infrastructure in the United States that is not run out of New York.

本：这也是其中之一。它是美国唯一不在纽约运营的金融基础设施之一。

David: Our task today is to tackle these questions. We start where some of you, I suspect know, but the vast majority of you, I also suspect don't. We start in 1958 in Fresno, California, with The Drop.

大卫：我们今天的任务是解决这些问题。我怀疑你们中的一些人知道，但我也怀疑你们中的大多数人不知道。我们从 1958 年的加利福尼亚州弗雷斯诺的 The Drop 开始。

Ben: The Drop. This is the name of the title in this fantastic book, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class. It's chapter one, The Drop, 1958. The Drop has become, if you say the drop to someone in the fintech industry, they're like, oh, September 1958, Fresno.

本：The Drop。这是这本奇妙书籍《A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class》的标题名称。第一章，The Drop，1958 年。The Drop 已经成为，如果你对金融科技行业的人说 The Drop，他们会说，哦，1958 年 9 月，弗雷斯诺。

David: Yup, and the rest of the world has no idea.

大卫：是的，其他人都不知道。

All right, what happened? The then largest bank in America, the San Francisco-based Bank of America, which formerly was called the Bank of Italy, both of which were total misnomers, because it was actually more accurately the Bank of California. It was illegal to operate banks across multiple states back then, as we will discuss.

好吧，发生了什么？当时美国最大的银行，总部位于旧金山的美国银行，之前被称为意大利银行，这两个名字都是完全的误称，因为实际上更准确的名称是加州银行。当时在多个州经营银行是非法的，正如我们将要讨论的那样。

Ben: The reason it was named Bank of Italy was it was started by an Italian immigrant who wanted to create something for the underbanked Italians in his California community.

本：之所以命名为意大利银行，是因为它是由一位意大利移民创办的，他想为加州社区中缺乏银行服务的意大利人创造一些东西。

David: Yeah, mostly farmers and merchants in San Francisco. It really started as the bank of the little guy. Bank of America decides that they are going to mail out little rectangular pieces of plastic to every single one of their 65,000 customers in the city of Fresno, completely unsolicited.

大卫：是的，主要是旧金山的农民和商人。它确实是作为小人物的银行开始的。美国银行决定向弗雷斯诺市的每一位 65,000 名客户邮寄小长方形塑料卡，完全未经请求。

A couple of things about this. (1) It's wild. I think the Fresno population at this point in time was maybe 200,000–250,000 people. A huge portion of the city of Fresno banked with Bank of America, and that was true for all of California at the time. (2) They just send these things out. Obviously, these are credit cards. People don't know what they are, they have no idea how to use them, mass chaos ensues.

关于这件事有几点。 (1) 这很疯狂。我认为此时弗雷斯诺的人口可能是 20 万到 25 万人。弗雷斯诺市的大部分人都在美国银行开户，当时整个加州都是如此。 (2) 他们只是把这些东西寄出去。显然，这些是信用卡。人们不知道它们是什么，也不知道如何使用它们，导致大规模混乱。

Ben: Certainly, nobody asked for them. There's this great quote again from A Piece of the Action that describes it and says, “There had been no outward yearning among the residents of Fresno for such a device, nor even the dimmest awareness that such a thing was in the works. It simply arrived one day with no advance warning as if it had dropped out of the sky.”

本：当然，没有人要求它们。这里有一句来自《行动的一部分》的精彩引述来描述它，说：“弗雷斯诺的居民中没有人对这种设备有外在的渴望，甚至没有最模糊的意识到这样的东西正在酝酿中。它就像从天而降一样，某天突然到来，没有任何预先警告。”

David: To explain how we got here, we need to spend a few more minutes on Bank of America's history and the history of banking and payment industries in the US more broadly. Like we said, B of A was the biggest bank in America in the 1950s, but it was not like all the other big banks at the time. It was a consumer bank.

大卫：为了说明我们是如何走到这一步的，我们需要再花几分钟来了解美国银行的历史以及更广泛的美国银行业和支付行业的历史。正如我们所说，B of A 在 1950 年代是美国最大的银行，但它与当时所有其他大银行不同。它是一家消费银行。

最初的基因。

The other large and influential banks in America back then were the JP Morgan's. They were white shoe corporate banks based in New York. We talked about this a lot in the Nike episode. It was illegal for banks to operate across state lines until much much later in history.

当时美国其他大型且有影响力的银行是摩根大通。这些是总部位于纽约的白鞋公司银行。我们在耐克那一集里谈了很多。直到历史上很久以后，银行跨州经营才是合法的。

For banks back then, the only way that you could actually get big for just about everybody else in the industry was to go the corporate route and to go the investment banking route, because you could service very large corporations that obviously were large themselves. It would generate lots of deposits, lots of lending activity.

在当时，对于银行来说，实际上能够在行业中比其他人更大唯一的方法就是走公司路线和投资银行路线，因为你可以为那些显然本身就很大的大型公司提供服务。这会产生大量的存款和贷款活动。

The investment banking activities around that were obviously very lucrative. That's how the JP Morgan's, the Morgan Stanley's, et cetera, of the world came to be. For the most part, consumer banks were backwater, small. There was no way to aggregate enough customers that you could get big enough.

围绕这些的投资银行活动显然非常有利可图。这就是摩根大通、摩根士丹利等公司如何崛起的。大多数情况下，消费银行是偏僻的、小型的。没有办法聚集足够多的客户让你变得足够大。

Ben: And in most states, they would have restrictions on the number of branches that banks could actually have. In some states—I think Texas was one of them—you literally could only have one branch. Other states would limit them as something like three. Other states would limit them and say, none outside the city. So you were a bank of a city. You could almost think about these more as credit unions than the big banks that we think about today.

在大多数州，他们会对银行实际拥有的分行数量进行限制。在某些州——我认为德克萨斯州就是其中之一——你实际上只能有一个分行。其他州会限制为类似三个。还有些州会限制说，不能在城市之外。所以你是一个城市的银行。你几乎可以把这些看作是信用合作社，而不是我们今天所想的大银行。

California happened to be unique in that you could actually have branches all over the state. California happened to have quite a large population, so it was the only place you could pull off a large consumer bank.

加利福尼亚恰好是独一无二的，因为你实际上可以在整个州设立分支机构。加利福尼亚恰好有相当多的人口，所以它是唯一可以开设大型消费银行的地方。

David: Exactly. California was already the second biggest state in the nation at that time behind New York. But the New York banking industry was super fragmented, because Bank of America starting as Bank of Italy with all these immigrants had built up a consumer base, they really were unique.

大卫：确切地说。加利福尼亚当时已经是仅次于纽约的全国第二大州。但纽约的银行业非常分散，因为美国银行起初作为意大利银行，凭借所有这些移民建立了消费者基础，他们确实是独一无二的。

The business of banking is banking, you take deposits, you make loans, you make your money on the loans. B of A was doing tons and tons and tons of small, little, and disparate consumer loans and lending. Obviously, mortgages and car loans still exist today, but they were doing washing machine loans.

银行业务就是银行业务，你接受存款，发放贷款，你通过贷款赚钱。美国银行做了大量的小额、零散的消费贷款。显然，抵押贷款和汽车贷款今天仍然存在，但他们当时还在做洗衣机贷款。

Ben: They were doing buy now pay later. But instead of on the website, you would go to your local bank branch, you would schedule time, you would sit down with the bank manager, and he would authorize you to go spend $150 at some merchant and make you a loan that you would come pay back over the next few months in installments. Every single time that you wanted to buy something now and pay for it later, you would repeat this very physical one-off manual process.

本：他们在做先买后付。但不是在网站上，而是你会去当地的银行分行，你会预约时间，坐下来和银行经理谈，他会授权你去某个商家花费 150 美元，并给你一笔贷款，你将在接下来的几个月中分期偿还。每次你想先买后付时，你都要重复这个非常实体的单次手动过程。

David: Yeah, and for specific items like go buy a refrigerator.

大卫：是的，比如去买冰箱这样的具体项目。

Ben: Wild. 本：野性。

David: It was just wild to imagine today. You can see why for a bank like Bank of America that is doing this at such large scale, the idea of a consumer credit card is pretty awesome, because you can take all of these disparate lending programs, consolidate it into just one card, cut out a ton of overhead fees, and make it way more efficient. This is what they are launching first in Fresno as the pilot market, and they call it the BankAmericard.

大卫：今天想象起来真是太疯狂了。你可以理解为什么像美国银行这样的大型银行会觉得消费者信用卡的想法非常棒，因为你可以将所有这些不同的贷款项目整合到一张卡上，减少大量的管理费用，使其更加高效。这是他们首先在弗雷斯诺作为试点市场推出的，他们称之为 BankAmericard。

Ben: Beautiful name. Ben：美丽的名字。

David: Beautiful name, and it would survive for quite a long time. This wasn't exactly a new idea on the part of Bank of America. Charge cards and credit cards had been around for decades. What was new was this was the first time that a bank had entered this market at scale. Let's talk about the history.

大卫：美丽的名字，而且它会存在很长一段时间。这并不是美国银行的新想法。借记卡和信用卡已经存在了几十年。新的是这是第一次有银行大规模进入这个市场。让我们谈谈历史。

Historically in the US, transferring money was actually not that easy. You had two options, you could use cash, or you could use checks. Checks worked, but they also had a bunch of problems. Until the creation of the Federal Reserve in the 1910s, the parties cashing the check, receiving the check, didn't actually receive the full face value of the check, because there was a bunch of work in mailing stuff around, traveling around the country that had to be done. And that was taken as a discount out of the check.

在美国的历史上，转账实际上并不那么容易。你有两个选择，可以使用现金，或者可以使用支票。支票可以使用，但也有很多问题。在 1910 年代联邦储备系统成立之前，兑现支票、接收支票的一方实际上并没有收到支票的全额面值，因为需要进行大量的邮寄和全国旅行工作。这些费用从支票中扣除作为折扣。

Ben: This is super important. This thing that we have today interchange rates on credit cards, that was happening with checks too. There was really a lot of expense and risk in processing checks when they first got started. Of course, you would take a discount out of the fact that you're taking risk, and you're spending money to go and make sure that this check that someone handed you eventually turned into dollars that you can have in your possession.

本：这非常重要。我们今天在信用卡上的交换费率，这在支票上也发生过。处理支票在刚开始时确实有很多费用和风险。当然，你会因为承担风险而打折，并花钱去确保有人给你的支票最终能变成你可以拥有的美元。

David: Totally. Problem number one, you didn't get all the money. Problem number two, also a big problem, it took a really long time. Imagine—we're talking the 1800s, early 1900s—his stuff was on the Pony Express. Pieces of paper going around a really, really big country. Not ideal.

大卫：完全正确。问题一，你没有拿到所有的钱。问题二，也是个大问题，花了很长时间。想象一下——我们说的是 1800 年代，1900 年代初期——他的东西在驿马快信上。纸片在一个非常非常大的国家里传递。这并不理想。

Ben: And until ACH where the banks would all meet once a day and decide, okay, how much do I owe you, how much do you owe me, and aggregate, okay, let's just settle one transaction, and then we'll figure out all of our internal accounting ourselves, they were literally check by check and saying, okay, I have this check, so you owe me $6.08. Okay, next check. Oh, I owe you $4.20. It was this crazy system of individual couriers bringing checks from the person who gave it to the merchant for the merchant to go and track down the money and bring the money back.

本：直到 ACH，银行每天都会开会决定，我欠你多少钱，你欠我多少钱，然后汇总，好吧，我们就结算一笔交易，然后我们自己解决所有的内部会计问题，他们实际上是逐张支票地说，好吧，我有这张支票，所以你欠我 6.08 美元。好，下一张支票。哦，我欠你 4.20 美元。这是一个疯狂的系统，个别信使把支票从给商家的那个人那里带来，让商家去追踪资金并把钱带回来。

David: Spoiler alert, ACH doesn't get developed in the US until the 1970s. Humans, though, are quite ingenious creatures at solving their problems, particularly when motivated by money.

大卫：剧透警告，ACH 直到 20 世纪 70 年代才在美国发展。然而，人类在解决问题方面是非常聪明的生物，尤其是在金钱的驱动下。

There is an obvious solution to this for merchants and their usual regular customers, and that is credit accounts, charge accounts. Rather than giving me money or a check, let me just keep tabs on a ledger of what you bought, what the value is, I'll tab it all up, and then at the end of the month, you'll come give me a check or cash for it.

对于商家及其通常的常客来说，有一个明显的解决方案，那就是信用账户、记账账户。与其给我钱或支票，不如让我在账本上记录你买了什么，价值是多少，我会把所有的账目记下来，然后在月底时，你来给我支票或现金。

I remember even me growing up in the 1980s, we had this at our local gas station near our house. We had a credit account. Whenever any of our family would go to this gas station, we would get the gas, and then we'd go inside and be like, oh, we have an account here. They just write down what it was, and then at the end of the month, I see my dad would go give them some money.

我记得即使是我在 1980 年代长大时，我们家附近的加油站也有这个。我们有一个信用账户。每当我们家里有人去这个加油站时，我们就加油，然后进去说，哦，我们在这里有个账户。他们就会记下金额，然后到月底，我看到我爸爸会去给他们一些钱。

Ben: Which saves on operations for everyone. It's great. Now we only need to move money once, we move it at the end of the month, and I trust you because I've seen you lots.

本：这为每个人节省了操作。这很棒。现在我们只需要移动一次资金，我们在月底移动它，我信任你，因为我见过你很多次。

David: From charge accounts at individual gas stations or individual branches of a grocery store chain or something like that, it's not a leap to think the next stage of evolution would be, oh, a card or account that would work at all the branches of a given brand. The gas stations get into this in a big way. Standard Oil gets into this in a big way. There are lots of standard stations across the country. You can have an account that works at all standard stations.

大卫：从个人加油站或杂货店连锁店的分店的账户来看，下一阶段的发展很可能是拥有一张可以在某个品牌的所有分店使用的卡或账户。加油站在这方面投入很大。标准石油公司在这方面投入很大。全国有很多标准加油站。你可以拥有一个在所有标准加油站都能使用的账户。

Ben: In 1939, Standard Oil of Indiana sent 250,000 unsolicited cards directly to all of their customers.

本：1939 年，印第安纳标准石油公司直接向所有客户发送了 250,000 张未经请求的卡片。

David: Making the Fresno Drop look like a drop in the bucket, shall we say?

大卫：让弗雷斯诺的下降看起来像是九牛一毛，我们可以这么说吗？

Ben: Interestingly, this is 20 years before. But again, this is not a bank. This is a single merchant mailing it out to all of their customers exclusively for use at their facility.

本：有趣的是，这是 20 年前的事。但同样，这不是一家银行。这是一位商人单独寄给他们所有客户的，仅供在他们的设施中使用。

David: There was that phase. Then pretty quickly, in a given local area, some of the retailers would get together and be like, you know? We compete with each other, but it sucks running these charge account programs on our own. We could collaborate and have a standardized charge account system that we could share.

大卫：有过那样一个阶段。然后很快，在某个特定的本地区域，一些零售商会聚在一起，就像，你知道吗？我们彼此竞争，但独自运行这些赊账计划很糟糕。我们可以合作，拥有一个可以共享的标准化赊账系统。

Ben: And just literally to simplify the back office as the first value proposition here.

本：简化后台作为这里的第一个价值主张。

David: For consumers, that's also pretty awesome, because do you really want to carry around 57 different charge cards in your wallet? Or would you rather have one that would be your Visa to everywhere you want to be?

大卫：对消费者来说，这也非常棒，因为你真的想在钱包里带着 57 张不同的信用卡吗？还是你更愿意只带一张可以通行所有地方的 Visa 卡？

Ben: Yes. Not to mention, on top of this, there is a huge benefit of a shared credit history. Now, all these merchants who were losing money on people coming and getting a loan from them in the form of I'm going to buy some goods, I'll pay you back later, but it turns out they had run up a tab all over town and weren't paying their bills anywhere. Now with this idea of a shared card, you actually can have a shared notion of who a consumer is across locations and across different retailers.

本：是的。更不用说，除此之外，还有一个共享信用历史的巨大好处。现在，所有这些商家都因为有人来他们这里贷款而亏钱，这些人以“我要买些商品，稍后再还你钱”的形式贷款，但结果是他们在全城都欠了一屁股账，哪里都不付账。现在有了共享卡的概念，你实际上可以在不同地点和不同零售商之间共享消费者的身份信息。

David: This comes to be post depression in the 1930s–1940s in the US. This really is starting to sound a lot like Visa. Except as you pointed out, Ben, there is a problem here.

大卫：这发生在 20 世纪 30 年代至 40 年代美国的经济大萧条之后。这听起来确实很像 Visa。正如你指出的，本，这里有个问题。

As the size of any given network of retailers that are collaborating on this grows, so does the intensity of competition within that network. Once you get to a certain scale, nobody's really incentivized to keep making this work. (A) because now, you're enabling people to shop all your competitors. But also (b) once you get past a couple of hundred or thousand participants here, are individual merchants equipped to manage a network like this? No, they don't have the resources to do this.

随着任何一个合作零售商网络的规模扩大，该网络内的竞争强度也随之增加。一旦达到一定规模，实际上没有人有动力继续推动这项工作。（A）因为现在，你让人们可以在所有竞争对手那里购物。但也（B）一旦这里的参与者超过几百或几千个，个别商家是否有能力管理这样的网络？不，他们没有资源来做到这一点。

Ben: So you have to spin up some shared organization that all the merchants are pooling their capital into in order to run the network on behalf of all of the merchants. It gets messy.

本：所以你必须建立一个共享的组织，所有商家将他们的资本集中到这个组织中，以便代表所有商家运营网络。这会变得很麻烦。

David: Or there could be an independent third-party for-profit network that does this. This is when Diners Club and American Express arrive on the scene. Diners Club was first. People might know and have heard of Diners Club. It still exists today. It's like a sub brand of Discover.

David：或者可能会有一个独立的第三方营利性网络来做这件事。这时，大来俱乐部和美国运通出现了。大来俱乐部是第一个。人们可能知道并听说过大来俱乐部。它今天仍然存在。它就像是 Discover 的一个子品牌。

There's a very famous legendary origin story behind Diners Club, and it goes like this. In 1949, post-World War II, economic prosperity, beginning of the madmen years in New York, in Manhattan, a New York businessman named Frank McNamara is hosting a lavish business dinner downtown. Halfway through the dinner, he realizes that he forgot his wallet at home. He does not have cash to pay for the dinner, so he excuses himself.

关于大来俱乐部有一个非常著名的传奇起源故事，是这样的。1949 年，二战后，经济繁荣，纽约的疯狂年代开始，在曼哈顿，一位名叫弗兰克·麦克纳马拉的纽约商人在市中心举办了一场奢华的商务晚宴。晚宴进行到一半时，他意识到自己把钱包忘在家里了。他没有现金支付晚餐，所以他找了个借口离开。

He goes to the payphone. He calls his wife at home on Long Island. She speeds into the city with enough cash in time to pay the bill for the dinner. Face is saved. His reputation as an erudite businessman is preserved.

他去投币电话。他打电话给在长岛家的妻子。她及时赶到城里，带着足够的现金支付晚餐的账单。面子保住了。他作为博学商人的声誉得以保全。

Afterwards, he's talking with his wife. It's like, oh, there's got to be a better way to do this. There really should be a business person–focused charge card network that will work at all the restaurants in Manhattan where business people host dinners.

之后，他和他的妻子交谈。他觉得，哦，应该有更好的方法来做这件事。真的应该有一个专注于商务人士的信用卡网络，可以在曼哈顿所有商务人士举办晚宴的餐厅使用。

Ben: So nobody ever needs to bring their cash. You could just imagine that we're all in this club of diners where anywhere we dine, we can stand up, we can authorize the bill, we can leave, we can pay no dollars out of our pocket that moment, and we get one nice statement at the end of the month that importantly, we do need to pay in full. We cannot roll it over into a loan, we must pay it. But that's nice, because all of my business transactions are on one single statement. It's easy for my expense reports, it's easy for me to not have to carry a wallet around. Of course, I get to look super awesome in front of all of my colleagues.

本：所以从来没有人需要带现金。你可以想象我们都在这个用餐俱乐部里，无论我们在哪里用餐，我们都可以站起来，我们可以授权账单，我们可以离开，我们可以在那一刻不花一分钱，并且在月底我们会收到一份漂亮的账单，重要的是，我们需要全额支付。我们不能将其转为贷款，我们必须支付。但这很好，因为我所有的商业交易都在一张单据上。我的费用报告很简单，我不需要随身携带钱包。当然，我在所有同事面前看起来超级棒。

David: I think there are two really important points here. (1) You said, I pay it. I don't pay it, my company pays it, I don't care. (2) The most important point, I get to look super awesome in front of all my colleagues, customers, and people that I'm trying to impress. I don't need to bring cash. They know me here. I'm good for it.

大卫：我认为这里有两个非常重要的点。（1）你说，我付钱。我不付钱，我的公司付钱，我不在乎。（2）最重要的一点是，我在所有同事、客户和我想打动的人面前看起来超级棒。我不需要带现金。他们在这里认识我。我没问题。

Ben: Just to start tracking a certain number here. When we were talking about checks earlier that we're getting a discount, and even in this era of early Diners Club, early American Express, we're talking about a 5%–7% discount of what actually got remitted ultimately to the restaurant or the retailer versus what the bill was originally that the consumer authorized.

本：只是为了开始追踪这里的某个数字。当我们之前谈到支票时，我们正在获得折扣，即使在早期的大来俱乐部和早期的美国运通时代，我们谈论的是最终汇给餐馆或零售商的金额与消费者最初授权的账单之间的 5%–7%的折扣。

David: All that's a very nice story, except it's completely fabricated. None of that actually happened, although stories like that did play out, I'm sure, on a nightly basis in Manhattan. The reality is Frank just thought this would be a good business idea. And he was right.

大卫：这一切都是个很好的故事，只是它完全是捏造的。实际上这些都没有发生，尽管我确信这样的故事每晚都会在曼哈顿上演。事实是，弗兰克只是认为这会是个不错的商业想法。而他是对的。

You see this all the time with networks, network-effect businesses. This was the right little node of the network to start with. This was like Harvard and Facebook, because restaurants in Manhattan are competitive with one another, but it's not exclusive competition. This isn't JC Penney's versus Macy's. No restaurants in Manhattan, no matter how good they are, really honestly believe that a majority of their customers are only going to dine at their restaurant.

你经常会在网络、网络效应业务中看到这种情况。这是网络中合适的小节点作为起点。这就像哈佛和 Facebook，因为曼哈顿的餐馆彼此竞争，但这不是排他性的竞争。这不是 JC Penney's 和 Macy's 的竞争。曼哈顿的餐馆，无论多么好，真的都不相信大多数顾客只会在他们的餐馆用餐。

Ben: Great point. So there's some incentivized sharing. It's almost like the reason to enter into a bundle for your most extreme fans, which are only going to be the top 5% of your customers. Sure, you want some exclusive relationship, and you want to maximize the dollar value you can get out of them. But for your casual fans who like your business but aren't necessarily exclusively going to use your business, you should figure out some bundling system that makes you work with complements of yours, so that people can shop you and everything like you the easiest way possible, and you can still make some money on everybody.

本：好观点。所以有一些激励分享。这几乎就像是为你最狂热的粉丝进入捆绑的理由，这些粉丝只会是你客户中排名前 5%的。你当然想要一些独家的关系，并且想要最大化从他们身上获得的价值。但是对于那些喜欢你的业务但不一定只使用你业务的普通粉丝，你应该想出一些捆绑系统，让你与互补的业务合作，这样人们可以以最简单的方式购物你和类似的所有东西，而你仍然可以从每个人身上赚到一些钱。

David: You're enabling people to spend money in your restaurant easier and more frequently. You don't really care that they also go to other restaurants, because they're going to do that anyway. It's crazy, ladies at Diners Club are able to charge restaurants and other merchants. They expand to hotels, airlines, anything that a businessperson traveler would need, 7% of the gross bill. Merchants complain about 3% today, but 7%. These are restaurants, that's crazy.

大卫：你让人们在你的餐厅花钱变得更容易、更频繁。你并不在意他们也去其他餐厅，因为他们无论如何都会这样做。这太疯狂了，Diners Club 的女士们能够向餐厅和其他商家收费。他们扩展到酒店、航空公司，任何商务旅行者需要的东西，账单总额的 7%。商家今天抱怨 3%，但 7%。这些是餐厅，这太疯狂了。

Eventually, they have so much power in what they're doing—this product is so good—they also add a fee for the card holders and their companies. It's not individual people paying this fee, it's the company's paying this fee. Of course, they're happy to pay it, it enables business. Amazing, brilliant idea back in the day.

最终，他们在所做的事情上拥有如此大的权力——这个产品非常好——他们还为持卡人及其公司增加了一项费用。支付这笔费用的不是个人，而是公司。当然，他们很乐意支付，因为这促进了业务发展。真是一个了不起的、辉煌的想法。

Ben: We should say, this has pricing power in action to have those very high fees. It's also a necessity. The cost of running these networks in a previous technology generation was super high, and it was not at full scale yet. It's just operating with a bunch of restaurants and retailers in New York City.

本：我们应该说，这在行动中具有定价权，以收取那些非常高的费用。这也是一种必要性。在以前的技术世代中，运营这些网络的成本非常高，而且还没有达到全面规模。它只是与纽约市的一些餐馆和零售商合作运营。

You actually need a lot of people both because there's not a lot of technology, but you need a lot of people, even though there aren't actually a lot of merchants. It turns out, there's just a lot of cost in the system to run it.

实际上，你确实需要很多人，因为技术不多，但即使商人不多，你也需要很多人。结果是，系统运行成本很高。

David: And Diners Club would ultimately fade, although it grossed over a million members. It goes national, it gets acquired by Citibank, and then sold to Discover in 2008, as we said, still a brand today. But it's basically impossible to create an independent from the ground-up network of this at the time, because you were just talking about the operational costs of running this thing.

大卫：最终，大来俱乐部会逐渐消失，尽管它拥有超过一百万的会员。它在全国范围内发展，被花旗银行收购，然后在 2008 年出售给 Discover，正如我们所说，今天仍然是一个品牌。但在当时，基本上不可能从头开始创建一个独立的网络，因为你刚才提到运营这个东西的成本。

Think about that merchant and customer acquisition costs. Nobody knew what Diners Club was. They have to now canvas the entire island of Manhattan and ultimately the whole country in the world, sign up all of these merchants, and go sign up all of these companies to get their employees to use it. That is a very expensive sales proposition.

想想那个商人和客户获取成本。没有人知道大来俱乐部是什么。他们现在必须在整个曼哈顿岛，最终在世界各地进行宣传，签约所有这些商家，并去签约所有这些公司，让他们的员工使用它。这是一个非常昂贵的销售提案。

Whereas from this point on, basically everybody else that comes into the industry, already has established relationships, sales channels into one or both sides of the market, which of course brings us to the brand you're all probably thinking about here, American Express.

从这一点开始，基本上其他进入该行业的人，已经建立了关系，销售渠道进入市场的一方或双方，这当然让我们想到了你们可能都在想的品牌，美国运通。

Ben: Which is the Diners Club of today. It's the favored card by businesses. It is the card that is most used for travel, entertainment, and meals.

本：这就是今天的 Diners Club。它是企业最喜欢的卡。它是用于旅行、娱乐和餐饮最常用的卡。

David: As you might remember from our Berkshire Hathaway series a couple of years ago, Amex at this point in time was primarily a traveler's checks business.

大卫：正如你可能还记得的，我们几年前的伯克希尔·哈撒韦系列中，Amex 在那个时候主要是一家旅行支票业务公司。

Ben: That's how they started, right?

本：他们就是这样开始的，对吧？

David: Actually, no. They started in 1850. This is amazing. Do you know who started American Express? This is a version of Dee Hock holding up the Visa card.

David：实际上，不是。他们始于 1850 年。这太神奇了。你知道是谁创办了美国运通吗？这是迪·霍克举着 Visa 卡的一个版本。

Ben: No, I don't. 本：不，我不这样认为。

David: I did not either until doing research for this episode. It was started by a group of people, two of the most prominent among whom were...

大卫：在为这一集做研究之前，我也不知道。它是由一群人发起的，其中最著名的两个人是……

Ben: Wells and Fargo. 本：韦尔斯和法戈。

David: Henry Wells and William Fargo.

大卫：亨利·威尔斯和威廉·法戈。

Ben: Amazing. 本：太棒了。

David: Totally amazing. Man, 1850, the Wild West, different time.

大卫：太神奇了。伙计，1850 年，狂野西部，不同的时代。

Ben: It was something like they started American Express but then had a conflict, so they left and they started Wells Fargo after that.

本：他们好像是创办了美国运通，但后来发生了冲突，所以他们离开了，然后创办了富国银行。

David: Something like that. The infrastructure of America was getting built out, so American Express called American Express. It was an express mail company. It was like the Pony Express. That was how they moved stuff around. I think Wells Fargo was doing banking, so obviously banks. As we're talking about, you need to move stuff around the country. It was a related business.

大卫：差不多是这样。美国的基础设施正在建设中，所以美国运通被称为美国运通。它是一家快递公司。就像驿马快递一样。他们就是这样运送东西的。我想富国银行当时在做银行业务，所以显然是银行。正如我们所说的，你需要在全国范围内运送东西。这是一个相关的业务。

Ben: It's amazing. I think it's fascinating that Wells Fargo came after Amex. You think Wells Fargo as this old timey Foundation of America. American Express is even older than that.

本：这太神奇了。我觉得富国银行在美国运通之后成立是很有趣的。你会认为富国银行是美国的一个古老基石。实际上，美国运通比它还要古老。

David: Amex by this point in time had become a traveler's checks, primarily. That was their primary business. As we talked about on the Berkshire episode, that was a freaking awesome business, partially because traveler's checks made good money.

大卫：到这个时候，运通已经主要成为旅行支票公司。那是他们的主要业务。正如我们在伯克希尔那一集谈到的，那是一个非常棒的业务，部分原因是旅行支票赚了很多钱。

You would buy a $100 traveler's check and pay Amex a little fee or whatever, but the float and the breakage. There are traveler's checks out there today that are 50–100 years old that have never been cast, and Amex has just been sitting on that cash for decades investing it. What an amazing business.

你会买一张 100 美元的旅行支票，并支付给美国运通一点费用或其他费用，但有浮动和损耗。今天有些旅行支票已经有 50 到 100 年的历史，从未兑现过，而美国运通几十年来一直持有这些现金进行投资。真是一个了不起的生意。

Ben: Okay. Amex observes Diners Club and says, hey, we need to get into this, and we actually have an ability to get into this fast.

本：好的。美国运通观察到大来俱乐部并说，嘿，我们需要进入这个领域，而且我们实际上有能力快速进入。

David: And they actually tried to buy Diners Club, but they can't get their own price. They're like, well, we don't need to pay you a lot of money because we can just do this too. Like I was just saying, not only can we do it too, we can do it better than you, because we're American Express. We have relationships with companies, we have relationships with restaurants, we have relationships with hotels. We don't need you, Diners Club.

大卫：他们实际上试图收购大来俱乐部，但他们无法获得自己的价格。他们就像，我们不需要付你很多钱，因为我们也可以做到这一点。就像我刚才说的，不仅我们也能做到，我们还能做得比你更好，因为我们是美国运通。我们与公司有关系，我们与餐馆有关系，我们与酒店有关系。我们不需要你，大来俱乐部。

Just within a year or maybe even two from when Amex launches their charge card business traveler program, they signed up 700,000 members, which is almost as much as Diners Club had signed up many years of working on it.

就在美国运通推出其商务旅行者信用卡计划的一年或甚至两年内，他们签下了 70 万名会员，这几乎与大来俱乐部多年来的努力签下的会员数量相当。

Ben: Importantly, here, the thing you're seeing is, this is the first time a real financial company is coming into the industry. All of the we-know-you're-good-for-itness was happening directly from retailers before or by organizations that represented retailers and restaurants. Now you have not a bank, but a bank-like entity that is starting to say, oh, this could be an interesting business.

本：重要的是，你在这里看到的是，这是第一次有真正的金融公司进入这个行业。之前所有的“我们知道你有信誉”都是直接来自零售商或代表零售商和餐馆的组织。现在你有一个类似银行的实体开始说，哦，这可能是一个有趣的生意。

David: This brings us right back to Fresno in 1958, because the timelines match up exactly. This is crazy. Amex launched their charge card program in 1958. B of A sees what's happening. They of course had seen everything else going on in the industry before. They understand the transformative power that this can have for their scaled consumer banking business in California. They're like, okay, the time is right, let's do credit cards. Let's go to Fresno.

大卫：这让我们回到了 1958 年的弗雷斯诺，因为时间线完全吻合。这太疯狂了。美国运通在 1958 年推出了他们的信用卡计划。美国银行看到发生的事情。他们当然之前已经看到了行业中的其他一切。他们理解这对他们在加州的大规模消费银行业务可能具有的变革力量。他们想，好吧，时机成熟了，让我们做信用卡。我们去弗雷斯诺。

Hopefully, as we painted the picture, their motivation and Diners Club, AmEx, and even the merchants' and retailers' motivations, are very different. B of A wants two things out of this. (1) Like we were saying earlier, they want to streamline and simplify all their wildly diverse lending programs. This is going to be huge operational savings for the bank if they can pull this off.

希望在我们描绘出这个画面时，他们的动机以及大来俱乐部、美国运通，甚至商家和零售商的动机都非常不同。美国银行想从中得到两件事。（1）就像我们之前说的，他们希望简化和简化所有种类繁多的贷款计划。如果他们能做到这一点，这将为银行带来巨大的运营节省。

(2) The bigger opportunity for B of A is what can this do for our banking business itself. Remember, how do banks make money? They make money on loans. This is going to enable so much more effective loan volume to flow through our system that we can make money on.

(2) 对美国银行来说，更大的机会在于这对我们的银行业务本身有什么帮助。记住，银行是如何赚钱的？他们通过贷款赚钱。这将使更多有效的贷款量流经我们的系统，从而使我们能够赚钱。

Ben: This is where B of A, informed by their previous business model of lending to consumers, really paves the path of what credit cards would become today. Often, in the past, before the BankAmericard, what would happen is you'd have this charge card, not a credit card, and the bill would arrive at the end of the month, and then you would pay it.

本：这就是美国银行在其先前的消费者贷款业务模式的启发下，真正为今天的信用卡发展铺平道路的地方。过去，在 BankAmericard 出现之前，通常会发生的是你会有一张记账卡，而不是信用卡，账单会在月底到达，然后你会支付它。

The innovation baked into the BankAmericard is they say, well, after the 30 days, you can get your statement, you can pay it in full, or you can roll it into a loan. We love loans. We would be happy to extend loans to our customers. We can learn a lot about them, we can make a good amount of money on that interest, so the modern credit card is born.

BankAmericard 的创新在于，他们说，好吧，30 天后，你可以拿到账单，可以全额支付，也可以将其转为贷款。我们喜欢贷款。我们很乐意向客户提供贷款。我们可以了解很多关于他们的信息，我们可以通过利息赚取不少钱，于是现代信用卡诞生了。

David: And it was already happening at B of A. They were doing these loans. This wasn't actually new behavior. It was just way easier, way more streamlined, on-ramped into this consumer lending that turbocharged it.

大卫：这在美国银行已经发生了。他们正在发放这些贷款。这实际上不是新的行为。只是变得更容易、更简化，进入了这种加速的消费贷款。

Ben: This product is the combination of three things, the charge card that had been happening over in Diners Club, Amex, the gas stations, the retailer land, then the second pillar is the consumer lending. The third thing is it is now from a real and proper bank that you already have your primary financial relationship with. Not from some industry association or hodgepodge of retailers, but now this is issued by your bank. The big takeaway for BankAmericard is it really bundled two different things together. One was convenience and the other is credit.

本：这个产品是三件事的结合，分别是 Diners Club、Amex 的信用卡，油站、零售商的领域，然后第二个支柱是消费贷款。第三件事是它现在来自一个你已经有主要金融关系的真正和正规的银行。不是来自某个行业协会或零售商的杂烩，而是由你的银行发行的。BankAmericard 的最大亮点是它真正将两件不同的事情捆绑在一起。一个是便利，另一个是信用。

David: There's one more really, really important sub point here to what this loan is, and it relates to the banks and why this is so powerful for B of A and for all banks. Think back to the old way the B of A was doing this. A California homeowner wants to go buy a new refrigerator. They walk into B of A, talk about it with the lending officer, blah-blah-blah, bunch of operational costs, who cares about that.

大卫：关于这笔贷款，还有一个非常非常重要的子点，它与银行有关，并且解释了为什么这对美国银行和所有银行都如此强大。回想一下美国银行以前的做法。一位加州房主想去买一台新冰箱。他们走进美国银行，与贷款官员讨论，等等，一堆运营成本，谁在乎这些。

At the end of the process, B of A gives them the money. The money is now out of B of A's hands, it's out the door. The consumer then goes to the merchant, gives the merchant the money, and buys the refrigerator. What's happening now with credit cards is actually a little different. The consumer goes to the store, the consumer buys the refrigerator with the credit card, and no money has left B of A's hands yet. They get to keep the money.

在这个过程中结束时，美国银行给他们钱。钱现在已经不在美国银行的手中，已经出门了。消费者然后去商家，给商家钱，并购买冰箱。现在信用卡的运作方式实际上有点不同。消费者去商店，消费者用信用卡购买冰箱，而钱还没有离开美国银行的手中。他们可以保留这笔钱。

Ben: A transaction has been authorized. But yes, they get to keep the money.

本：一笔交易已被授权。但没错，他们可以保留这笔钱。

David: Because we're talking about California here, there is a very high likelihood chance—I think at the beginning, I suspect a 100% chance—that the merchant also banks with B of A. That money is never leaving Bank of America's hands, which frees up more capital, which frees up float. The B of A of management must have been beside themselves with glee about this.

大卫：因为我们在谈论加利福尼亚，我认为一开始就有 100%的可能性——商家也在美国银行开户。那笔钱永远不会离开美国银行的手中，这释放了更多的资本，释放了浮动资金。美国银行的管理层对此一定欣喜若狂。

Ben: In theory, if they managed to put any financial controls or proper risk underwriting on this whole thing, but it turns out, David, as I'm sure you are about to tell us...

本：理论上，如果他们设法在整个事情上实施任何财务控制或适当的风险承保，但事实证明，大卫，我相信你即将告诉我们……

David: It's exactly where we're going.

大卫：这正是我们要去的地方。

Ben: When you mail 65,000 cards indiscriminately with the same credit limit to every single customer and say, have at it, guys, and this is a brand new consumer behavior that they've heard about, or they might have witnessed in one form or another but now they have a bonafide charge plus credit card sitting in their hands, you're going to lose a lot of money at first.

本：当你不加区分地向每位客户邮寄 65,000 张信用额度相同的卡片，并说，大家随便用吧，这是他们听说过的一种全新的消费者行为，或者他们可能以某种形式见证过，但现在他们手中有一张真正的收费加信用卡时，你一开始会损失很多钱。

David: Because there's another more pernicious way that this type of lending is different from the previous type of lending that B of A was doing. It's unsecured. If you give a customer a loan to go buy the refrigerator, you don't want to repossess the refrigerator, but push comes to shove, you can go repossess the refrigerator. This whole consumer credit card land is unsecured lending.

David：因为这种贷款方式与美国银行之前的贷款方式还有另一种更恶劣的不同。它是无担保的。如果你给客户贷款去买冰箱，你不想收回冰箱，但迫不得已时，你可以去收回冰箱。整个消费者信用卡领域是无担保贷款。

Ben: You probably shouldn't apply the assumptions about your loss ratios from secured lending to unsecured lending, but that is exactly what happened.

本：你可能不应该将关于有担保贷款损失率的假设应用于无担保贷款，但这正是发生的情况。

David: This all comes back to why it really had to be Bank of America to start this program, because they do this. They do the drop in Fresno, 65,000 unsolicited cards go out to unsuspecting consumers. Fraud is out of control, $20 million of fraud within the first pilot program, 22% of the credit that they issued to that initial Fresno cohort ends up being default or delinquent, which I think is five or six times what their delinquency rate was before on traditional lending.

大卫：这一切都回到了为什么真的必须由美国银行来启动这个项目，因为他们这样做。他们在弗雷斯诺进行投放，65,000 张未经请求的卡片发给毫无戒心的消费者。欺诈失控，首个试点项目中有 2000 万美元的欺诈行为，他们发给最初弗雷斯诺群体的信用中有 22%最终成为违约或拖欠，我认为这是他们传统贷款拖欠率的五到六倍。

Ben: It is pretty crazy. It's worth pointing out, we're talking a lot about credit and debt at this point in time. Now in 2023, some of these sounds like bad words. Frankly, it's because of the situation that society has pushed Americans too, but it was a very different time back when credit cards were first getting started and when this practice of installment loans was extremely common in the pre card era.

本：这真是太疯狂了。值得指出的是，我们现在谈论了很多关于信用和债务的问题。现在是 2023 年，其中一些听起来像是坏词。坦率地说，这是因为社会把美国人推到了这种境地，但在信用卡刚开始出现以及在信用卡时代之前分期贷款非常普遍的时候，那是一个非常不同的时代。

There's a great passage from A Piece of the Action that I mentioned earlier that I just want to read here. "Despite the denunciations, despite the free floating anxiety, Americans have always borrowed money to buy things, if not from a bank, then from somebody, from a finance company, a credit union, a department store, or a loan shark for that matter. There isn't another western country that has relied so heavily on consumer credit.

我之前提到过《A Piece of the Action》中的一段精彩文字，我想在这里读一下。“尽管有谴责，尽管有无处不在的焦虑，美国人总是借钱买东西，如果不是从银行借的，那就是从某人那里，从金融公司、信用社、百货公司，或者干脆是高利贷者那里借的。没有其他西方国家如此依赖消费信贷。”

Between 1958 and 1990, there was never a year where the amount of outstanding consumer debt wasn't higher than the year before. Years later, a Bank of America executive could look back on his lifetime and the credit card industry and say proudly, consumer credit built this country. Whatever one's feelings about personal debt, it is difficult to disagree with this assertion."

在 1958 年至 1990 年之间，从未有一年未偿还的消费者债务不高于前一年。多年后，美国银行的一位高管可以回顾他的一生和信用卡行业，自豪地说，消费者信贷建立了这个国家。无论人们对个人债务有何感受，很难不同意这一说法。

Interestingly, what's basically happening here is people are using debt not because of this bleak, horrible time that they're in. It's actually because of their optimism. They believe that the future is brighter than the present, so they're fine taking on debt.

有趣的是，这里基本上发生的情况是，人们使用债务并不是因为他们处于这个暗淡、可怕的时期。实际上是因为他们的乐观。他们相信未来比现在更光明，所以他们愿意承担债务。

That is what has led us to today, where because the growth of the American economy and the global economy has been so strong, people have always generally been fine, or at least we exist in a system that teaches you that you should be fine. betting that the future is going to be better than today.

这就是导致我们来到今天的原因，因为美国经济和全球经济的增长如此强劲，人们总是普遍过得不错，或者至少我们存在于一个教导你应该过得不错的系统中。赌未来会比今天更好。

David: It's such a good point. As long as growth is happening in an economy, a society, industry, whatever, you should absolutely use capital to fuel into that growth.

大卫：这是一个很好的观点。只要经济、社会、行业或其他领域在增长，你就绝对应该利用资本来推动这种增长。

Ben: That may not be true on an individual basis, but it's absolutely true on a societal basis.

本：这在个人层面可能不是真的，但在社会层面绝对是真的。

David: Back to what I was saying about why B of A is so important. B of A can absorb this loss. No other consumer bank at the time, if they had seen $20 million of losses in a set of months, they would have pulled the ripcord immediately. B of A, though, can absorb this loss, no problem. And they know if we can make this work, this is going to transform our business.

大卫：回到我刚才说的关于为什么美国银行如此重要。美国银行可以承受这个损失。当时没有其他消费银行，如果他们在几个月内看到 2000 万美元的损失，他们会立即拉开降落伞。然而，美国银行可以承受这个损失，没问题。他们知道如果我们能让这件事成功，这将会改变我们的业务。

Rather than pulling the ripcord, they expand. They roll it out quickly across the whole rest of California. Over the next year, all within the first year, they sign up 20,000 merchants in California. Do you know how many card holders they sign up in that first year?

他们没有拉开拉绳，而是扩展。他们迅速在整个加利福尼亚州推出。在接下来的一年内，全部在第一年内，他们在加利福尼亚州签约了 20,000 家商户。你知道他们在第一年签约了多少持卡人吗？

Ben: No. 本：不。

David: Two million California card holders signed up using the card in the first year. It took Diners Club years to get to a million. Amex was so proud in the first year too; they get to 700,000. B of A instantly at scale is the largest charge card/credit card program, certainly in America, I suspect in the world. That's one year and one state.

大卫：两百万加州持卡人在第一年使用该卡注册。Diners Club 花了几年才达到一百万。Amex 在第一年也非常自豪，他们达到了 70 万。美国银行瞬间规模化，成为美国乃至世界上最大的收费卡/信用卡项目。这是一年和一个州的成绩。

Ben: This is like Meta launching Threads or Microsoft launching Teams. You can sit back for a while and watch the innovation, and figure out what the very best product is that people want, and then you can go ram it through your distribution channels when you invent one of your own.

本：这就像 Meta 推出 Threads 或微软推出 Teams。你可以先坐下来观望创新，找出人们想要的最佳产品，然后当你发明出自己的产品时，可以通过你的分销渠道推销它。

David: And it's even more than that. As we said, this really was a big innovation. It wasn't just that they copied AmEx, Diners Club, or anything else. They were adding credit to this. This was a huge innovation.

大卫：而且这不仅仅是这样。正如我们所说，这确实是一个重大创新。他们不仅仅是复制了美国运通、大来俱乐部或其他任何东西。他们在此基础上增加了信用。这是一个巨大的创新。

By 1961, year three of the program, they're able to get fraud under control enough that the whole program is profitable.

到 1961 年，也就是该计划的第三年，他们能够将欺诈控制到足以使整个计划盈利的程度。

Ben: But they keep that under their hats.

本：但他们对此保密。

David: They don't want anybody else to know about this. There's been all these newspaper articles about all this money that B of A is losing. Many banks that had been thinking about launching a similar program abandoned it, because they were like, oh, man, we thought this was going to work, but clearly, it's not working for B of A, so people were shutting down their efforts.

大卫：他们不想让其他人知道这件事。关于美国银行亏损的所有这些钱，已经有很多报纸文章。许多曾考虑推出类似计划的银行放弃了，因为他们觉得，哦，天哪，我们以为这会奏效，但显然对美国银行来说并不奏效，所以人们正在停止他们的努力。

There were rumors that another bank was going to launch in LA, in San Francisco, and B of A had actually rushed theirs to market to go be sooner than these other banks that actually never ended up launching, because the market perception was that it was such a gigantic failure.

有传言说另一家银行将在洛杉矶和旧金山开业，而美国银行实际上加快了他们的上市速度，比这些实际上从未开业的其他银行更早，因为市场认为这是一个巨大的失败。

Here's a crazy stat from 1960 to 1966. This whole era is actually a profitable era for B of A, but no one else knows it. There were only 10 new credit cards introduced in the entire United States because they did such a good job keeping what became a cash gusher for them quiet. But the secret comes out in 1966. From 1966 to 1968, in just two years, approximately 440 credit cards were introduced by banks large and small throughout the country.

这里有一个从 1960 年到 1966 年的疯狂统计数据。整个时代实际上是美国银行的盈利时代，但没有其他人知道。在整个美国只有 10 张新信用卡被推出，因为他们做得很好，把这成为他们的现金来源的秘密保密。但秘密在 1966 年泄露。从 1966 年到 1968 年，仅仅两年时间，全国各地大大小小的银行大约推出了 440 张信用卡。

Ben: And it is specifically 1966 when the secret gets out, because phase two of Bank of America's grand master plan here gets unveiled, which is maybe worth a quick setup. As we said, this was transformative for their business in California, but they're the biggest bank in America.

本：而且正是在 1966 年这个秘密被揭露，因为美国银行宏伟计划的第二阶段在这里揭开了帷幕，这可能值得快速介绍一下。正如我们所说，这对他们在加州的业务具有变革性，但他们是美国最大的银行。

They have been itching for any way to expand to truly be the Bank of America. Why the hell did they change the name to Bank of America? It's not because they wanted to be the Bank of California. They're like, maybe this is our path. California is only 10% of the US population.

他们一直渴望以任何方式扩展，真正成为美国银行。他们为什么要把名字改成美国银行？不是因为他们想成为加州银行。他们想，也许这是我们的道路。加州只占美国人口的 10%。

In 1966, they create the BankAmericard service organization with the express purpose of licensing out the BankAmericard program and network to banks across the country, across all 50 states. This is the seed of Visa.

1966 年，他们创建了 BankAmericard 服务组织，明确目的是将 BankAmericard 计划和网络授权给全国各地的银行，覆盖所有 50 个州。这是 Visa 的起源。

Okay, David, how do we get to Visa? You have been telling me about the BankAmericard from Bank of America, and I opened this show saying Visa is not a bank and Visa doesn't have direct relationships. This is a big indirect thing, where they work with other banks. This is a big mismatch.

好的，大卫，我们怎么去 Visa？你一直在跟我讲美国银行的 BankAmericard，我在节目开头说 Visa 不是银行，Visa 没有直接关系。这是一个很大的间接关系，他们与其他银行合作。这是一个很大的不匹配。

David: The story is so wild because this first chapter that we just told, there's only one entity in the world that could have done this, Bank of America. In the second chapter, there is also only one person in the world that could have taken BankAmericard and turned it into Visa, and that is Dee Hock.

David：这个故事太疯狂了，因为我们刚刚讲述的第一章中，世界上只有一个实体可以做到这一点，那就是美国银行。在第二章中，世界上也只有一个人可以将 BankAmericard 变成 Visa，那就是 Dee Hock。

Here we are in 1966. B of A now starts going around to all the other consumer banks in other states and selling them on joining the network as BankAmericard licensees. The deal is that you pay B of A a $25,000 franchise fee to get your franchise of the BankAmericard. This is like Wendy's or something. Plus you pay them a percentage of the gross transaction revenues. It literally is like a McDonald's. This is wild.

现在是 1966 年。美国银行现在开始去其他州的所有其他消费银行，向他们推销加入网络成为 BankAmericard 的特许经营者。协议是你支付美国银行 25,000 美元的特许经营费来获得你的 BankAmericard 特许经营权。这就像温迪汉堡或类似的东西。此外，你还要支付他们一定比例的总交易收入。这简直就像麦当劳。这太疯狂了。

The executives must have just been throwing party after party, because (a) this whole thing turbocharged their own business, (b) now they're like, oh, we're going to make all the other consumer banks in the country essentially into serfs in our kingdom here.

高管们一定是一场接一场地举办派对，因为(a)这整个事情加速了他们自己的业务，(b)现在他们就像，哦，我们要把全国其他的消费银行基本上变成我们王国里的农奴。

Ben: One of the assumptions they made was correct, and the other one was too hubris. The first assumption is a good business model decision, which is, okay, we've now created this distributed asset, which is all these customers with our card that want to use our card at lots of merchants.

本：他们做出的一个假设是正确的，而另一个假设则过于自负。第一个假设是一个好的商业模式决策，也就是说，好吧，我们现在创建了这个分布式资产，也就是所有这些持有我们卡片的客户，他们希望在许多商家使用我们的卡片。

People still weren't using credit cards the way we do today, just treating it like cash and using it for coffees and little things here and there. It was still treated as, this is the card for big purchases, some of which I may want to finance and decide later.

人们当时还不像我们今天这样使用信用卡，只是把它当作现金，用来买咖啡和一些小东西。它仍然被视为用于大额消费的卡，其中一些我可能想要融资并稍后决定。

David: It was also an intensely private thing, a taboo thing, because when you were using a credit card these days, you were implicitly saying I'm using debt to buy this transaction. You didn't want other people to necessarily know that.

大卫：这也是一件非常私密的事情，一件禁忌的事情，因为当你现在使用信用卡时，你实际上是在说我用债务来购买这笔交易。你不想让其他人知道这一点。

Ben: It's a bit odd. But consumers clearly did want to use this thing for some subset of the purposes that they did today. Bank of America is leaning into it and saying, we've got this asset, surely we can leverage that for great gain.

本：这有点奇怪。但显然消费者确实想用这个东西来实现他们今天的一些目的。美国银行正在倾斜并表示，我们有这个资产，肯定可以利用它获得巨大的收益。

But the specific implementation of it was a bad assumption, where they said, the way that we can take advantage of the fact that now all these consumers have the card, all these merchants out there, and accept the card, is this weird franchising thing.

但其具体实施是一个糟糕的假设，他们说，我们可以利用现在所有这些消费者都有卡，所有这些商家都接受卡的事实的方式，是这种奇怪的特许经营。

David: The bad assumption was that other banks would consent to basically being serfs in their kingdom. But at the outset, these other banks see the power and now that B of A is telling them of what this has done for B of A. They're like, wow, this is already the biggest charge card credit network in America, if not in the world, we can now bring this to our state. I think B of A offers exclusivity to banks in geographic areas too to start. That eventually, of course, gets dropped, but it does tempt a lot of people.

大卫：错误的假设是其他银行会同意基本上成为他们王国中的农奴。但一开始，这些其他银行看到了这种力量，现在美国银行告诉他们这对美国银行的影响。他们就像，哇，这已经是美国乃至世界上最大的信用卡网络，我们现在可以将其带到我们的州。我认为美国银行也向地理区域的银行提供独家权利以开始。当然，最终这会被取消，但这确实吸引了很多人。

Within two years, by 1968, a couple of hundred banks had signed up. There are six million card holders across the country and beyond the country. Actually, Barclays Bank in the UK had signed up to be a franchisee of BankAmericard back in the day.

在两年内，到 1968 年，已有几百家银行签约。全国及国外有六百万持卡人。实际上，英国的巴克莱银行早在那时就签约成为 BankAmericard 的特许经营商。

Ben: What year is this?

本：这是什么年份？

David: This was in the mid-60s.

大卫：这是在 60 年代中期。

Ben: That's way earlier than I realized for international expansion.

本：这比我意识到的国际扩张要早得多。

David: It was already out of the US, because the system is a great system. But as this expands beyond B of A, it becomes clear that a bunch of stuff that were either just assumptions or ways of business within B of A, or things they didn't have to worry about isn't going to scale to hundreds of banks, all 50 states, multiple countries around the world.

大卫：它已经在美国之外了，因为这个系统是一个很好的系统。但是随着它扩展到美国银行之外，很明显，一些在美国银行内只是假设或业务方式的东西，或者他们不必担心的事情，将无法扩展到数百家银行、所有 50 个州、世界各地的多个国家。

One of the examples I alluded to earlier, in California, in the Bank of America–owned and operated BankAmericard system, usually all parties in the transaction were Bank of America customers. There wasn't really any difference between the bank of the consumer, the cardholder, and the bank of the merchant. B of A controls both sides. Once they expand the network and let other banks in, all of a sudden, that's almost never the case.

我之前提到的一个例子，在加利福尼亚，由美国银行拥有和运营的 BankAmericard 系统中，交易中的所有各方通常都是美国银行的客户。消费者的银行、持卡人的银行和商家的银行之间实际上没有任何区别。美国银行控制着双方。一旦他们扩展网络并让其他银行加入，情况几乎从未如此。

Ben: B of A realized that the cardinal sin of many entrepreneurs, which is, my particular situation is actually not a pattern of several other customers. It's actually an n of one. I'm idiosyncratic. When I'm just making the same assumptions about all the future customers about serving my own needs, that's actually a false assumption.

本：美国银行意识到许多企业家的致命错误，即我的特殊情况实际上不是其他几个客户的模式。实际上是一个独特的个例。我是特立独行的。当我只是对所有未来客户做出与满足自己需求相同的假设时，这实际上是一个错误的假设。

David: B of A has no distinction between what ultimately now in the Visa network, MasterCard, and others is called issuing banks—these are the banks that give the cards to the customers—and merchant banks that are the banks of the merchants. It's all just one for B of A.

大卫：美国银行在 Visa 网络、万事达卡和其他网络中没有区分所谓的发卡银行——这些是向客户提供卡片的银行——和商户银行，即商家的银行。对于美国银行来说，这一切都是一样的。

Ben: These merchant banks—we'll come back to some of this terminology later—have gone on to become the acquiring bank, because this is the bank that acquires the merchant relationship as a customer.

本：这些商业银行——我们稍后会回到一些术语上——已经成为收单银行，因为这是获取商户关系作为客户的银行。

David: Now in this new world, where there are different banks on each side of the transaction, this creates the need for a network and operational services to settle those transactions. This comes to be known as interchange. Interchange fees are, obviously, what Visa does today.

大卫：现在在这个新世界中，每笔交易的两边都有不同的银行，这就产生了对网络和运营服务的需求来结算这些交易。这被称为交换。交换费显然就是 Visa 今天所做的。

Ben: This is the first moment that we start to see a departure from what American Express was doing. The original BankAmericard was very similar to American Express and Diners Club where they were closed-loop systems. It was a bank that issued a card to be used at a payment terminal, that all stayed within the bank's closed-loop network.

本：这是我们开始看到与美国运通所做的不同之处的第一个时刻。最初的 BankAmericard 与美国运通和大来俱乐部非常相似，它们都是闭环系统。这是一家银行发行的卡片，用于支付终端，所有这些都在银行的闭环网络内。

With this new BankAmericard licensee system that they're starting to develop here that would become Visa, it's an open-loop system. It's, hey, there's one bank on one side who owns the customer, who owns the cardholder and one bank on another side. We're going to enable those systems to talk to each other, but they're not the same party. This is an open-loop now.

随着他们在这里开始开发的新 BankAmericard 许可证系统，这将成为 Visa，这是一个开放式系统。就是说，一边有一个银行拥有客户，拥有持卡人，另一边有另一个银行。我们将使这些系统能够相互通信，但它们不是同一方。这现在是一个开放式系统。

David: This interchange thing, all of the other banks that are now signing up to become B of A franchisees for the BankAmericard system, come to B of A and they're like, hey, this whole thing is a problem. Bank of America isn't providing any service to do this. There are also all these costs that these other banks are incurring because they need to figure out this interchange thing.

大卫：这个交换的事情，所有现在签约成为美国银行 BankAmericard 系统特许经营商的其他银行，来到美国银行，他们就像，嘿，这整个事情是个问题。美国银行没有提供任何服务来解决这个问题。其他银行也在承担这些成本，因为他们需要弄清楚这个交换的事情。

Ben: The problem they're experiencing is like, hey, Bank of America, how did you build all the technology...

本：他们遇到的问题就像，嘿，美国银行，你们是如何构建所有技术的……

David: To do this? Bank of America's response was, we didn't have that problem because in our corner of the world, we're the bank on both sides.

大卫：要这样做吗？美国银行的回应是，我们没有这个问题，因为在我们的世界里，我们是双方的银行。

Ben: We're a closed-loop.

本：我们是一个闭环。

David: I don't know. You guys figure it out. This sounds like a you problem, not a me problem.

大卫：我不知道。你们自己解决吧。这听起来是你们的问题，不是我的问题。

Ben: I see. When these banks are coming to Bank of America, they're not actually complaining about price in any way. They're literally just saying, how do you solve this problem?

本：我明白了。当这些银行来到美国银行时，他们实际上并没有在任何方面抱怨价格。他们只是字面上在说，你如何解决这个问题？

David: No, I don't think price was an issue. I think it was this and a set of other things along these lines, where the franchisees were like, hey, we signed up for a franchise, you operate the whole system. Bank of America was like, no, no, we sold you a marketing system.

大卫：不，我不认为价格是个问题。我认为是这些事情和其他类似的事情，加盟商就像，嘿，我们签了加盟合同，你们运营整个系统。美国银行就像，不，不，我们卖给你的是一个营销系统。

Ben: I see. It's like, you buy a McDonald's franchise, they ship you some golden arches, and they're like, good luck figuring out how to make cheeseburgers.

本：我明白了。这就像你买了一个麦当劳的特许经营权，他们给你运来一些金色拱门，然后就说，祝你好运，自己琢磨怎么做芝士汉堡吧。

David: That is exactly right. To be somewhat fair to Bank of America here, the golden arches are worth a lot. The BankAmericard, three colored bands, blue, white, and gold, are also worth an incredible amount here.

大卫：那完全正确。为了对美国银行稍微公平一点，金色拱门的价值很高。BankAmericard，蓝色、白色和金色的三色带，在这里也价值非凡。

Ben: And of course, the ability to actually be on the network that sends those payments, right?

本：当然，还有实际在发送这些付款的网络上的能力，对吧？

David: Yes, of course. The network has incredible value. Back to the brand and the marketing. As all these other banks are considering whether to become franchisees of BankAmericard, some of them are like, no, I'm not going to do that. Some of the ones who do become franchisees, really, all the ones who become franchisees become very frustrated. Of course, people are going to start competing systems.

大卫：是的，当然。这个网络具有难以置信的价值。回到品牌和营销。当所有这些其他银行在考虑是否成为 BankAmericard 的特许经营商时，其中一些人会说，不，我不会那样做。那些成为特许经营商的人，实际上，所有成为特许经营商的人都变得非常沮丧。当然，人们会开始竞争系统。

Right in this time over this year or two period, a bunch of local, geographical, competing credit card systems by various bank consortiums come together. Those pretty quickly all merge into a national association called Interbank, which—spoiler alert—Interbank is MasterCard.

就在这一两年期间，各种银行财团的本地、地理竞争信用卡系统聚集在一起。这些很快都合并成一个名为 Interbank 的全国性协会，剧透一下，Interbank 就是万事达卡。

At this point in time, Interbank is a Franken network. There's no common brand, mark, or visual identity for all of these cards. Now, you're trying to make this payments network operate. How do you as a consumer know that my card that I got from XYZ or Bank of Illinois that's part of the interbank network, supposedly?

在这个时间点，Interbank 是一个弗兰肯网络。这些卡没有共同的品牌、标志或视觉识别。现在，你正试图让这个支付网络运作。作为消费者，你如何知道我从 XYZ 或伊利诺伊银行获得的卡是 Interbank 网络的一部分呢？

Now I go somewhere, I've got that card, it looks like one thing. I'm looking at this store at this restaurant or whatever. They've got a thing on the door that says they take something that looks totally different. I don't know that this is going to work, even though it actually might work because it's part of the MasterCard Interbank network.

现在我去某个地方，我有那张卡，看起来像一回事。我在看这家商店或这家餐馆或其他地方。他们在门上贴了一个东西，说他们接受看起来完全不同的东西。我不知道这是否会奏效，尽管它实际上可能会奏效，因为它是万事达银行间网络的一部分。

Ben: I see. It's like when I'm trying to figure out I have to keep pulling up Alaska Airlines partner network to figure out what international airline I should fly since I pay no attention to anything other than, well, it's Alaska. Was it Oneworld?

本：我明白了。这就像我试图弄清楚时，我必须不断查看阿拉斯加航空的合作伙伴网络，以确定我应该乘坐哪家国际航空公司，因为除了阿拉斯加，我不关注其他任何事情。是寰宇一家吗？

David: Oneworld, yeah. That's today with the Internet, you can do that. Back in the 1960s, there's literally no way for a prospective customer of a merchant to know by looking at their card and looking at the sign on the door if that card is going to be accepted, unless they all have the same brand and mark.

大卫：Oneworld，是的。如今有了互联网，你可以做到这一点。在 20 世纪 60 年代，商家的潜在客户根本无法通过查看他们的卡片和门上的标志来知道该卡是否会被接受，除非它们都有相同的品牌和标志。

Ben: It's so funny. This is the original problem of Diners Club, too, because I think it was Diners Club that originally shipped a little folded thing that fit in your wallet with the card, that was a little booklet, that was a list of all the merchants so you could literally know if the card would be accepted at the restaurant you're at.

本：这太有趣了。这也是大来俱乐部的原始问题，因为我认为最初是大来俱乐部随卡片一起寄送了一个小折叠物，可以放在钱包里，是一本小册子，上面列出了所有商家，这样你就可以确切知道你所在的餐厅是否接受这张卡。

David: That's right. But now, the scale that these networks are starting to be at, obviously that's not tenable. Back to the mark. What these franchisees are buying from Bank of America and what Bank of America is like, hey, this is what we're selling you, it has value, it's access to the network, but the network is homogenous, it all is the BankAmericard name, brand, and importantly, mark. What are the colors of Visa? I'm sure everybody listening probably around the world knows this. It's blue, white, and gold.

大卫：没错。但是现在，这些网络开始达到的规模显然是不可持续的。回到标志。这些特许经营商从美国银行购买的东西，以及美国银行说的，嘿，这就是我们卖给你的，它有价值，它是对网络的访问，但网络是同质的，都是 BankAmericard 的名字、品牌，重要的是，标志。Visa 的颜色是什么？我相信全世界的听众都知道。这是蓝色、白色和金色。

Ben: Which is the hills of California, right?

本：那是加利福尼亚的山丘，对吗？

David: There's this amazing origin story to this. It's super reminiscent of the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper that is the most viewed photo in the world, the hills. It's actually in Sonoma, California.

大卫：这有一个很棒的起源故事。这非常让人想起世界上观看次数最多的照片——Windows XP Bliss 壁纸，那些山丘。它实际上在加利福尼亚的索诺玛。

The story is the B of A team, when they were first rolling out the program, the guy tasked with card design lived in Pleasanton, California, in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay area, where it's pleasant.

这个故事是关于美国银行团队的，当他们第一次推出这个项目时，负责卡片设计的人住在加利福尼亚州的普莱森顿，位于旧金山湾区的东湾，那里的环境宜人。

One fine spring morning, he looks out his back door at the local hillside, the sky is this beautiful blue with white puffy clouds, very much like the Windows XP bliss background, and the hill is covered with beautiful golden colored California poppies in bloom. He rushes back inside, he paints an abstracted version of his beautiful hillside. Voila, the three bands, blue, white, gold BankAmericard Visa.

一个晴朗的春日早晨，他从后门望向当地的山坡，天空是美丽的蓝色，带有白色的绵云，非常像 Windows XP 的幸福背景，山坡上覆盖着盛开的金色加州罂粟花。他匆匆回到屋内，画下了他美丽山坡的抽象版本。瞧，三条带，蓝色、白色、金色的 BankAmericard Visa。

Ben: This would go on to be incredibly valuable to plaster on your storefront and say, we accept BankAmericard here, and that just means your sales are going to go up. Friction to purchase goods goes down, customers are excited to spend with you, because they're shiny, cool things that they like spending money on. It works there, and it's good for your business to be able to accept it.

本：这将成为一个非常有价值的东西，可以贴在你的店面上，并说，我们在这里接受美国银行信用卡，这意味着你的销售额将会上升。购买商品的摩擦减少，顾客很乐意在你这里消费，因为这些是他们喜欢花钱购买的闪亮、酷炫的东西。它在这里有效，并且能够接受它对你的业务有好处。

David: It's so wild that today, we would think, oh, what's a moat? What's a competitive advantage? What's durable? You need technology advantage, even how we think of brands. All the companies we've covered on the show, it's so much more than this. But it was so simple back in the day. It was just could you create a two-sided network where there was a common signal of acceptance?

大卫：今天我们会觉得，哦，护城河是什么？竞争优势是什么？什么是持久的？你需要技术优势，甚至我们如何看待品牌。我们在节目中讨论的所有公司，远不止这些。但在过去，这一切都很简单。只是你能否创建一个双边网络，其中有一个共同的接受信号？

From B of A's perspective, they're like, yeah, we did all the work. We created this. This is what you are franchising from us. Take it or leave it. From the franchisees perspective, as we were talking about, they're like, you gave us a marketing program, how do we run this damn thing?

从美国银行的角度来看，他们会说，是的，我们做了所有的工作。我们创造了这个。这就是你从我们这里特许经营的东西。要么接受，要么放弃。从特许经营者的角度来看，正如我们所讨论的，他们会说，你给了我们一个营销计划，我们该如何运营这个该死的东西？

Ben: They got this marketing program. How did it literally work, because this is a pre-magnetic stripe?

本：他们有这个营销计划。它究竟是如何运作的，因为这是一个磁条之前的？

David: There's no technology here.

大卫：这里没有技术。

Ben: This is literally like, cool, I've become a Bank of America licensee, what transactions does that let me do, and how does that happen?

本：这简直太酷了，我成了美国银行的被许可人，这让我可以进行哪些交易，这怎么发生的？

David: The banks have to resort all the way back to how checks worked back in the 1800s, early 1900s in the US, where it was all decentralized.

大卫：银行不得不回到 19 世纪和 20 世纪初在美国支票运作的方式，那时一切都是去中心化的。

Ben: The bank would sign up a merchant in their local town.

本：银行会在他们的本地城镇签约一个商户。

David: Rhe banks would take the sales drafts from their merchants that the merchants had brought to them, and then they would go individually decentralized mail around the country to the issuing banks, the card holder banks, to get the money.

大卫：银行会从商户那里拿到销售单据，然后将其分散寄送到全国各地的发卡银行、持卡人银行，以获取资金。

The way they've financed all this was a discount fee, just like checks back in the day like, oh, hey, this sales draft is for $100, this is all really hard to figure out, so, okay, you give me $97 instead or you give me $90 instead. There was no standardization. It wasn't like a set discount fee, it was just whatever they negotiated with one another.

他们为这一切融资的方式是折扣费，就像过去的支票一样，比如，哦，嘿，这个销售单是 100 美元，这真的很难弄清楚，所以，好吧，你给我 97 美元或者你给我 90 美元。没有标准化。它不像是一个固定的折扣费，只是他们彼此协商的结果。

Ben: The sales drafts get handed to the licensee. Let's say you're running a department store and keep going with the Illinois example that you said. You're running a Chicago department store. After a whole day of sales, you've got a bunch of sales drafts where you say, all these customers came in with BankAmericard. They said good for the money, so I gave them the goods. And now I'm holding the sales draft.

本：销售单据交给被许可人。假设你在经营一家百货商店，并继续你提到的伊利诺伊州的例子。你在经营一家芝加哥的百货商店。经过一整天的销售，你有一堆销售单据，上面写着，所有这些顾客都使用了 BankAmericard。他们说钱没问题，所以我把商品给了他们。现在我手里拿着销售单据。

I actually have no idea if they were good for the money, but the fact that I have a sales draft and the fact that I, the merchant, have a contract with a bank, and that bank has a contract with Bank of America, means that I feel very good that I'm going to get my 93¢ on the dollar or whatever. The bank is responsible, probably?

实际上，我不知道它们是否物有所值，但我有销售草稿，而且我，作为商家，与一家银行有合同，而那家银行与美国银行有合同，这让我觉得我会得到 93 美分或其他金额。我会感到很满意。银行可能负责？

David: Yeah, so the merchant bank, that acquiring bank…

David：是的，所以商人银行，那个收单银行……

Ben: Mails all those, effectively, invoices to all the other banks…

本：有效地将所有这些发票邮寄给所有其他银行……

David: That the people who bought the goods there to their banks with their cards, and there was no standardized discount.

大卫：那些在那里购买商品的人用他们的卡到他们的银行，但没有标准化的折扣。

Ben: This is ludicrously expensive.

本：这太贵了。

David: It's chaos. People are so pissed, and again be amazed like, yeah, whatever.

大卫：一片混乱。人们非常生气，然后又像，嗯，随便吧，感到惊讶。

Ben: Yeah, whatever. For us, we just moved a few numbers internally; we actually didn't have to do any of this.

本：是啊，无所谓。对我们来说，我们只是内部调整了一些数字；实际上我们根本不需要做这些。

David: And you all are paying us now money, so our empire dreams are coming true.

大卫：你们现在都在给我们钱，所以我们的帝国梦想正在实现。

Ben: Wow. 本：哇。

David: This is maybe painting Bank of America into poor light. Like I said, nobody knew. This is the first time that a banking charge card/credit card system is operating at scale in the country. Even though BankAmericard had been operating for a couple of years internally to B of A in California, now it's going across state lines. This had never been a problem before—the merchant banks versus the consumer banks, the issuing banks, et cetera.

大卫：这可能会让美国银行显得不太好。就像我说的，没有人知道。这是该国首次大规模运营银行收费卡/信用卡系统。尽管 BankAmericard 在加州的美国银行内部已经运营了几年，但现在它正在跨州运营。以前从未出现过这样的问题——商户银行与消费者银行、发卡银行等等。

All of these tensions come to a head in October 1968 when the licensees, all the franchisees of Bank of America, all these other banks across the country, demand a summit. They need to air their grievances with the parent with Bank of America. This is untenable, we can't operate like this, we got to fix this. B of A says, okay, fine. We'll all get together in Columbus, Ohio.

所有这些紧张局势在 1968 年 10 月达到高潮，当时所有美国银行的特许经营者、全国各地的其他银行要求召开峰会。他们需要向美国银行的母公司表达不满。这种情况无法维持，我们不能这样运作，必须解决这个问题。美国银行说，好吧，没问题。我们将在俄亥俄州哥伦布市聚会。

Ben: Really? No way. 本：真的吗？不可能。

David: In the middle of the country. You didn't know this?

David：在国家的中部。你不知道吗？

Ben: No. 本：不。

David: I thought you knew this. Yeah. Columbus, Ohio. Ohio State.

大卫：我以为你知道这个。是的。哥伦布，俄亥俄州。俄亥俄州立大学。

Ben: Wow. Amazing. 本：哇。太棒了。

David: This is where the birth of Visa happens. The summit gets organized. For the franchisee banks, this is becoming existential for their businesses. They're racking up such huge losses. This is such chaos. They're sending senior representatives from the banks, everybody running their card programs. Everybody's converging in Columbus. B of A sends two mid-level marketing managers to go face the angry mob. None of the senior executives from B of A could be bothered enough to go deal with this, which just says everything.

大卫：这就是 Visa 诞生的地方。峰会正在组织中。对于特许经营银行来说，这对他们的业务变得至关重要。他们正在积累如此巨大的损失。这是一片混乱。他们派出银行的高级代表，所有负责卡项目的人都来了。大家都聚集在哥伦布。美国银行派了两名中层营销经理去面对愤怒的人群。美国银行的高级管理人员没有一个愿意去处理这件事，这说明了一切。

These poor guys who show up are literally facing pitchforks. The franchisees are incensed. They're incensed both because the situation sucks, and they're like, God dammit, B of A. Take us seriously. You have meddled in our entire businesses. This is in chaos. We got to fix this.

这些可怜的家伙出现时，真的是在面对干草叉。特许经营者们非常愤怒。他们愤怒是因为情况很糟糕，他们就像，上帝啊，见鬼去吧，美国银行。认真对待我们。你们干涉了我们整个业务。这是一片混乱。我们必须解决这个问题。

What did these two poor B of A guys do? Right before lunch on the second day, they're like, yo, we got to save our skins, we got to get out of here. Let's do the smart thing to make sure that everybody gets placated, but nothing actually happens. They don't have any authorization from Bank of America to do anything. They're just the people sent to face the mob.

这两个可怜的美国银行家伙做了什么？就在第二天午餐前，他们就像，哟，我们得保住自己的命，我们得离开这里。我们得做聪明的事来确保大家都满意，但实际上什么都不做。他们没有得到美国银行的任何授权去做任何事情。他们只是被派来面对人群的人。

Let's appoint a committee of licensees to "investigate" all of the operating problems and report back to us. They can come out to San Francisco. They can meet us at B of A headquarters, and we'll listen to their problems.

让我们任命一个由持证人组成的委员会来“调查”所有的运营问题并向我们汇报。他们可以来旧金山。他们可以在美国银行总部与我们会面，我们会听取他们的问题。

But unfortunately for their goals, they're very narrow goals that particular morning, but very, very fortunately for all involved, the franchisees, the world, consumers...

但不幸的是，他们的目标在那个特定的早晨非常狭隘，但对所有相关人员、特许经营者、世界、消费者来说，非常非常幸运的是...

Ben: In the long-term, at least.

本：至少从长远来看。

David: In the long-term, and also Bank of America in the long-term, one of the people that gets put on that committee is the BankAmericard franchisee program manager from a small bank in Seattle, the Seattle National Bank of Commerce, which would go on to become Rainier bank. Ironically, do you know what happened to Rainier bank? You can't make this stuff up.

大卫：从长远来看，以及美国银行从长远来看，被任命到那个委员会的人之一是来自西雅图一家小银行的 BankAmericard 特许经营计划经理，即西雅图国家商业银行，该银行后来成为雷尼尔银行。具有讽刺意味的是，你知道雷尼尔银行发生了什么吗？这种事情你都编不出来。

Ben: No, I don't, but I can guess where this is going.

本：不，我不知道，但我可以猜到这会怎样。

David: Once interstate banking regulations get loosened up, they get acquired by Bank of America, of course, in the 1990s. But for the moment, the person running their BankAmericard franchisee program is one Dee Hock, and I think you could really say on Dee's day, the founder of Visa.

大卫：一旦州际银行法规放宽，他们当然在 1990 年代被美国银行收购。但目前，负责他们 BankAmericard 特许经营计划的人是迪·霍克，我想你可以真正说在迪的时代，Visa 的创始人。

Ben: And one of the most interesting characters in anything we've ever studied, because he's not a tycoon the way that most of these people are.

本：在我们研究过的所有事物中，他是最有趣的角色之一，因为他不像大多数这些人那样是个大亨。

David: No, and we're going to talk about more about Dee in a minute, but just to keep the story going so we don't leave you all in suspense on Dee's day. During the lunch break, Dee has gotten put on this committee. He goes up to the two B of A guys and he's like, hey, rather than us just putting together a list of grievances and reporting back to you at B of A, what if instead, we do examine all the problems in this system, but what if we ourselves, this committee, design and propose a new way of operating the whole thing?

大卫：不，我们稍后会详细谈论迪，但为了不让你们对迪的一天感到悬念，我们继续讲故事。在午休时，迪被安排进了这个委员会。他走到两位 B of A 的人面前，说，嘿，与其我们只是列出一份不满清单然后向你们 B of A 汇报，不如我们自己，这个委员会，设计并提出一个新的操作整个系统的方法？

After some convincing, the B of A guys are like, sure. They're not agreeing to anything. Their goal is just to escape the mob anyway. They're like, whatever, if this makes you happy, if this lets us escape back to California, sure. Probably, almost assuredly, this is a committee we're talking about, nothing is going to come of this.

经过一些说服，B of A 的人就像，好吧。他们并没有同意任何事情。他们的目标只是逃离人群。他们就像，随便吧，如果这能让你开心，如果这能让我们逃回加州，好吧。可能，几乎可以肯定，我们谈论的是一个委员会，这不会有什么结果。

The whole summit reconvenes after lunch. Dee gets up on stage, not the Bank of America guys, and he proposes this idea to the group. He said, hey, we've got this committee. Rather than us taking a list of grievances back to B of A, what if we try to design a new way that the system could operate and operate better for everyone? They take a vote on it.

午餐后，整个峰会重新召开。Dee 走上舞台，而不是美国银行的人，他向小组提出了这个想法。他说，嘿，我们有这个委员会。与其把一堆不满带回美国银行，不如我们试着设计一种新方法，让系统能够更好地运作并为每个人服务得更好？他们对此进行了投票。

Everybody agrees, mostly, I think just because they wanted to get out of there, go back home, and away from this disaster of a meeting. They all get on planes, they all leave. Most of them probably think that nothing is ever going to come of this. Certainly the B of A guys thinking nothing is ever going to come of this, but Dee thinks he just got authorization to go create Visa.

大家都同意了，我想主要是因为他们想离开那里，回家，远离这场灾难般的会议。他们都上了飞机，都离开了。他们中的大多数人可能认为这不会有什么结果。当然，美国银行的人认为这不会有什么结果，但迪认为他刚刚获得了创建 Visa 的授权。

Ben: A whole new system. He has no power at this point, but he thinks he does.

本：一个全新的系统。他现在没有权力，但他认为自己有。

Okay, David, Dee Hock thinks he's got a mandate to go change things up in a big way and create some big crazy new proposal.

好的，大卫，迪·霍克认为他有权大幅度改变现状，并提出一些疯狂的新提案。

David: And he's not wrong. Fortune favors the bold, might you say?

大卫：他没错。你会说，幸运偏爱勇敢的人吗？

Ben: Yes. 本：是的。

David: To say a few more words about why this is so hard to organize this group of now competing banks to collaborate with one another, you've got multiple banks in the same state that are part of this system.

大卫：要多说几句关于为什么组织这个现在竞争的银行团体合作如此困难的原因，你在同一个州有多个银行是这个系统的一部分。

Let's take Illinois again to stick with this. You've got a bunch of banks in Illinois that are now all part of the BankAmericard payment network, which is intimately linked with their banking operations. If I'm any one of those banks, I would want to say, hey, I want to be the only bank in Illinois doing this. Okay, maybe there are a few others here with me, but I sure as hell want to shut the door to anybody else coming in and being part of this network.

我们再以伊利诺伊州为例来坚持这一点。你在伊利诺伊州有一堆银行，现在都属于 BankAmericard 支付网络的一部分，这与他们的银行业务密切相关。如果我是其中任何一家银行，我会想说，嘿，我想成为伊利诺伊州唯一这样做的银行。好吧，也许这里还有其他几家和我一起，但我肯定想关上门，不让其他人进来成为这个网络的一部分。

Whereas when you think about growing the value and power of the network, you want as many merchants and card holders in the system as possible. The merchants obviously want as many card holders as possible, and the card holders obviously want as many merchants as possible. That means that you need all the banks, because you need all the merchants, you need all the customers, you need all the banks.

然而，当你考虑增加网络的价值和力量时，你希望系统中有尽可能多的商家和持卡人。商家显然希望有尽可能多的持卡人，而持卡人显然希望有尽可能多的商家。这意味着你需要所有的银行，因为你需要所有的商家，你需要所有的客户，你需要所有的银行。

Ben: And you basically want it to happen as fast as possible. Maybe if you only allow 20% of the banks in America, or 20% of the banks in a state to be members of this thing, eventually, they can bootstrap the whole network, but it takes a lot of time to go door to door to door to door, and maybe that particular merchant doesn't want to take on a second baking relationship. They already have one, they're good.

本：而且你基本上希望它尽快发生。也许如果你只允许美国 20%的银行，或者一个州 20%的银行成为这个东西的成员，最终他们可以引导整个网络，但这需要花费大量时间逐家逐户地去做，也许那个特定的商家不想再建立第二个银行关系。他们已经有一个，他们觉得很好。

David: Totally. This is a classic two-sided network. You want to race to get ubiquity as fast as possible on both sides of the network.

大卫：完全正确。这是一个经典的双边网络。你想要尽快在网络的两边都达到普及。

As Dee goes off and reflects on all this, he realizes that the fundamental problem is you've got this huge and diverse set of banks that both directly compete with one another, but also if they're going to make this thing actually work, they need to collaborate and work together.

当迪反思这一切时，他意识到根本问题在于，你有一组庞大而多样化的银行，它们既直接相互竞争，但如果要让这件事真正奏效，它们也需要合作和共同努力。

That sounds like a really, really, really difficult problem to solve. Even if you could do that, how are you going to get the DOJ to let you do that? Antitrust is going to be an issue here for sure.

这听起来像是一个非常非常非常难以解决的问题。即使你能做到这一点，你打算如何让司法部允许你这样做？反垄断肯定会是一个问题。

But this is Dee. He's like, okay, if we could do this, what is the opportunity? We've seen what the opportunity is for Bank of America. That is the shining case study. At a minimum, this could do for all the other banks in the world what it has done for Bank of America. But even more than that, though, Bank of America was trying to stretch here.

但这是迪。他就像，好吧，如果我们能做到这一点，机会是什么？我们已经看到了美国银行的机会。这是一个闪亮的案例研究。至少，这可以为世界上所有其他银行做美国银行所做的事情。但更重要的是，美国银行在这里试图突破。

They got greedy to a certain extent in franchising this out to other banks, but other banks signed up for this. They were willing to pay both a franchise fee and a percentage of transaction volume to Bank of America, because the siren song, the reward of doing this was so great to them.

在将这项业务特许给其他银行时，他们在某种程度上变得贪婪，但其他银行也签约了。他们愿意向美国银行支付特许经营费和交易量的百分比，因为这样做的诱惑和回报对他们来说是如此之大。

Ben: Frankly, all powered by the fact that this is what consumers want.

本：坦率地说，这完全是因为这是消费者想要的。

David: Absolutely. In a certain way, this is, I don't want to say inevitable, because this is definitely not inevitable. But again, in the thought exercise of could you do this, the actual organization itself, the network, would have so much value.

大卫：当然可以。从某种意义上说，这不是不可避免的，因为这绝对不是不可避免的。但再次在思考这个问题时，实际的组织本身，网络，将会有很大的价值。

If you could get every bank in America, and then every bank in the world—and Dee is thinking big from the beginning—to be part of this, and you could power this global payments and credit network, and you were allowed to take a fee on the transaction volume for doing that, the value that you would unlock and generate begs the imagination to think about what this could be.

如果你能让美国的每家银行，然后是世界上的每家银行——而且迪从一开始就有宏大的想法——成为其中的一部分，并且你能够推动这个全球支付和信贷网络，并且你被允许对交易量收取费用，那么你将解锁和创造的价值让人不禁想象这可能会是什么。

Ben: And if we can grow the pie enough, would B of A be comfortable not owning the whole thing? That's the bottom line here.

本：如果我们能把蛋糕做大，B of A 会愿意不拥有整个蛋糕吗？这才是关键。

David: There's this great passage from him in his book, One From Many. He says, "Any organization that could guarantee, transport, and settle transactions in the form of arranged electronic particles," that's what he calls digital information, "24 hours a day, 7 days a week around the globe, would have a market. Every exchange of value in the world that beggared the imagination. The necessary technology had been discovered and would be available in geometrically increasing abundance at geometrically diminishing costs.

大卫：在他的书《合众为一》中有一段很精彩的文字。他说：“任何能够以排列好的电子粒子形式保证、传输和结算交易的组织，”他称之为数字信息，“全天候、全球范围内运作，都会有市场。世界上每一次超乎想象的价值交换。必要的技术已经被发现，并将以几何级数增加的丰富性和几何级数减少的成本提供。”

But there was a problem. No bank could do it. No hierarchical stock corporation could do it. No nation state could do it. In fact, no existing form of organization we could think of could do it.

但是有一个问题。没有银行能做到。没有等级制的股份公司能做到。没有民族国家能做到。事实上，我们能想到的任何现有组织形式都无法做到。

On a hunch, I made an estimate of the financial resources of all the banks in the world. It dwarfed the resources of most nations. Jointly, they could do it, but how? It would require a transcendental organization linking together it wholly new ways, an unimaginable complex of diverse institutions and individuals." This is the opportunity, and this is what he essentially takes to Bank of America.

凭直觉，我估算了全世界所有银行的财力。它使大多数国家的资源相形见绌。联合起来，他们可以做到，但怎么做呢？这需要一个超越的组织，以全新的方式将其连接在一起，一个难以想象的由各种机构和个人组成的复杂体。这就是机会，这就是他基本上带到美国银行的东西。

Now we have to say a few words about Dee, because this situation is nuts. Dee is a banker. He is running the BankAmericard franchise program at what will become Rainier bank in Seattle. But he's an outsider, he's a nobody, he's not senior in a small bank in Seattle.

现在我们必须说几句关于迪的话，因为这种情况太疯狂了。迪是一名银行家。他正在西雅图未来成为雷尼尔银行的地方运营 BankAmericard 特许经营计划。但他是个局外人，他是个无名小卒，他在西雅图的一家小银行里没有高级职位。

He was raised in rural Utah, basically in poverty during the Depression. He didn't go to a four year college. He only has an associate's degree. He bounced around in a bunch of random consumer finance jobs on the West Coast, all of which he got fired from because he's too insubordinate.

他在犹他州的农村长大，基本上是在大萧条期间的贫困中长大的。他没有上四年制大学。他只有一个副学士学位。他在西海岸的一些随机消费金融工作中辗转，但因为他太不服从而被解雇。

He is now walking into the boardroom in Bank of America, which is what he's going to do, and standing toe-to-toe with the Vice Chairman of Bank of America and saying, I think you should give me the BankAmericard program because it is in your self-interest to do so, which almost literally are the words that come out of his mouth in that boardroom. It's just absolutely wild.

他现在正走进美国银行的会议室，正如他所计划的那样，与美国银行的副主席面对面地站着，并说，我认为你应该把 BankAmericard 项目交给我，因为这样做符合你的自身利益，这几乎就是他在那个会议室里说的话。这真是太疯狂了。

Ben: Fortune favors the bold.

本：幸运偏爱勇敢的人。

David: Fortune favors the bold.

大卫：幸运偏爱勇敢的人。

Ben: Importantly, though, fortune favors the bold who have done the work to figure out how to align incentives such that a logical person will think through and come to the same conclusion he has.

本：然而，重要的是，幸运总是眷顾那些勇敢且努力工作以找出如何调整激励措施的人，这样一个理性的人就会思考并得出与他相同的结论。

David: This is the thing, Dee is an odd duck for sure, but he is amazingly smart. He's basically all self-taught. He's incredibly well read. He started reading every book on his little farm in Utah that he could get his hands on when he was seven years old.

大卫：事情是这样的，迪确实是个怪人，但他非常聪明。他基本上是自学成才的。他读了很多书。他从七岁起就开始阅读他在犹他州的小农场里能找到的每一本书。

Super importantly—this is a Steve Jobs you-can-only-connect-the-dots-looking-backward moment—he was not very good at sports in high school, so he got into debate instead, and then he also did debate in college when he did his associates degree. He uses all of the techniques that he learned from competitive debate and persuasion.

非常重要的是——这是一个类似史蒂夫·乔布斯“你只能向后看才能连接点滴”的时刻——他在高中时体育并不太好，所以他转而参加辩论，然后在大学攻读副学士学位时也参加了辩论。他运用了从竞争性辩论和说服中学到的所有技巧。

He has this amazing quote. He says, "During my years of college debate, I held fast to the notion that until someone has repeatedly said no and adamantly refuses another word on the subject, they are in the process of saying yes and don't know it." Dee basically is the prototypical Silicon Valley founder. He's just a generation too early and in the wrong industry.

他有一句很棒的名言。他说：“在我大学辩论的那些年里，我始终坚持这样的观念：除非有人反复说不，并坚决拒绝再谈论这个话题，否则他们其实是在说是，只是自己还不知道。”迪基本上是硅谷创始人的原型。他只是早了一代，并且在错误的行业。

Ben: I once had a Silicon Valley founder give a talk at a startup weekend I ran 10–12 years ago who said, until your company shuts down, you are just in the act of succeeding.

本：我曾经在我大约 10 到 12 年前举办的一个创业周末活动中请了一位硅谷创始人演讲，他说，在你的公司关闭之前，你只是在成功的过程中。

David: Totally, cut from the same cloth right down to every single stitch. There's one other important aspect to Dee that I think we should highlight here, that enables him and all of Visa to succeed. That's that he's about as far from the man and image of JP Morgan, as you could imagine.

大卫：完全一样，从每一针每一线都一样。我认为我们应该在这里强调迪的另一个重要方面，这使他和整个 Visa 能够成功。那就是他与 JP 摩根的形象和形象相去甚远。

That is what enables this, because if he were the CEO of another bank, a senior executive, or some well-respected person, marching into the Bank of America boardroom, standing toe to toe with their board and saying, I want you to give me your very precious crown jewel, there's no way it would work.

这就是为什么能够实现这一点，因为如果他是另一家银行的首席执行官、高级管理人员或某个备受尊敬的人，走进美国银行的董事会会议室，与他们的董事会面对面地说，我希望你们把你们非常珍贵的皇冠上的明珠给我，那是不可能成功的。

Of course, Bank of America would say, what's in it for you, I don't trust you, I don't believe you. Even if they did trust and believe this person, they would lose all of their face and reputation if they were subordinating themselves to somebody who could conceivably be their equal.

当然，美国银行会说，这对你有什么好处，我不信任你，我不相信你。即使他们信任并相信这个人，如果他们屈从于一个可能与他们平等的人，他们也会失去所有的面子和声誉。

Dee's just gone into B of A with this grand vision of, you should give me this incredible asset, because the value that it will create outside of your hands and your fractional ownership thereof will be so much greater than what it could be on its own. Miraculously, that works.

迪刚刚带着这个宏伟的愿景进入了美国银行，你应该给我这个不可思议的资产，因为它在你手中和你部分拥有的情况下所创造的价值将远远大于它自身的价值。奇迹般地，这奏效了。

Ben: Would you rather own a few percent of something that is the default global way that commerce is produced? Or would you rather own 100% of BankAmericard’s?

本：你是愿意拥有全球默认商业生产方式的一小部分股份，还是愿意拥有 100%的 BankAmericard 股份？

David: Totally incredible that Dee actually convinces Bank of America to do this. Nobody in the world would have thought that this could happen. But now, the work is just beginning, because there are two things now that he needs to do. (1) He hasn't actually figured out how to architect this thing such that it works, so he's got to go do that. (2) Now he has to go back to all of the soon-to-be former franchisee banks and convince them why they should do this.

大卫：真是难以置信，迪竟然说服了美国银行去做这件事。世界上没有人会想到这会发生。但现在，工作才刚刚开始，因为他现在需要做两件事。（1）他还没有真正想出如何设计这个东西使其能够运作，所以他必须去做这件事。（2）现在他必须回到所有即将成为前特许经营银行的地方，说服他们为什么应该这样做。

This is a different argument from what he made to B of A. B of A, he's trying to get them to give him the asset. With the other banks, he actually needs to get them to change their behavior. He needs to be able to go to say the couple of banks in Illinois that are existing franchisees of the BankAmericard system and say, hey, the new regulations, the new operating laws for this organization are going to be all the banks of Illinois can join, and we actively want to go convince all of your competitors to come join this system.

这与他对美国银行提出的论点不同。对于美国银行，他试图让他们把资产给他。对于其他银行，他实际上需要让他们改变行为。他需要能够去对伊利诺伊州的几家银行说，这些银行是 BankAmericard 系统的现有特许经营商，并说，嘿，新的法规，这个组织的新运营法律将是伊利诺伊州的所有银行都可以加入，我们积极想说服你们所有的竞争对手来加入这个系统。

Ben: I see. He's basically coming to them with a waiver and saying, I want you to waive your exclusivity to some territory because in our new construct here or we're all working together, you and everyone else is agreeing that it's good for the value of us all if we waive our exclusivity.

本：我明白了。他基本上是带着一份豁免书来找他们，并说，我希望你们放弃对某些地区的独占权，因为在我们新的构架中，或者说我们大家一起工作时，你和其他人都同意，如果我们放弃独占权，对我们所有人的价值都是有利的。

David: You know what? This is back in our NFL episode.

David：你知道吗？这回到了我们的 NFL 那一集。

Ben: Exactly right. 本：完全正确。

David: When the NFL started negotiating national television rights collectively as an organization, a bunch of the individual teams hated that because they were like, if I'm the Jets, I'm making more money in my New York metro area doing my own TV deals than I'm going to get as a share from you, the NFL of a national deal. But in the long run, it was absolutely the right decision and value accretive to everybody, including the Jets that the NFL centralized this.

大卫：当 NFL 开始作为一个组织集体谈判全国电视转播权时，一些球队非常讨厌，因为他们觉得，如果我是喷气机队，我在纽约大都会区通过自己的电视交易赚的钱比从你们 NFL 的全国交易中分到的份额要多。但从长远来看，NFL 将其集中化绝对是正确的决定，并且对包括喷气机队在内的所有人都有增值作用。

Ben: You'd rather be the Jets with their proportional share of the $14 billion a year TV deal that the NFL has today than whatever their very fat contract was alone in the 60s or 70s.

本：你宁愿成为拥有今天 NFL 每年 140 亿美元电视协议比例份额的喷气机队，而不是他们在 60 年代或 70 年代单独拥有的非常丰厚的合同。

David: It is exactly the same thing here. Okay, how's this whole thing going to work? Dee and a few of his other fellow committee members go to Sausalito, California, just north of San Francisco, just across the Golden Gate Bridge. And they do an off site for a couple of days at a hotel in Sausalito. There, they come up with a number of operating regulations guidelines for this hypothetical new entity, four of which we're going to talk about here that are super critical.

大卫：这里的情况完全一样。好吧，这整个事情将如何运作？迪和他的几位委员会成员去加利福尼亚的索萨利托，就在旧金山以北，金门大桥对面。他们在索萨利托的一家酒店进行为期几天的外部会议。在那里，他们为这个假设的新实体制定了一些操作规章指南，其中四个我们将在这里讨论，这些都是非常关键的。

(1) Ownership of this new organization, that's going to be called National BankAmericard Inc, the new owner of the BankAmericard program, is going to be in the form of irrevocable, non-transferable rights of participation. You're not going to own stock in this thing. There's no equity. The way that you have ownership and the percentage ownership that you have in the network is by participating in it and the amount of volume that you are contributing to the network.

(1) 这个新组织的所有权，将被称为 National BankAmericard Inc，是 BankAmericard 计划的新所有者，将以不可撤销、不可转让的参与权的形式存在。你不会拥有这个东西的股票。没有股权。你拥有的方式以及在网络中拥有的百分比是通过参与其中以及你为网络贡献的交易量来决定的。

Ben: Oh, interesting. 本：哦，有趣。

David: This means a couple of things. (1) It's a representation and ownership according to value contributed. (2) It's non transferable, so you can't sell it. Any individual bank, if they were to say, this is valuable now, I'm going to go sell it, and then I no longer have any incentive to participate in the network, if that starts happening, then it'll lead to a cascade for the exits, and the network will lose value. There's no way to do that.

大卫：这意味着几件事情。(1) 它是根据所贡献的价值进行的表示和所有权。(2) 它是不可转让的，所以你不能出售它。任何一家银行，如果他们说，现在这很有价值，我要去卖掉它，然后我就没有任何参与网络的动力了，如果这种情况开始发生，那么它将导致退出的连锁反应，网络将失去价值。没有办法做到这一点。

Ben: It's basically designed for you to breakeven on it. If you're putting in 17% of the transactions on the whole network, and you're paying in fees on 17% of the transaction, well, good news. For all of the leftover profits from running the network, 17% of them go back to you.

本：它基本上是为你设计的，以便收支平衡。如果你在整个网络中占 17%的交易，并且支付 17%的交易费用，那么，好消息是，运行网络的所有剩余利润中有 17%会返还给你。

David: You're making the assumption that this is a cost-only organization. You're forgetting the fact that it is one of the greatest business models and revenue generators of all time. You are contributing 17% of the volume to this, you are entitled to 17% of the profits that we are extracting from the merchants and the card holders.

David：你假设这只是一个成本导向的组织。你忘记了这是有史以来最伟大的商业模式和收入来源之一。你为此贡献了 17%的交易量，你有权获得我们从商家和持卡人那里提取的 17%的利润。

Ben: Because this is the natural business model of interchange to do the exact same things that was being done with the sales drafts, where you give a discount to the retailer. When I say discount, I don't mean a beneficial one, I mean I'm discounting the amount of money that I am giving you off of the 100% that you would have received by the customer, basically taking that old check courier business model, and carrying it into a network form.

本：因为这就是交换的自然商业模式，做与销售草稿完全相同的事情，即给零售商折扣。当我说折扣时，我不是指有利的折扣，而是指我从客户本应收到的 100%中扣除给你的金额，基本上是将旧的支票快递业务模式转变为网络形式。

David: Exactly. The actual legal structure that Dee and his fellow committee members land on for this is a for-profit, non-stock membership corporation.

David：没错。Dee 和他的委员会成员为此选择的实际法律结构是一个营利性、无股票的会员制公司。

非常理性的设计。

Ben: That is a mouthful.

本：那真是拗口。

David: It is. There's a myth out there that Visa was originally a nonprofit and then was converted to a for-profit before the IPO in 2008. That's not true. It was always for-profit, it was just a non-stock membership Corporation, and that was to get around banks selling their interest. If you don't participate in it, you don't own it.

David：是的。有一种说法认为 Visa 最初是一个非营利组织，然后在 2008 年 IPO 之前转变为营利组织。这不是真的。它一直是营利性的，只是一个无股票的会员制公司，这样可以避免银行出售其权益。如果你不参与其中，你就不拥有它。

Ben: Say it one more time. It is a for-profit.

本：再说一遍。这是一个营利性组织。

David: A for-profit, non-stock membership corporation. Your ownership is your membership.

大卫：一个营利性、无股票的会员制公司。你的所有权就是你的会员资格。

Ben: Fascinating. 本：真有趣。

David: It's like a coop. It's like REI or something like that. The way that Dee describes it to all the other banks is, it is a reverse holding company. The parent entity is owned by the subordinate members as opposed to the top-level holding company owning all the subordinates.

大卫：这就像一个合作社。就像 REI 或类似的东西。Dee 向所有其他银行描述的方式是，这是一个反向控股公司。母实体由下属成员拥有，而不是顶级控股公司拥有所有下属。

Ben: There's actually another NFL analogy here. The NFL doesn't own the teams, the team owners own the NFL.

本：实际上，这里还有一个 NFL 的类比。NFL 并不拥有这些球队，球队老板拥有 NFL。

David: Yes, but the NFL sets all the regulations for how the game is played, and all the teams submit to it.

大卫：是的，但 NFL 制定了所有比赛规则，所有球队都遵守这些规则。

Ben: That's actually probably the best analogy for Visa, the NFL league organization.

本：这实际上可能是对 Visa 最好的比喻，NFL 联盟组织。

David: I think it totally is. Okay, that's point number one, maybe the most important one. Point number two, it is a self-organizing body with irrevocable governance rights for each member. This is, I guess also how it's like the NFL. Basically this means this is a democracy.

大卫：我认为完全是这样。好的，这是第一点，也许是最重要的一点。第二点，它是一个自我组织的机构，每个成员都有不可撤销的治理权。我想这也是它像 NFL 的地方。基本上这意味着这是一个民主。

Every member has a vote in determining how this organization runs. Anything that you could conceivably have a vote on, changing our regulations, setting them in the first place, budgets, fees, all this stuff, every single member bank will have a vote. Importantly, every single member bank can call a vote at any time. It's literally a pure democracy.

每个成员在决定这个组织如何运作时都有投票权。任何你可以想象到的投票事项，改变我们的规定，最初的设定，预算，费用，所有这些东西，每个成员银行都有投票权。重要的是，每个成员银行可以随时发起投票。这简直是一个纯粹的民主。

Ben: You can imagine nothing happening if everybody has the right to do that.

本：你可以想象如果每个人都有权这样做，什么都不会发生。

David: They set the threshold at 80% for anything to happen. There's a strong incentive not to call a vote and waste everybody's time, unless you really think you can round up 80% of the votes, which, in practice, just gives Dee all of the control and power of the company, because everybody's going to listen to him as the CEO.

大卫：他们将门槛设定为 80%才能采取行动。除非你真的认为可以争取到 80%的选票，否则就没有强烈的动机去发起投票并浪费大家的时间。实际上，这只是让迪掌握了公司所有的控制权和权力，因为作为 CEO，大家都会听他的。

Point three, we've basically already discussed, and that is that the mission of this organization is to facilitate cooperation and trust among competing institutions, to grow the BankAmericard payment network larger than any one institution could on its own, which is the pitch he gave to Bank of America leadership.

第三点，我们基本上已经讨论过了，那就是该组织的使命是促进竞争机构之间的合作与信任，使 BankAmericard 支付网络的规模超过任何一个机构单独能够达到的规模，这就是他向美国银行领导层提出的建议。

Also, though, this is an implicit forbidding of banks in the network from going off and also forming or participating in competing networks. To borrow a crypto phrase here, no side chains allowed. Everything happens on the main network.

不过，这也隐含地禁止网络中的银行脱离并形成或参与竞争网络。借用一个加密术语，不允许侧链。所有事情都在主网络上发生。

Ben: I see. None of these banks are members of Interbank at this point. These banks are exclusively members of whatever the heck Visa's predecessor name is.

本：我明白了。这些银行目前都不是 Interbank 的成员。这些银行只是 Visa 前身名称的成员。

David: National BankAmericard Inc.

David：国家银行美国卡公司。

Ben: National BankAmericard Inc.

David: Yes. At this point in time, an antitrust lawsuit would change that very shortly. But at this point in time, it's like, nope, you are part of NBI exclusively, you don't go join Interbank MasterCard, and you also don't go start your own networks or peel off parts of the network. Everything that you're doing in payment card operations needs to route into this network.

大卫：是的。在这个时间点，反垄断诉讼会很快改变这一点。但在这个时间点，就像，不，你是 NBI 的专属成员，你不能加入 Interbank MasterCard，也不能开始自己的网络或剥离网络的部分。你在支付卡操作中所做的一切都需要进入这个网络。

Ben: This is a big contract to sign.

本：这是一个需要签署的大合同。

David: Totally. Again, this is why you need to paint the picture both to Bank of America and all the other banks. The prize is worth it.

大卫：完全同意。这就是为什么你需要向美国银行和所有其他银行描绘这个画面。奖品是值得的。

Finally, point four, there will be a singular universal set of operating and governing procedures that, much like the US Constitution, is infinitely modifiable by a threshold vote of all members. This is the 80% I talked about.

最后，第四点，将会有一套统一的操作和管理程序，类似于美国宪法，可以通过所有成员的门槛投票无限修改。这就是我提到的 80%。

Also like the US Constitution to its citizens, all members agree to be bound by its law, both now and as it is so then modified in the future. If you're signing up for this, you are signing up for the regulations and operating procedures as they exist today and for any future changes that come of which you will have a vote in. This is a democracy, but you can't leave the democracy.

就像美国宪法对其公民一样，所有成员同意受其法律的约束，无论是现在还是将来经过修改的法律。如果您注册此项，您就是在注册现有的法规和操作程序以及未来的任何更改，您将对此进行投票。这是一个民主制度，但您不能离开这个民主制度。

Ben: You're signing up for something that might change in the future, and you don't get to know today if it's going to change in the future, but at least you have some say in it.

本：你正在注册一些未来可能会改变的东西，而你今天无法知道它是否会改变，但至少你对此有一些发言权。

David: That is exactly the pitch. Amazingly, even describing this now having done all the research, read all the books, written the script that we're talking about here, I still can't believe this actually happens. Dee goes on a tour across the country. He goes and meets with all the banks. Bank of America helps them out. They bring senior executives too to help convene meetings with all the banks to persuade them. Every single member bank of the previous BankAmericard franchisee organization, every single one of them signs up for the new organization led by Dee, not a single person jumped ship.

大卫：这正是关键。令人惊讶的是，即使现在描述这一切，在做了所有研究、读了所有书、写了我们正在谈论的剧本之后，我仍然无法相信这真的发生了。迪在全国巡回。他去见了所有的银行。美国银行帮助了他们。他们还带来了高级管理人员，帮助召集所有银行的会议以说服他们。之前 BankAmericard 特许经营组织的每一个成员银行，每一个都加入了由迪领导的新组织，没有一个人跳槽。

Ben: How many banks were at this point?

本：这时有多少家银行？

David: Over 200. 大卫：超过 200。

Ben: Wow. 本：哇。

David: Isn't that wild? 大卫：那不是很疯狂吗？

Ben: Once you get to 70 or something, then it seems likely that everyone's going to tip. But in those first 20, the fact that nobody was out is crazy.

本：一旦你达到 70 或类似的水平，那么似乎每个人都会给小费。但在最初的 20 个中，居然没有人出局，这太疯狂了。

David: Totally, and Dee writes about this, too. Bank of America helped him out. They identified the 13 most influential banks, and they can be in the first summits with them of, hey, what do we got to do to horse trade to get you guys involved, and they began to spiral out from there. But every single one, nobody jumped ship.

大卫：完全正确，迪也写过这个。美国银行帮助了他。他们确定了 13 家最有影响力的银行，他们可以在第一次峰会上与他们讨论，嘿，我们需要做些什么来进行交易以让你们参与进来，然后他们开始从那里扩展。但每一个人，没有一个人退出。

Ben: When is this, 1970-ish?

本：这是 1970 年左右吗？

David: The process starts in 1968. It all wraps up in either 1970 or 1971. Importantly, we've talked about antitrust and DOJ a bunch here. You would think that this would be setting off massive alarm bells in Washington and with the Department of Justice. They get ahead of this.

大卫：这个过程始于 1968 年。它在 1970 年或 1971 年结束。重要的是，我们在这里谈论了很多反垄断和司法部。你会认为这会在华盛顿和司法部引发巨大的警报。他们抢先一步。

Dee goes to see them, and he gives the same pitch to the government. He says, look, obviously, this is the whole industry, all the competitors in the industry colluding to work together. That's the whole premise of the organization. But what we can create by doing this would not be possible otherwise, and it will be so profoundly useful and important to the American consumer and American businesses that it is worth you letting us do this. They actually get a letter from the DOJ saying, hall pass, you're good on this one.

迪去见他们，并向政府提出同样的建议。他说，看，很明显，这是整个行业，行业中的所有竞争者联合在一起合作。这就是该组织的全部前提。但通过这样做，我们可以创造出其他方式无法实现的东西，这对美国消费者和美国企业将是非常有用和重要的，因此值得你们让我们这样做。他们实际上收到了司法部的一封信，说，通行证，这次你们可以。

Ben: Wow, it's just like the Presidential exceptions for the NFL, an antitrust exemption where, yeah, we're amenable to the fact that you're collaborating, potentially colluding, but it is actually one of the things that we believe will make the country better, so go for it.

本：哇，这就像 NFL 的总统例外，一个反垄断豁免，我们对你们的合作，可能的勾结持开放态度，但这实际上是我们认为会让国家变得更好的事情，所以去做吧。

David: America wants both its football and its credit cards. Amazing. That was a key point and then going and convincing all the other banks to sign up for this, because that was one of the first questions they asked. Hey, if we do this, aren't we inviting the DOJ on our backs. Dee is able to say, nope, got the letter right here, we're good.

大卫：美国既想要橄榄球，也想要信用卡。太棒了。这是一个关键点，然后去说服所有其他银行加入，因为这是他们问的第一个问题之一。嘿，如果我们这样做，不是会引来司法部的关注吗？迪能够说，不，我们有这封信，我们没问题。

Ben: Wow. Amazing. 本：哇。太棒了。

David: Very shortly after this, after the creation of NBI (National BankAmericard Inc), Dee in 1972 is thinking globally from the get-go. He goes and creates a parallel, similar organization of international banks using the BankAmericard system.

大卫：就在此之后不久，在 NBI（国家银行美卡公司）成立后，迪在 1972 年一开始就考虑全球化。他去创建了一个使用银行美卡系统的国际银行的平行、类似组织。

Visa was global from basically day one. It wasn't just Barclays in the UK, it was Sumitomo bank in Japan, it was other banks throughout Europe, it was Canada, it was Latin America. We won't go into all the detail here, except one amazing story we're going to tell.

Visa 从第一天起就基本上是全球性的。不仅仅是英国的巴克莱银行，还有日本的住友银行，还有整个欧洲的其他银行，还有加拿大，还有拉丁美洲。我们在这里不会详细介绍所有细节，除了一个我们将要讲述的惊人故事。

This was actually harder to pull off, if you can imagine that, than forming NBI, because it really is not clear for some of these international banks that it is better for them to be part of the global network than if they could run the table on their entire country.

如果你能想象的话，这实际上比成立 NBI 更难实现，因为对于一些国际银行来说，是否加入全球网络比在整个国家中独占鳌头对它们更有利并不明确。

Say you're Sumitomo bank in Japan. You have to decide, do I want to buy Dee's pitch of it's worth it to me to be a proportional owner of Visa? Or I could be the singular dominant credit card network in my own country. Which is more valuable?

假设你是日本的住友银行。你必须决定，我是否想购买 Dee 的提议，即成为 Visa 的比例所有者对我来说是否值得？或者我可以成为自己国家中唯一占主导地位的信用卡网络。哪个更有价值？

Ben: For many of them, they'd be right in saying, it actually would be better to be singular and dominant. You look at China Union Pay. That is the dominant way of payments flowing in China. That was, for them, the right move.

本：对他们中的许多人来说，他们说得对，实际上，成为单一和主导的会更好。你看看中国银联。那是中国支付流动的主导方式。对他们来说，那是正确的举动。

David: Totally. Once again, in Sausalito, this all comes to a head. Dee knows that probably not all of the international banks are going to agree to this, and some of them are going to go their own way. He calls a final summit in Sausalito. They're going to vote the next morning, final vote on who's going to join the soon-to-be Visa network, and who's going to go out on their own.

大卫：完全正确。再次在索萨利托，这一切都达到了高潮。迪知道可能并不是所有的国际银行都会同意这一点，其中一些银行将会选择自己的方式。他在索萨利托召集了最后一次峰会。他们将在第二天早上投票，最终决定谁将加入即将成为 Visa 网络的行列，谁将独立发展。

Dee gives this nostalgic speech at the end of dinner saying, “Here in Sausalito, looking at the bay, this is where me and my colleagues dreamed up the original vision for what this could be. It's sad that this won't be extended to the whole world and a true global payment monetary system, but we're all gathered here. We should celebrate having accomplished so much and had a chance at this dream. Just having the chance is worth it.” He's really good with his debate skills.

晚餐结束时，迪发表了这番怀旧的演讲：“在索萨利托这里，眺望海湾，这就是我和我的同事们构思出最初愿景的地方。很遗憾这无法扩展到全世界，成为一个真正的全球支付货币系统，但我们都聚集在这里。我们应该庆祝取得了如此多的成就，并有机会实现这个梦想。仅仅拥有这个机会就值得了。”他的辩论技巧真的很出色。

He's like, “Before we meet, one more time tomorrow to obviously disband this whole venture and have the dream just be a memory, we have one more thing for you.” He's like Steve Jobs. “A small gift of appreciation for you giving your valuable time and effort as part of this global undertaking, please take this little box out from under your seats.”

他说：“在我们明天见面之前，再一次显然解散整个项目，让梦想成为记忆，我们还有一件事要给你。”他就像史蒂夫·乔布斯。“感谢您在这项全球事业中付出宝贵的时间和努力，请从座位下拿出这个小盒子。”

Everybody takes a little box out from under their seat, they unwrap it, and inside are a pair of pure gold cufflinks, that on each of the two cufflinks, there is one half of the globe. Under one side, it says in Latin, Studium Ad Prosperadum, which translates as The Will to Succeed, and the other side says, Voluntas In Conveniendum.

每个人都从座位下拿出一个小盒子，打开后，里面是一对纯金袖扣，每个袖扣上都有半个地球。在一侧下面，用拉丁文写着“Studium Ad Prosperadum”，翻译为“成功的意愿”，另一侧写着“Voluntas In Conveniendum”。

Apologies to Latin speakers out there that I'm butchering that. It translates as The Grace to Compromise. He explains this all, and somebody from the crowd yells out, do you miserable bastard, because he just pulled out everybody's heartstrings. And he gets the votes. The next morning, all the holdouts reverse course. They all joined. You can't make this stuff up. It literally happens. The cufflinks are out there, you can google him, he did this.

向所有拉丁语使用者道歉，我把它弄得一团糟。它翻译为妥协的优雅。他解释了这一切，人群中有人大喊，你这个可怜的混蛋，因为他刚刚拨动了每个人的心弦。然后他得到了选票。第二天早上，所有坚持不懈的人都改变了立场。他们都加入了。你无法编造这些东西。这确实发生了。袖扣在那里，你可以谷歌他，他做了这件事。

Ben: He's basically saying, hey, whether you voted for this or not, you're getting to leave with something saying, I'm so great, I had the will to compromise even if you didn't and you are the reason that you killed it.

本：他基本上是在说，嘿，不管你是否投票支持这个，你都会带着某种东西离开，说，我太棒了，我有妥协的意愿，即使你没有，而你是导致它失败的原因。

David: Dee is such a character. The other thing along these lines that he does, which is just hilarious. Once this is all set up, this, the international part of Visa becomes the first IBANCO. Shortly after this, they rebrand the whole thing into Visa, which we'll talk about in a minute. For the board, the board is huge, because it's all the representatives from every region, from every country. There were 25 people on the board.

大卫：迪真是个有趣的人。他做的另一件类似的事情，真是太搞笑了。一旦这一切都安排好，Visa 的国际部分就成为了第一个 IBANCO。不久之后，他们将整个品牌重塑为 Visa，我们稍后会谈到这一点。对于董事会来说，董事会规模庞大，因为它包括来自每个地区、每个国家的代表。董事会有 25 人。

Dee holds board meetings all around the world, different cities all the time, it's a global organization, whatnot. He invites the spouses of all the board members to come to each location, because it's a family trip, et cetera. Then he gets the idea. He invites the spouses into the board meeting itself.

迪在世界各地举行董事会会议，不同的城市一直在变，这是一个全球性的组织，等等。他邀请所有董事会成员的配偶到每个地点，因为这是一次家庭旅行，等等。然后他有了一个想法。他邀请配偶们参加董事会会议本身。

Ben: What a nightmare. 本：真是个噩梦。

David: Twenty-five board members plus their spouses in his board meeting. This means two things. (1) Nothing is going to get done. There are 50 people in the room. (2) He needs all these people to behave well together and be generous and gallant. What better way to make sure they're on their best behavior than to have their spouse sitting behind them?

大卫：在他的董事会上有二十五名董事会成员及其配偶。这意味着两件事。（1）什么都做不成。房间里有 50 个人。（2）他需要所有这些人和睦相处，慷慨大方。有什么比让他们的配偶坐在他们身后更好的方法来确保他们表现良好呢？

Ben: Wow. 本：哇。

David: Are you really going to act like an asshole in front of not only your spouse, but the spouses of all these other global bank heads?

大卫：你真的要在你配偶和其他所有全球银行负责人配偶面前表现得像个混蛋吗？

Ben: That's so funny. Let's start doing that.

本：太有趣了。我们开始这样做吧。

David: We should have our wives in the room while we record.

大卫：我们录音时应该让我们的妻子在房间里。

Ben: Definitely not. 本：绝对不是。

David: Amazing. 大卫：太棒了。

Ben: I think neither would join for that.

本：我认为两者都不会为此加入。

David: Totally, no. They'd be like, no way.

大卫：完全不。他们会说，没门。

Ben: Okay, how does the name Visa come about? How is the joining of the international and the domestic?

本：好的，Visa 这个名字是怎么来的？国际和国内的结合是怎样的？

David: Visa is so important. It's not just a rebrand. It has to happen once this international organization is set up.

大卫：Visa非常重要。这不仅仅是一个重新品牌化。一旦这个国际组织成立，这就必须发生。

Ben: Yeah, America can't be the name.

本：是的，美国不能是这个名字。

David: Yeah, BankAmericard ain't going to work. Importantly, as we'll get into it in a little bit, this is a huge problem for American Express too. The soon to be Visa knows, if we're really going to realize this global vision, we need a truly global brand and mark. Remember back to the blue, white, and gold, three stripes, that's iconic, it works internationally. Obviously, the name does not.

大卫：是的，BankAmericard 不会奏效。重要的是，正如我们稍后会讨论的那样，这对美国运通来说也是一个大问题。即将成为 Visa 的公司知道，如果我们真的要实现这个全球愿景，我们需要一个真正的全球品牌和标志。回想一下蓝色、白色和金色，三条纹，那是标志性的，它在国际上行得通。显然，名字不行。

Dee holds a contest internally within NBI/IBANCO to generate a new name, and he offers a $50 prize for the winning entry that is chosen. As legend goes, there are so many submissions of the name Visa that when they finally unveil it, Dee makes a big deal and writes out a $50 check made out to everyone in the company, which is funny. But then they changed the name to Visa. It's the most incredible name ever created. Nike was so great. This is even better. You cannot have a better name for what this is.

迪在 NBI/IBANCO 内部举办了一场比赛，以产生一个新名字，并为选中的获奖作品提供 50 美元的奖金。据传说，有太多的 Visa 名字提交，当他们最终揭晓时，迪大张旗鼓地写了一张 50 美元的支票给公司里的每个人，这很有趣。但后来他们把名字改成了 Visa。这是有史以来最不可思议的名字。耐克曾经很棒。这甚至更好。对于这件事，你不可能有一个更好的名字。

Ben: It's interesting, it's in English. I guess it makes sense, it's the most spoken language.

本：这很有趣，它是用英语写的。我想这很合理，因为它是使用最广泛的语言。

David: No, it's not just an English. The name Visa in every, if not almost every language on Earth...

大卫：不，这不仅仅是英语。地球上几乎每种语言中的 Visa 这个名字……

Ben: When you're traveling, you need a Visa for our country, they call it a Visa in other languages too?

本：当你旅行时，你需要我们国家的签证，其他语言中也叫签证吗？

David: That's what it is. But when you are traveling internationally, when you're going through customs in any country, it is identified as a Visa. That is the name.

大卫：就是这样。但是当你在国际旅行时，当你在任何国家通过海关时，它被识别为签证。这就是它的名字。

Ben: Yeah, the universality. It's a presumptive close, because at this point, they've got 300, 400, or 500 banks. They have 16,000 today. It's quite the presumptive close that it will be universally accepted everywhere the way that Visa would imply.

本：是的，普遍性。这是一个假定的结论，因为在这一点上，他们已经有 300、400 或 500 家银行。他们今天有 16,000 家。这是一个相当假定的结论，即它将像 Visa 所暗示的那样在各地被普遍接受。

David: Just in every dimension, the presumptive close, the implication that this is a global network, that you can bring your Visa with you when you're traveling to other countries and it'll work. The actual definition of the word Visa that it is your entry pass. This card is now your entry pass to commerce, to experiences, that it works everywhere, as you said, that it's universal, it's amazing.

大卫：在每一个方面，假定的结论，这意味着这是一个全球网络，你可以在旅行到其他国家时带上你的 Visa 卡，它会起作用。Visa 这个词的实际定义是你的入境通行证。这张卡现在是你进入商业、体验的通行证，正如你所说，它在任何地方都有效，它是普遍的，真是太棒了。

The Visa name, brand, everything, there are two more levels at which it becomes really important. They do something really, really, really smart. We talked about the need for the universality of a mark and why early Interbank was a problem until they standardized on MasterCard. They've got the three bands, the blue, white, and gold, and now they have a global name. But all the individual banks, the hundreds soon to be thousands of banks, all want their own branding on the card too.

Visa 这个名字、品牌、一切，还有两个层面使其变得非常重要。他们做了一些非常非常聪明的事情。我们谈到了标志的普遍性需求，以及为什么早期的 Interbank 是个问题，直到他们在 MasterCard 上实现标准化。他们有三个色带，蓝色、白色和金色，现在他们有了一个全球性的名字。但所有的个别银行，数百家即将成为数千家的银行，都希望在卡上有自己的品牌。

Visa says, okay, here's the operating regulations. Every card has to have the blue, white, and gold. In the middle white band, Visa logo goes there, nothing but the Visa logo. On the top blue band, you can put whatever you want. You can put your own bank logo, you banks get creative. You can do literally whatever you want.

Visa 说，好吧，这是操作规定。每张卡都必须有蓝色、白色和金色。在中间的白色带上，Visa 标志放在那里，除了 Visa 标志什么都不能放。在顶部的蓝色带上，你可以放任何你想要的东西。你可以放你自己的银行标志，你们银行可以发挥创意。你可以做任何你想做的事情。

Banks start going around. They do affinity card programs with NFL teams, with merchants. This is how you get the Southwest card. This is how you get the San Francisco 49ers card. This is how you get the XYZ everything that they're a bazillion of now.

银行开始四处活动。他们与 NFL 球队、商家合作进行联名卡项目。这就是你如何获得西南航空卡。这就是你如何获得旧金山 49 人队卡。这就是你如何获得现在数不胜数的 XYZ 一切。

Ben: In the blue stripe on the top of the top third of the card, the bank start cobranding with the name of their bank and some affinity.

本：在卡片上三分之一顶部的蓝色条纹中，银行开始与他们的银行名称和一些亲和力进行联合品牌。

David: Yup. This is the brilliance of the Visa model. They were like, it's open. You can do whatever you want up there.

大卫：是的。这就是 Visa 模式的聪明之处。他们就像，它是开放的。你可以在上面做任何你想做的事情。

Ben: Right, that seems good for us. We're happy with that.

本：好的，这对我们来说不错。我们对此很满意。

David: Of course, it's great. The whole goal is just get more consumers and more merchants on the network. Anything that's going to do that, great, while maintaining the universality of Visa, great. We got the middle, you got the top. Go wild. Do whatever you want.

大卫：当然，这很好。整个目标就是让更多的消费者和商家加入网络。任何能做到这一点的事情都很好，同时保持 Visa 的普遍性，也很好。我们负责中间部分，你负责顶端。尽情去做你想做的事。

Ben: Wow, and that's how I ended up with BB-8 on my card today.

本：哇，所以我今天卡上有了 BB-8。

David: Amazing. Maybe the most important thing, though, for Visa, really pulling away and becoming, at least for many decades, the dominant global payment card network. The name change ends up becoming this incredible growth hack, because what happens is they're the new operating regulations now that mandate that all cards out there, all the previous BankAmericards need to be migrated to Visa cards I think within two years of this being declared or something like that.

大卫：太棒了。不过，也许对 Visa 来说，最重要的事情是，它真正脱颖而出，至少在几十年内，成为全球主导的支付卡网络。更名最终成为了一个令人难以置信的增长策略，因为现在的新操作规定要求，所有现有的卡片，所有以前的 BankAmericard 都需要在这个被宣布后的两年内迁移到 Visa 卡。

Some banks start to see this as an opportunity to go poach card holders from other banks. The competition within the network, obviously this still exists, because consumers now know and Visa runs a national advertising campaign. Hey, your BankAmericard is going to switch to Visa.

一些银行开始将此视为一个从其他银行挖走持卡人的机会。网络内部的竞争显然仍然存在，因为消费者现在知道 Visa 正在进行全国广告宣传活动。嘿，你的 BankAmericard 将转换为 Visa。

Some banks in aversion to the Fresno drop, they start sending unsolicited letters to consumers who are already Visa BankAmericard customers with another bank. They're like, oh, hey, it's time to switch over to your Visa card, here's the application, sign up with this.

由于对弗雷斯诺下跌的反感，一些银行开始向已经是另一家银行的 Visa BankAmericard 客户的消费者发送未经请求的信件。他们就像，哦，嘿，是时候换成你的 Visa 卡了，这是申请表，签上这个。

Ben: Nice of them to, at this point in history, offer applications. I think a hundred million cards got dropped in the United States before the government made it illegal to just start randomly issuing credit to people without their awareness or asking for it.

本：在历史的这个时刻，他们提供申请真是太好了。我认为在美国，政府禁止在未经人们同意或要求的情况下随意发放信用卡之前，有一亿张卡被发放。

David: Totally wild. But because of this, a whole bunch of consumers start unconsciously switching the bank that issues their Visa card. Once this starts happening, this kicks off a total arms race, where all the banks in the network are now like, shoot, we got to blanket the whole country, preserve our domain, and see what we can capture from others.

大卫：完全疯狂。但正因为如此，一大批消费者开始无意识地更换发行其 Visa 卡的银行。一旦这种情况开始发生，就会引发一场全面的军备竞赛，网络中的所有银行现在都想，糟糕，我们得覆盖整个国家，保住我们的领域，看看能从其他银行那里捕获到什么。

In the one year between when the Visa name change first comes online and takes effect, which is in 1977 and the next year in 1978, the number of banks participating in the Visa system grows by 20%, because everybody who's not in the system now is like, I got to get in the Visa system.

在 Visa 名称变更首次上线并生效的一年之间，也就是 1977 年和下一年的 1978 年之间，参与 Visa 系统的银行数量增长了 20%，因为现在不在系统中的每个人都想加入 Visa 系统。

Ben: By the way, this is the thing that pushes Visa ahead of what was, I believe, then called Master Charge. The Interbank had changed Master Charge, they hadn't yet turned it to MasterCard. But in 1976, Master Charge was actually bigger. They had 7400 banks. At this point in history, Visa had about 7000 banks.

顺便说一下，这就是让 Visa 领先于当时我认为被称为 Master Charge 的东西。Interbank 已经改变了 Master Charge，但他们还没有将其改为 MasterCard。但在 1976 年，Master Charge 实际上更大。他们有 7400 家银行。在这个历史时刻，Visa 大约有 7000 家银行。

Master Charge also had more card holders, 37 million versus BankAmericard's 31 million before they change to Visa. Despite all the deck chair rearranging between the member banks, it was great for Visa to leap ahead of MasterCard.

在会员银行之间进行所有的甲板椅重新安排之后，Visa 能够超越万事达卡是很棒的。

David: Totally. The number of member banks grows by 20%. The number of active card holders in the Visa network in this one year grows by 45%.

大卫：完全正确。会员银行的数量增长了 20%。在这一年中，Visa 网络中的活跃持卡人数增长了 45%。

Ben: Wow. 本：哇。

David: Isn't that wild? As you say, they blow way past MasterCard. Thanks to this. They're already way bigger than AmEx, because Amex is a different customer segment, which we'll talk about in a sec. This really puts them on the path to becoming the dominant global network that they are today.

大卫：这不是很疯狂吗？正如你所说，他们远远超过了万事达卡。多亏了这个。他们已经比美国运通大得多，因为美国运通是一个不同的客户群，我们稍后会谈到。这确实使他们走上了成为今天全球主导网络的道路。

Ben: It's worth a moment on Amex here, because I would have thought, just like Facebook, WhatsApp, or Google, when you have this winner-take-all massive network effect business, that the single centralized player network effect would win. Why wouldn't Amex win with their closed-loop system, where they own the whole thing end-to-end, and can provide the most incredibly custom experience for everyone on their platform, on the merchant side and on the consumer side?

本：在这里值得花点时间谈谈 Amex，因为我本以为，就像 Facebook、WhatsApp 或 Google 一样，当你拥有这种赢家通吃的大规模网络效应业务时，单一的中心化玩家网络效应会胜出。为什么 Amex 不会凭借他们的闭环系统获胜呢？他们拥有从头到尾的整个系统，可以为他们平台上的每个人提供最不可思议的定制体验，无论是在商家方面还是在消费者方面。

One of the answers of why this open-loop system beat the closed-loop system is, Visa adopts this strategy of the network of networks. They go sign up one bank, that bank can go sign up 100 million customers or 2 million merchants. They get so much scale leverage on signing up just one bank that this strategy makes it so that they have far more scalability than something like AmEx.

为什么这个开环系统胜过闭环系统的答案之一是，Visa 采用了这种网络中的网络策略。他们去签约一家银行，那家银行可以签约 1 亿客户或 200 万商家。他们在签约一家银行时获得了如此大的规模杠杆，这种策略使他们比像 AmEx 这样的公司具有更大的可扩展性。

Amex also is a bank themselves, so it's highly regulated. They're a bank by this point in history, I believe, on both sides of the transaction. They're both a card issuing bank, and they are a merchant acquiring bank. In terms of scaling internationally, you mentioned their name holds them back. Also, they have to become a bank in another country in order to expand to that country, whereas Visa just needs to go tap a few banks and say, why don't you go figure out how to grow for us there?

Amex 本身也是一家银行，所以受到严格监管。我相信在历史的这个阶段，他们在交易的双方都是一家银行。他们既是发卡银行，也是商户收单银行。在国际扩张方面，你提到他们的名字限制了他们。此外，他们必须在另一个国家成为一家银行才能扩展到那个国家，而 Visa 只需要去找几家银行并说，为什么不去想办法为我们在那里发展呢？

This network of networks thing, the open-loop system, while it creates a little bit more of a kludgy user experience because they're the lowest common denominator of data getting passed through the network, it's open source versus something that's wholly owned and operated by a company or protocol versus fully owned application.

这个网络中的网络，开放式系统，虽然它会因为数据通过网络时是最低公分母而导致用户体验有点笨拙，但它是开源的，而不是由公司或协议完全拥有和运营的东西，相对于完全拥有的应用程序。

Anytime that you have something that's more distributed, you're going to be compromising a little bit on the user experience, because you can't rule by fiat when you want to make a change, but it does potentially come with much better scalability, which is the reason why Visa and MasterCard have become the dominant way versus the closed-loop systems.

任何时候，只要你有更分散的东西，你就会在用户体验上做出一些妥协，因为当你想做出改变时，你不能通过命令来统治，但它确实可能带来更好的可扩展性，这就是为什么 Visa 和 MasterCard 成为主导方式而不是闭环系统的原因。

David: It's also worth closing the loop on MasterCard here, too. I mentioned that the DOJ eventually came after both Visa and MasterCard, and prevented them from being exclusive systems. That does happen in 1975. This concept of duality takes hold for the bank's duality meaning they can multi-home on both Visa and MasterCard.

大卫：这里也值得对万事达卡进行总结。我提到过，美国司法部最终对 Visa 和万事达卡采取了行动，阻止它们成为独占系统。这确实发生在 1975 年。双重性这一概念开始盛行，银行的双重性意味着它们可以同时在 Visa 和万事达卡上多重归属。

In all the testimony and the case with the DOJ, Dee is obviously 100% against this happening. He doesn't want his banks to be able to join MasterCard too, but he also makes the surprisingly correct argument. He's like, look, this would be a huge mistake, because the US government, if you do this, you are going to freeze the payment networks in the US. Nobody's ever going to develop a new, competing open-loop payment network, because now there's no more competitive vector between Visa and MasterCard. We'll all have the same features, banks will be members of both. They're going to operate in lockstep.

在所有的证词和与司法部的案件中，Dee 显然 100%反对这种情况的发生。他不希望他的银行也能加入万事达卡，但他也提出了一个出乎意料的正确论点。他就像，看，这将是一个巨大的错误，因为美国政府，如果你这样做，你将冻结美国的支付网络。没有人会开发一个新的、竞争的开放式支付网络，因为现在 Visa 和万事达卡之间没有更多的竞争向量。我们都会有相同的功能，银行将是两者的成员。他们将同步运作。

Ben: The prices should be identical for both.

本：价格应该是相同的。

David: All this stuff. The DOJ is like, no, no, we're going to do it anyway. Irony of ironies, later, in 1988, the DOJ again sues Visa and MasterCard for being a duopoly and not competitive enough. Dee was right.

大卫：所有这些东西。司法部就像，不，不，我们还是要这样做。讽刺的是，后来在 1988 年，司法部再次起诉 Visa 和 MasterCard 是双头垄断，不够有竞争力。迪是对的。

Ben: To this day, Dee has been right. There have been many attempts that we'll talk about toward the end of this episode of displacing Visa and MasterCard or inventing new payment systems, and they never work, or they haven't worked yet.

至今，迪一直是对的。我们将在本集结尾讨论许多取代 Visa 和 MasterCard 或发明新支付系统的尝试，但它们从未成功，或者尚未成功。

David: Great point. They're in the process of working. It's so great.

大卫：说得好。他们正在进行工作。这太好了。

Ben: It's probably actually worth sharing the Amex thing. Amex tried this crazy strategy in the 80s, and I'm flashing forward 10 years here. They would basically cut their interchange, the discount rate that they were charging merchants, massively if those merchants would go exclusive to Amex.

本：实际上可能值得分享一下美国运通的事情。美国运通在 80 年代尝试了一种疯狂的策略，我在这里快进了 10 年。如果商家愿意只接受美国运通，他们基本上会大幅降低对商家收取的交换费，即折扣率。

This actually continued until 1991 for many of their merchants and for Costco. It went all the way to 2016, where they had the exclusive agreement with Amex. If you were going to use a credit card at Costco, it had to be Amex.

这实际上一直持续到 1991 年，涉及他们的许多商家和 Costco。一直到 2016 年，他们与 Amex 有独家协议。如果你要在 Costco 使用信用卡，必须是 Amex。

But interestingly, Visa and MasterCard cried foul when all of their banks were multi-homing, and AmEx with their virtue of a slightly different business model was allowed to go and try to lock up merchants to be exclusive to them. Eventually, the whole thing stopped. Flash forward to today, all cards are accepted at basically all locations.

但有趣的是，当所有银行都在多归属时，Visa 和 MasterCard 大声抗议，而 AmEx 凭借其略有不同的商业模式被允许去尝试将商家锁定为其独家合作伙伴。最终，整个事情停止了。快进到今天，基本上所有地点都接受所有卡。

David: This basically concludes the full Visa story. How did this incredible thing happen? We've answered Dee’s questions. Who owns this? Who runs it? How did it start? We could end the episode here, but we've actually really only told you half the story. What we've told you is all the incredible business, organizational, social, human behavior innovations that Visa and Dee created.

大卫：这基本上总结了整个 Visa 的故事。这件不可思议的事情是怎么发生的？我们已经回答了 Dee 的问题。谁拥有这个？谁在运营它？它是如何开始的？我们可以在这里结束这一集，但实际上我们只告诉了你一半的故事。我们告诉你的是 Visa 和 Dee 创造的所有令人难以置信的商业、组织、社会和人类行为创新。

Ben: As Dave puts it in Electronic Value Exchange, there is a socio-technical aspect to this company. We've talked about the socio but not the technical.

本：正如戴夫在《电子价值交换》中所说，这家公司有一个社会技术方面。我们谈到了社会方面，但没有谈到技术方面。

David: Something that is also true and also, I think, really underappreciated about Visa is it's also a technology company. There is a whole technology story in parallel with this too that enabled the Visa we know today to Dee's question of where is Visa headquartered and nobody knowing that. It's headquartered in the Bay Area.

大卫：关于 Visa，还有一个事实，我认为真的被低估了，那就是它也是一家科技公司。与此并行的还有一个完整的技术故事，使我们今天所知的 Visa 成为可能，回答 Dee 的问题，Visa 的总部在哪里，却没有人知道。它的总部位于湾区。

It's a Silicon Valley company. It was started in the same place in time as Intel, Atari, Apple. The only thing that is different about it versus those other companies is it wasn't funded by venture capital, and it does didn't make anybody rich except the banks who owned it and thus, were already rich. But there's an incredible technology story.

这是一家硅谷公司。它与英特尔、雅达利、苹果在同一时间和地点创立。与其他公司不同的是，它没有获得风险投资的资助，也没有让任何人变得富有，除了拥有它的银行，而这些银行已经很富有。但这背后有一个令人难以置信的技术故事。

Ben: Great point. 本：说得好。

Ben: Okay, David, what is Visa's technical infrastructure look like? And how did this come to be?

本：好的，大卫，Visa 的技术基础设施是什么样的？这是如何形成的？

David: Everything we just described up until now, amazing, incredible, unlikely, one in a million. But all it really bought Dee and Visa was the opportunity. To actually realize what he sold to Bank of America and the other banks of an instant global payment network that a large percentage of global commerce runs on, you had to build a lot of technology to make that happen.

大卫：我们刚才描述的一切，令人惊叹，难以置信，不太可能，百万分之一。但它真正为 Dee 和 Visa 带来的只是一个机会。要真正实现他向美国银行和其他银行出售的即时全球支付网络，这个网络承载了全球很大一部分商业活动，你必须构建大量技术来实现这一目标。

If you asked the question of Dee back in 1968—okay, let's assume we do this, and we put one of these soon-to-be Visa cards in the hands of every consumer on the planet—do they actually want to use them instead of cash and checks? The answer to that was probably not.

如果你在 1968 年问 Dee 这个问题——好吧，假设我们这样做，并把这些即将成为 Visa 卡的东西放在地球上每个消费者的手中——他们真的想用它们代替现金和支票吗？答案可能是否定的。

Ben: Fascinating. 本：真有趣。

David: Now, they wanted to use them in specific use cases. Like Ben, you pointed out, when you want to make a credit purchase, when you want to essentially do what installment financing was before. When you have any number of XYZ other set of factors in the case of Diners Club and Amex, when you want to impress your colleagues and your business partners, there were use cases.

大卫：现在，他们想在特定的使用场景中使用它们。就像本指出的那样，当你想进行信用购买时，当你想本质上做分期融资之前的事情时。在大来俱乐部和美国运通的情况下，当你想给同事和商业伙伴留下深刻印象时，有使用场景。

But it wasn't like it is today, where obviously you're going to use your credit card, which is probably a Visa and maybe a MasterCard to pay for everything that you do everywhere instantly.

但那时并不像今天这样，显然你会用信用卡支付，可能是 Visa，也可能是 MasterCard，随时随地支付你所做的一切。

Ben: To illustrate, we will link this in the show notes, but there is an old TV segment from 1993, not that old, pretty recent.

本：为了说明这一点，我们将在节目备注中链接这个，但有一个 1993 年的旧电视片段，不是那么旧，相当近期。

David: Ben, I have really sad news, 1993 was 30 years ago. We remember it.

大卫：本，我有个非常悲伤的消息，1993 年是 30 年前的事了。我们记得它。

Ben: I know. 本：我知道。

David: 1993 to today is like the 1950s were to us when we were kids.

大卫：1993 年到今天就像我们小时候的 1950 年代。

Ben: Not good, David. 本：不好，大卫。

David: Not good. 大卫：不好。

Ben: This 1993 TV segment, the news is that Burger King has just rolled out credit cards. That should tell you a lot. Burger King, prior to 1993, did not accept credit cards, or at least this commercial makes it seem that way. They interviewed this woman and she says, I think it's pretty sad when you have to use a credit card when you go to a fast food restaurant. That was a view of someone just sitting in a Burger King in 1993.

本：这段 1993 年的电视片段，新闻是汉堡王刚刚推出了信用卡。这应该能告诉你很多。1993 年之前，汉堡王不接受信用卡，或者至少这个广告让它看起来是这样的。他们采访了一位女士，她说，我觉得当你去快餐店时不得不使用信用卡是很可悲的。这是 1993 年一个坐在汉堡王里的人所持的观点。

A second guy is interviewed and says something to the effect of, I just hope it doesn't slow things down, because they'll have to call New York, and then they'll have to do the thing. I just hope it doesn't slow things down. The prevailing idea is that cash is fast, cash is easy.

第二个人接受采访时说了类似的话，我只是希望这不会拖慢进度，因为他们得打电话给纽约，然后他们得做那件事。我只是希望这不会拖慢进度。普遍的想法是现金快捷，现金方便。

David: Cash is respectable, credit cards are debt. What this woman is saying is really sad if you need to use debt to buy a burger.

大卫：现金是可敬的，信用卡是债务。如果你需要用债务来买一个汉堡，这个女人说的话真的很悲哀。

Ben: But even at this point in history, it was viewed as this cumbersome thing rather than a convenient thing to bust out the card. I actually think Burger King corporate crunched the numbers, and they were like, geez, for the amount of time we spend handling change, we just want to encourage everyone to be swiping the card all the time, even if they're losing some money on the interchange.

本：但即使在历史上的这个时候，它也被视为一种麻烦的事情，而不是一种方便的事情来刷卡。我实际上认为汉堡王公司计算了数字，他们就像，天哪，为了我们花在处理零钱上的时间，我们只是想鼓励每个人一直刷卡，即使他们在交换中损失了一些钱。

David: It's crazy, that was 1993. Compare that to today. I don't know about you, but I get pissed when somebody ahead of me in line starts breaking out cash and coins. I'm like, oh my God.

大卫：太疯狂了，那是 1993 年。和今天相比。我不知道你怎么样，但当我前面排队的人开始掏出现金和硬币时，我会很生气。我就像，哦，我的天。

Ben: What are you doing? Start us back. I think the last time we checked in on how the settlement worked was around literally collecting paper sales drafts and then starting to mail it around.

本：你在做什么？让我们回到开始。我想上次我们检查结算是如何运作的时候，大概是收集纸质销售草稿，然后开始邮寄。

David: To get from there to today, three major pieces of technology needed to be built by Visa. One was transaction authorizations. When we were talking about transactions happening earlier and the person in Burger King was referencing like, oh, they got a call to New York, they got to authorize the transaction, and all that, we glossed over one stop gap/band aid that Visa and other credit card networks implemented around authorization.

大卫：为了从那时到达今天，Visa 需要构建三大技术。一个是交易授权。当我们谈论早期发生的交易时，汉堡王的人提到，比如，他们接到一个去纽约的电话，他们必须授权交易，等等，我们略过了 Visa 和其他信用卡网络在授权方面实施的一个权宜之计/临时解决方案。

They didn't actually authorize every transaction. When you paid for something with a credit card in a store, all merchants had what was called a floor limit. The floor limit was any transaction over that limit could not be authorized directly on the floor and say it was $50 or something like that. Anything paid with a credit card under $50 was basically within the judgment of the cashier to say yes or no. Everybody just said, yes. The reality was, this was the threshold below which the banks and Visa were willing to say, okay, we'll accept a certain amount of fraud.

他们实际上并没有授权每一笔交易。当你在商店用信用卡支付时，所有商家都有一个所谓的底限。底限是指任何超过该限额的交易不能直接在现场授权，比如说是 50 美元或类似的金额。任何低于 50 美元的信用卡支付基本上都由收银员判断是否同意。大家都会同意。实际上，这就是银行和 Visa 愿意接受一定程度欺诈的门槛。

Above that limit, the cashier had to go call up the merchant bank and say, hey, we got a card here, it's this number, somebody's buying a refrigerator, then that merchant bank would have to look up that card number, figure out based on the card number, what bank issued the card to the card holder, call up the card holder bank, and get somebody on the horn there and say, hey, I've got your caller ID holder, Benjamin Gilbert, his card number is XYZ123, can you look up his credit? He wants to buy a $500 refrigerator. Can you tell me if he's good for it?

超过该限额后，收银员必须打电话给商家银行，说，嘿，我们这里有一张卡，是这个号码，有人要买冰箱，然后商家银行需要查找该卡号，根据卡号找出是哪家银行发给持卡人的，打电话给持卡人银行，并联系那边的人说，嘿，我有你的来电显示持有人，Benjamin Gilbert，他的卡号是 XYZ123，你能查一下他的信用吗？他想买一台 500 美元的冰箱。你能告诉我他是否有足够的信用吗？

Ben: This effectively would be like, have they hit their limit yet?

本：这实际上就像是，他们达到极限了吗？

David: Yes, have they hit their limit? The issuing bank would go look that up. Literally, the person talk on the phone to the person at the merchant bank, give them the answer, the merchant bank then switches the line back to the cashier at the store and says, yeah, Ben is good for it or no, Ben is not good for it.

大卫：是的，他们达到限额了吗？发卡银行会去查这个。字面意思是，电话中的人会与商户银行的人交谈，给他们答案，然后商户银行再把电话转回商店的收银员，并说，是的，本可以支付，或者不，本不能支付。

Ben: You had banks talking to banks.

本：你有银行在和银行对话。

David: People at merchants talking to people at their bank, talking to people at the card holders bank, and then reversing the whole chain.

大卫：商家的人与他们的银行的人交谈，与持卡人银行的人交谈，然后逆转整个链条。

Ben: But importantly, you had a person at the merchant’s bank calling a person at the cardholder’s bank.

本：但重要的是，你让商家银行的人打电话给持卡人银行的人。

David: Yes. 大卫：是的。

Ben: Today, that is known as VisaNet. There's this piece of technology that sits in the middle that eliminates that bank to bank phone call.

本：今天，这被称为 VisaNet。有一项技术位于中间，消除了银行间的电话联系。

David: This is a big part of one of the first things that Visa builds. That process that we just described could take 20 minutes, and it just didn't work outside of business hours for those banks. Now that BankAmericard is nationwide, soon to be international, imagine you're trying to buy something in Japan, and the Japanese merchant bank calls your card holder bank back in America, closed for business, just no way for that transaction to happen.

大卫：这是 Visa 构建的首批内容之一的重要部分。我们刚刚描述的那个过程可能需要 20 分钟，而且在那些银行的非营业时间根本无法运作。现在 BankAmericard 已经在全国范围内使用，并很快将走向国际，想象一下你在日本购买东西，而日本的商户银行打电话给你在美国的发卡银行，银行已经关门营业，这笔交易根本无法进行。

Ben: Wow, that's crazy. 本：哇，那太疯狂了。

David: Not good. Definitely not good. Dee and Visa know that this is the first thing that they have to address. In 1971 right after NBI is formed, Dee starts a project called the BankAmericard Authorization System Experimental or BASE to build technology to address this problem.

大卫：不好。绝对不好。迪和 Visa 知道这是他们必须解决的首要问题。1971 年，NBI 成立后不久，迪启动了一个名为 BankAmericard 授权系统实验（BASE）的项目，以建立技术来解决这个问题。

The whole thing actually started rather inauspiciously, because right after all the approvals came through for Dee to form NBI, I think it was literally the evening before the first board meeting, Bank of America comes up to Dee and they're like, can we take you aside? There's something you need to know.

整件事情实际上开始得相当不顺利，因为就在所有批准都通过让 Dee 成立 NBI 之后，我想那几乎是在第一次董事会会议的前一天晚上，美国银行走到 Dee 面前，他们说，我们能把你拉到一边吗？有件事你需要知道。

Ben: God, that's always fun before our first board meeting.

本：天啊，这总是在我们第一次董事会会议前很有趣。

David: They're like, well, it's hard to tell you. We've been in secret negotiations with American Express for months to create a joint venture together, Bank of America and American Express, that will create an automated system for transaction authorization for multiple credit card systems across the whole country. We're going to do this.

大卫：他们就像，嗯，很难告诉你。我们已经与美国运通进行了几个月的秘密谈判，计划与美国银行和美国运通共同创建一家合资企业，该企业将为全国多个信用卡系统创建一个自动化的交易授权系统。我们会这样做的。

Dee, if you want us to remain part of NBI—remember, this is Bank of America, the most important part of NBI—I know you know that part of the operating agreement is we can't really operate outside of the bounds of NBI, but this isn't really outside the bounds of the NBI, this is a separate thing. This is authorization systems. We're going to do this, and if you say we can't do this, we're out. Not good.

迪，如果你希望我们继续成为 NBI 的一部分——记住，这是美国银行，NBI 最重要的部分——我知道你知道运营协议的一部分是我们不能真正超出 NBI 的范围运作，但这实际上不在 NBI 的范围之外，这是一个单独的事情。这是授权系统。我们要做这个，如果你说我们不能做这个，我们就退出。不太好。

Ben: It's true. It's not really like they're issuing new cards or acquiring new merchants. They're being a technology provider.

本：这是真的。他们并没有真正发行新卡或获取新商户。他们是一个技术提供商。

David: Because they and American Express both see that, hey, this is a really, really, really, really valuable piece of technology. Dee is of course pissed, but what's he going to do? B of A says, take it or leave it. Dee takes it.

大卫：因为他们和美国运通都看到，这是一项非常非常非常非常有价值的技术。迪当然很生气，但他能怎么办？美国银行说，要么接受，要么放弃。迪接受了。

As Dee then tells the story, Bank of America and AmEx go out and they try and pitch the other banks in NBI, Interbank, and MasterCard on joining the system. But there are all these problems with it, they don't know how to build technology, and the whole thing dies on the vine. Maybe that might be part of the story.

然后，迪讲述了这个故事，美国银行和美国运通出去尝试向 NBI、Interbank 和万事达卡的其他银行推销加入该系统。但这个系统存在很多问题，他们不知道如何构建技术，整个事情就此夭折。也许这可能是故事的一部分。

The other thing that happens is Interbank and MasterCard actually get involved in the project. The whole thing then morphs into a tripartite consortium of Interbank, American Express, Bank of America, and thus, by association, NBI. Our old friends, the Department of Justice, start sniffing around and they're like, all right, now this is actually collusion and anti-competitive behavior. If you go forward with this, we're going to sue you. And they all abandoned the project. This is huge for Visa, because this means they can build it on their own.

另一件发生的事情是，Interbank 和 MasterCard 实际上参与了该项目。整个事情随后演变成一个由 Interbank、American Express、Bank of America 组成的三方联盟，因此，通过关联，NBI 也参与其中。我们的老朋友，司法部，开始调查，他们就像，好吧，现在这实际上是合谋和反竞争行为。如果你们继续推进这个项目，我们将起诉你们。于是他们都放弃了这个项目。这对 Visa 来说是个大好事，因为这意味着他们可以独立构建它。

Ben: Fascinating. 本：真有趣。

David: They do the natural thing at the time. These are bankers. Even though they're based in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, these aren't tech folks. They put out an RFP to folks like IBM, systems integrators, the Accenture's of the day to go build this technology for them. Go build a computerized authorization system for the BankAmericard Visa network.

大卫：他们在当时做了自然的事情。这些是银行家。即使他们总部设在旧金山和硅谷，这些也不是技术人员。他们向像 IBM 这样的公司、系统集成商、当时的埃森哲等发出 RFP，让他们为其构建这项技术。为 BankAmericard Visa 网络构建一个计算机化的授权系统。

All the bids come back. Of course, they are all way over budget and way over time. Dee says, screw it, we're going to do it ourselves. How hard can it be? In his very Dee way, he goes and recruits the guy from the firm that impressed them the most throughout the bidding process. It was a firm named TRW and a guy named Ahram Detulian.

所有的投标都回来了。当然，它们都远远超出预算和时间。迪说，算了，我们自己来做。能有多难呢？以他一贯的方式，他去招募了在投标过程中给他们留下最深刻印象的公司的人。这是一家名为 TRW 的公司，一个名叫 Ahram Detulian 的人。

Dee goes back to him and he's like, I like you. You come work for me. Leave TRW, I'm going to hire you, you build this here in-house. I'll give you the resources, you come join us, and you'll build out your own tech team here within NBI/Visa. Ahram comes and joins, and starts the core of the Visa tech team. Dee gives him nine months to build this entire thing from scratch.

迪回到他身边，他说，我喜欢你。你来为我工作。离开 TRW，我要雇用你，你在这里内部建立这个。我会给你资源，你来加入我们，你将在 NBI/Visa 内部建立自己的技术团队。Ahram 加入并开始建立 Visa 技术团队的核心。迪给了他九个月的时间从头开始建立整个项目。

To do this, (1) it involves building a first nationwide and then ultimately worldwide telecom network so that the electronic communication can happen. (2) Installing computer systems in each of the member banks around the country so that instead of the banks calling the other banks, this can happen over computers. (3) Training the people at the banks on how to use these new computer systems. (4) Maybe most importantly for the long run, building a new centralized data center for Visa in the Bay Area.

为此，（1）需要先建立一个全国性的，然后最终是全球性的电信网络，以便进行电子通信。（2）在全国各成员银行安装计算机系统，这样银行之间的通信可以通过计算机进行，而不是通过电话。（3）培训银行员工如何使用这些新的计算机系统。（4）可能对长期而言最重要的是，在湾区为 Visa 建立一个新的集中数据中心。

This becomes the San Mateo campus. You can see it right off of 101 as you're driving between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. It is, I believe, still the headquarters of Visa today now, a huge campus in San Mateo where they build the data center.

这成为了圣马特奥校区。你可以在从旧金山到硅谷的 101 公路上看到它。我相信，它现在仍然是 Visa 的总部，一个位于圣马特奥的大型校区，他们在那里建造数据中心。

Ben: Until I think next year, it's going to go back up to San Francisco when they finished the new building.

本：我想明年，当他们完成新建筑时，它会回到旧金山。

David: That's right. I think it's going to Mission Bay. Miraculously, Ahram and his new tiger Visa tech team do it in nine months. And it works. Dave Stearns writes in his book about this whole situation and about Dee. "Dee maintained that if you give computer people more time, they will just consume it." So he always insisted—it's so true—on shorter projects with uncompromising deadlines.

大卫：没错。我认为它将前往使命湾。奇迹般地，Ahram 和他的新虎队 Visa 技术团队在九个月内完成了。而且它成功了。戴夫·斯特恩斯在他的书中写到了整个情况和迪。“迪坚持认为，如果你给计算机人员更多时间，他们只会消耗掉。”所以他总是坚持——这是真的——更短的项目和不妥协的截止日期。

Ben: They will just consume it. Fascinating. Okay, they build what becomes VisaNet in-house. At this point, there's no internet, so it's all just working over telephone communication.

本：他们只会消费它。真有趣。好吧，他们在内部构建了后来成为 VisaNet 的东西。此时，还没有互联网，所以一切都只是通过电话通信进行。

David: Yup, direct networking.

大卫：是的，直接联网。

Ben: Amazing. They're just operating the whole network out of this data center in California.

本：太棒了。他们只是从加利福尼亚的数据中心运营整个网络。

David: Importantly, this is only for transaction authorizations. The cards and the point of sale have not been digitized yet. That's going to be the final third piece of the stool of technology that Visa builds. This is just when a merchant makes a call to their bank saying, hey, is this card good for this amount? This is then the Interbank communication.

大卫：重要的是，这仅用于交易授权。卡片和销售点尚未数字化。这将是 Visa 构建的技术的最后一个组成部分。这只是当商家向他们的银行询问这张卡是否适合这个金额时的情况。这就是银行间的通信。

Ben: I see. How does the settlement happen at this point in history?

本：我明白。在历史的这个时刻，和解是如何发生的？

David: That's what's next. That's the next big operational technical problem that Visa needs to solve.

大卫：这就是接下来的事情。这是 Visa 需要解决的下一个重大运营技术问题。

Ben: It's literally moving the money when it needs to be moved.

本：这实际上是在需要的时候移动资金。

David: Reconciling the transactions, moving the money, getting everything wrapped up at the end of the day, week, month, sending out statements, all this stuff. You can think of the first piece that we just described as the authorization as the front end of a payment card system. The settlement is the back end. The front end piece consumed a lot of phone time and people, the back end piece consumed a lot of paper and time too, maybe more time, but a lot of paper.

David：对交易进行调节，转移资金，在一天、一个星期、一个月结束时完成所有工作，发送对账单，所有这些事情。你可以将我们刚刚描述的第一部分视为支付卡系统的前端授权。结算是后端。前端部分消耗了大量的电话时间和人力，后端部分也消耗了大量的纸张和时间，可能更多的时间，但也有很多纸张。

Ben: Because you're effectively mailing checks.

本：因为你实际上是在邮寄支票。

David: Even more perniciously, as the network grew, and at this point in time, soon-to-be Visa is growing explosively, the complexity of this settlement piece also grows exponentially. Every new bank node that you add into the system now has to interact with all the other bank nodes, so this is a hard computer science problem.

David：更具危害性的是，随着网络的增长，在这个时间点，即将成为 Visa 的公司正在爆炸性增长，这个结算部分的复杂性也呈指数级增长。现在，您添加到系统中的每个新银行节点都必须与所有其他银行节点进行交互，因此这是一个困难的计算机科学问题。

Ben: It's an n-squared problem.

Ben：这是一个 n 平方的问题。

David: It's a problem that is easily solved by computers. But when you're doing all this manually with paper, this is a big, big problem.

大卫：这是一个计算机可以轻松解决的问题。但当你用纸手动完成所有这些时，这是一个非常非常大的问题。

Ben: N-squared is much worse when you're doing it with paper than with computers.

本：用纸做的时候，N 平方要比用电脑糟糕得多。

David: What you really need to do this efficiently to bring it all the way back to the beginning of the episode is a clearing house. You need an automated clearing house. This is unbelievable. A few people had referenced this to us as we were doing the research, but I forgot about it till the end when I got to this point. I was like, holy crap.

大卫：你真正需要做的，是有效地将这一切带回到情节的开头，就是一个清算所。你需要一个自动清算所。这真是难以置信。在我们进行研究时，有几个人提到过这个，但我直到最后才想起来，当我到达这一点时，我就像，天哪。

Visa builds an automated clearing house for themselves to do settlement electronically over the network. They ended up calling this project BASE II after BASE I, which was the first thing doing authorizations. This happens at the exact same time and place as when the Federal Reserve is building their own ACH system for checks—automated clearing house, ACH, everything in the banking system. That was built by the San Francisco branch of the Federal Reserve in the exact same years in the 70s when Visa was building their own, essentially, automated clearing house system.

Visa 为自己建立了一个自动清算所，通过网络进行电子结算。他们最终将这个项目称为 BASE II，以区别于 BASE I，后者是第一个进行授权的系统。这与联邦储备系统为支票建立自己的 ACH 系统——自动清算所，ACH，银行系统中的一切——的时间和地点完全相同。那是由联邦储备系统的旧金山分行在 70 年代与 Visa 建立自己的自动清算所系统的同一年建成的。

Ben: That is wild. 本：太疯狂了。

David: I've never read anything, I couldn't find anything. I've never heard anybody say that they talk to each other, that they knew anything about what was going on, that they were sharing practices. I assume they probably didn't, but it's wild. The same place, the same time.

大卫：我从来没有读过任何东西，我找不到任何东西。我从来没有听说过有人说他们彼此交谈，知道发生了什么，分享了做法。我想他们可能没有，但这很疯狂。同一个地方，同一个时间。

Ben: Solving the same problem.

本：解决同样的问题。

David: Solving the same problem.

大卫：解决同样的问题。

Ben: Again, the problem is this gigantic list of a whole bunch of transactions just happened. People just agreed to make them happen, and now we need to settle up at the end of the day. If you paid me $100 500 times, and I paid you $100 400 times, what is the net that actually needs to get transferred? That is a far more efficient way. Batching them up is a far more efficient way than transferring the money back and forth every single time, but still can be a complicated problem, especially when you have thousands of banks on each side of that equation.

本：问题在于，这个庞大的交易列表刚刚发生。人们同意让它们发生，现在我们需要在一天结束时结算。如果你付给我 100 美元 500 次，而我付给你 100 美元 400 次，实际需要转移的净额是多少？这是一种更有效的方式。将它们批量处理比每次来回转账要有效得多，但仍然可能是一个复杂的问题，尤其是当你在这个等式的每一边都有成千上万的银行时。

David: It really is the exact same problem that both of these teams are solving with the same users, the same banks. It's totally wild. Once BASE II is done—and again, it also happens in less than a year that it's live and up and running—average settlement time for transactions on the Visa network go from taking a week on average to happening in batch overnight, every single night.

大卫：这确实是完全相同的问题，这两个团队正在为相同的用户、相同的银行解决。真是太疯狂了。一旦 BASE II 完成——而且再次强调，它在不到一年的时间里就上线并运行——Visa 网络上的交易平均结算时间从平均一周缩短到每晚批量处理。

Every transaction on the network settled every single night. The speed is super important. This has lots of implications for float amongst the banks, some good, some bad between the banks, between the merchants, the issuing banks.

网络上的每笔交易每晚都会结算。速度非常重要。这对银行之间的浮动有很多影响，有些对银行有利，有些对银行不利，对商家和发卡银行之间也是如此。

Ben: If you're the one that owes the money, you want the payment to take more time.

本：如果是你欠钱，你会希望付款花更多时间。

David: Exactly. Also, importantly, this is from Dave's book, it ends up saving about $15 million in labor and postage costs to the banks by automating this just in year one. Imagine if this were done manually today. It wouldn't be possible to do this manually today.

大卫：确切地说。而且，重要的是，这来自戴夫的书，通过自动化这一过程，仅在第一年就为银行节省了大约 1500 万美元的人工和邮资成本。想象一下，如果今天手动完成这项工作。今天手动完成这项工作是不可能的。

Ben: You needed the technology solutions that they've put in place to enable the commerce scale that flows on this network today.

本：你需要他们所实施的技术解决方案，以支持今天在这个网络上进行的商业规模。

David: It is also during this project that one of the most famous Visa tech team stories in history happens.

大卫：也正是在这个项目期间，历史上最著名的 Visa 技术团队故事之一发生了。

Ben: This is a good one.

本：这是一个好的。

David: This is in Dave's book. One of the guys—I think he was working on BASE I and then maybe got transferred into BASE II—is thinking about the system, and reliability is so important. This network can't go down. He's like, we actually have a pretty serious vulnerability in the system. He goes to see Dee. The whole Visa organization I think is less than 50 people at this point in time. It's just wild.

大卫：这在戴夫的书里。其中一个家伙——我想他当时在做 BASE I，然后可能被调到 BASE II——在思考系统，可靠性是如此重要。这个网络不能瘫痪。他说，我们的系统实际上有一个相当严重的漏洞。他去找迪。整个 Visa 组织在这个时候我想不到 50 人。这真是太疯狂了。

He's like, Dee, all this technology we're building, we've got authorizations running, we're in the middle of getting settlement running, the whole Visa network now depends on this technology. We're providing the service off of one computer in one data center, which is made out of wood and sits on a hillside that has dried grass, right by a freeway, below a parking lot that is perched on a cliff. We're also about a mile from the San Andreas Fault.

他说，Dee，我们正在构建的所有这些技术，我们已经有授权在运行，我们正在进行结算，现在整个 Visa 网络都依赖于这项技术。我们在一个数据中心的一台计算机上提供服务，这个数据中心是用木头建成的，坐落在干草覆盖的山坡上，紧邻高速公路，下面是悬崖上的一个停车场。我们还距离圣安德烈亚斯断层大约一英里。

We really might want to think about having some redundant parallel site data center out there. It is very Dee way. He's like, all right, let me think about this over the weekend. He comes back on Monday and he's like, all right, you're right. thought about it, you now have a new job, your job is to solve this problem. Your marching orders, you are to go move somewhere on the East Coast, I don't care where, find a site where you can build a redundant data center, get it all built, and have it done within six months.

我们真的可能需要考虑在外面建立一些冗余的平行站点数据中心。这是非常迪的方式。他就像，好吧，让我在周末考虑一下。周一他回来时，他就像，好吧，你是对的。考虑过了，你现在有一个新工作，你的工作就是解决这个问题。你的任务是，你要去东海岸的某个地方，我不在乎在哪里，找到一个可以建造冗余数据中心的地点，把它全部建好，并在六个月内完成。

Ben: And invent the technology to keep these things synchronized so they are actually redundant.

本：并发明技术来保持这些东西同步，以便它们实际上是冗余的。

David: Dee is not technical enough to talk about that, but this is super important. Up until this point in time, the state of the art in the fledgling data center world was yes, to have redundant other location backups, but the way that it was typically done was you had your primary data center that operated at full capacity all the time. The backups were just cold storage. They were dormant backups that only were there to come online if you had to failover from the primary system.

David：Dee 不够专业，无法谈论这个，但这非常重要。直到这个时间点，新兴数据中心领域的最新技术是，确实有冗余的其他位置备份，但通常的做法是，你的主要数据中心一直以满负荷运行。备份只是冷存储，它们是休眠备份，只有在主系统故障转移时才会上线。

Visa, though, and the Visa tech team, they're like, if we're going to go through all this trouble and expense of building another data center, let's use it. They re-architected BASE I and completed architecting BASE II to run concurrently across multiple datacenters as shared operations running across multiple data centers, which I think may have been either the first or one of the first examples of that ever happening.

不过，Visa 和 Visa 技术团队就像，如果我们要费这么大劲和花费去建另一个数据中心，那就用它吧。他们重新设计了 BASE I，并完成了 BASE II 的架构，使其能够在多个数据中心上同时运行，作为跨多个数据中心的共享操作，我认为这可能是第一个或其中一个最早的例子。

Totally wild, right? I don't know that it was the first, but it was definitely not state of the art before. This whole data center world was still pretty new, and Visa definitely, through ingenuity, invented a way to do this. Of course, this is now how every data center in the world runs today. Pretty amazing. That was data center innovation, which happens in concert with settlement digitization.

完全疯狂，对吧？我不知道这是第一个，但之前绝对不是最先进的。整个数据中心的世界仍然相当新颖，Visa 确实通过独创性发明了一种方法来实现这一点。当然，现在这是全世界每个数据中心的运行方式。相当惊人。这是数据中心的创新，与结算数字化同步发生。

The third big leg of the technology stool that Visa builds is finally digitizing the point of the transaction itself. That requires both figuring out some way to make the cards digital or capable of being read in a digital manner and digitizing the point of sale terminal in the merchants.

Visa 构建的技术支柱的第三大支柱最终是将交易点本身数字化。这需要找到某种方法使卡片数字化或能够以数字方式读取，并将商家的销售点终端数字化。

Ben: The Verifone, traditionally, they had a huge market share.

Ben：传统上，Verifone 拥有巨大的市场份额。

David: This is when Verifone gets built. There was no Verifone before this. This is huge. This is the holy grail. The BASE I authorization system, that was still only for transactions above the floor limits at the merchant, above $50, $100, or whatever. It replaced the need for phone calls, but it didn't digitize the transactions themselves.

大卫：这是 Verifone 建立的时候。在此之前没有 Verifone。这是巨大的。这是圣杯。BASE I 授权系统仍然只用于商户超过底限的交易，超过 50 美元、100 美元或其他金额。它取代了电话的需求，但并没有将交易本身数字化。

Ben: This is actually, every transaction now is running digitally for authorization over the network.

本：实际上，现在每笔交易都是通过网络进行数字化授权的。

David: Exactly. Not only authorization, but just think about all the things that happen digitally around transactions, the data, everything. This is the beginning of it all.

大卫：确切地说。不仅仅是授权，想想所有与交易相关的数字化事物、数据、一切。这是一切的开始。

The first step to doing this, as we mentioned, is digitizing the cards. That really meant making them machine readable. Before this, the cards were just pieces of plastic with embossed numbers on them. You had to say or type the numbers into something.

正如我们提到的，执行此操作的第一步是将卡片数字化。这实际上意味着使它们可被机器读取。在此之前，这些卡片只是带有压印号码的塑料片。你必须将号码说出来或输入到某个东西中。

Ben: The nice thing about the embossing is that if you run a [...] on it, the zip-zap, or the card imprint reader, you actually can get the numbers off of it without writing it down yourself. That was a huge productivity gain when they launched the imprint reader machines.

本：关于压印的好处是，如果你在上面使用[...]，即拉卡机或卡片压印阅读器，你实际上可以在不自己写下来的情况下获取号码。这在他们推出压印阅读器机器时是一个巨大的生产力提升。

David: Visa makes the decision. They end up going with the mag stripe technology. This is the magnetic strip on the back of, still to this day, almost everybody's cards out there. There's a whole bunch of drama around this. Citibank had financed a proprietary magnetic solution that they were trying to push on the industry. I think they're a bunch of lawsuits.

大卫：Visa 做出了决定。他们最终选择了磁条技术。这是至今仍在几乎每个人的卡背面的磁条。围绕这一点有很多戏剧性事件。花旗银行曾资助了一种专有的磁性解决方案，他们试图在行业中推广。我想有一堆诉讼。

Ben: Didn't they tried to hack the magnetic stripe, and then they did just to prove that the proprietary thing would have been more secure?

本：他们不是试图破解磁条，然后只是为了证明专有技术会更安全吗？

David: Yes, but it was proprietary. Visa is like, hey, we're not going to pay you, Citibank skiff, on everything that we do here. We take the skiff.

David：是的，但它是专有的。Visa 就像，嘿，我们不会为你支付费用，花旗银行小艇，关于我们在这里所做的一切。我们拿走小艇。

Ben: You pay us a skiff on everything.

本：你在每件事上都给我们一点好处。

David: Exactly. They standardize on the mag stripe for the cards. The next step then is they have to create a digital point of sale terminal. This is pretty far outside the scope of what Visa itself could do. Mass produce a small, inexpensive piece of hardware that needs to get distributed to millions of merchants around the globe.

大卫：没错。他们对卡片的磁条进行了标准化。接下来的步骤是他们必须创建一个数字销售终端。这远远超出了 Visa 本身的能力范围。大规模生产一个小型、廉价的硬件设备，需要分发给全球数百万商家。

Ben: That is outside their circle of competence.

本：那超出了他们的能力圈。

David: We mentioned earlier, and you alluded too, this is when Verifone takes off. What Visa does is they create a spec. They're like, this is the spec of what we need to be created. They invite different technology vendors to bid on it. Verifone ends up becoming the large dominant. I actually don't know what their market share was or is.

大卫：我们之前提到过，你也提到过，这是 Verifone 起飞的时候。Visa 所做的是他们创建一个规范。他们就像，这是我们需要创建的规范。他们邀请不同的技术供应商来竞标。Verifone 最终成为了大型的主导者。我实际上不知道他们的市场份额是多少或是多少。

Ben: I think they had two-thirds of the market at peak.

本：我认为他们在高峰时占据了三分之二的市场。

David: It's pretty crazy, they come up with this sub-$500 device that can sit pretty easily on a merchant countertop that already has a bunch of other stuff on it and not a lot of space, and get it distributed and installed at all these merchants.

David：这真是太疯狂了，他们想出了这个不到 500 美元的设备，可以很容易地放在已经有很多东西且空间不大的商家柜台上，并在所有这些商家中分发和安装。

Now the merchants didn't exactly want this thing necessarily, but the way Visa incentivize them to get it is they gave merchants who used it a discount on transaction fees, I think, for a period of time for transactions that happen digitally over the digital network.

现在商家并不一定想要这个东西，但 Visa 激励他们获得它的方式是给使用它的商家提供交易费折扣，我认为，这在一段时间内适用于通过数字网络进行的数字交易。

Ben: I see. If you use this instead of the zip-zap, you'll get cheaper fees.

本：我明白。如果你用这个代替 zip-zap，你会得到更便宜的费用。

David: Exactly. 大卫：没错。

Ben: That business model carries through today. The way that you charge a card massively affects the interchange that gets charged, whether it's keyed in with numbers, whether it's swiped, or whether it's an ecommerce transaction.

本：这种商业模式延续至今。你刷卡的方式会极大地影响所收取的交换费，无论是输入数字、刷卡还是电子商务交易。

David: One really fun piece of implementation detail around this, just like with BASE I and authorization, where Visa had to build out a telecommunications network amongst all the banks. Now, Visa needs a telecommunications network amongst all the merchants around the whole country and the world. That's another whole step change.

David：围绕这一点有一个非常有趣的实现细节，就像 BASE I 和授权一样，Visa 必须在所有银行之间建立一个电信网络。现在，Visa 需要在全国乃至全世界的所有商家之间建立一个电信网络。这是另一个完全的变革。

Ben: That's single digit millions of nodes.

Ben：那是数百万个节点。

David: What are they going to do? For the pilot program, they work with one of the big telecom vendors and essentially build it out themselves. We're now in the 1980s here, but they realized during this that there's this new fledgling consumer networking service out there called CompuServe. For folks who either weren't alive in the US at this time or not Americans, CompuServe was an AOL competitor in the early days of the Internet.

David：他们打算做什么？对于试点项目，他们与一家大型电信供应商合作，并基本上自己构建。我们现在是在 20 世纪 80 年代，但他们在此期间意识到有一个新的初创消费者网络服务，叫做 CompuServe。对于当时在美国没有生活过的人或不是美国人来说，CompuServe 是互联网早期的 AOL 竞争对手。

Ben: I think they invented the GIF.

本：我认为他们发明了 GIF。

David: I think that might be right, yeah. As a consumer, you would pay a monthly fee to CompuServe, AOL, or whatever, and it would be your internet service provider, but also your email and your portal to the web.

大卫：我想这可能是对的，是的。作为消费者，你会每月支付费用给 CompuServe、AOL 或其他公司，它会是你的互联网服务提供商，同时也是你的电子邮件和网络门户。

Ben: It was a proprietary internet.

本：那是一个专有的互联网。

David: They somehow get in touch with CompuServe. They realized that CompuServe has this dynamic where they've architected out their network for peak capacity demand, which is probably when consumers are home at night. The rest of the day, they've got all this capacity that's unused sitting on their network. Visa ends up renting CompuServe network capacity to send their digital transactions from merch and point-of-sale terminals. I think this goes on for years.

大卫：他们以某种方式与 CompuServe 取得联系。他们意识到 CompuServe 有一个动态，他们为峰值容量需求设计了网络，这可能是在消费者晚上在家时。其余时间，他们的网络上有大量未使用的容量。Visa 最终租用了 CompuServe 的网络容量来发送他们的数字交易，从商家和销售点终端。我认为这持续了多年。

Ben: That's crazy. I had no idea. That's fascinating.

本：太疯狂了。我完全不知道。这真是太吸引人了。

David: Totally wild. 大卫：太疯狂了。

Ben: Normally, you run into the problem with spare capacity, where the time where people want your extra capacity is when you have none. It's amazing to find two complementary use cases for the same infrastructure that when one is waxing, the other is waning.

本：通常，你会遇到备用容量的问题，人们需要你的额外容量的时候，恰好是你没有的时候。找到两个互补的用例来使用同一基础设施，当一个在增长时，另一个在减少，这真是太神奇了。

David: Pretty cool. Finally, with this third step, all the pieces of the transaction are digitized, computerized, fully implemented as part of the network, this has a huge impact on cutting down fraud.

David：很酷。最后，通过第三步，交易的所有部分都被数字化、计算机化，完全作为网络的一部分实施，这对减少欺诈有巨大的影响。

Tons of fraud was happening below the floor limits. If you're charging a $5 transaction to a card, it's just not worth it to the banks and Visa to figure out whether that's fraudulent or not. Now, because it's all digital and instant, they can figure out whether that's fraudulent or not.

大量的欺诈行为发生在低于限额的情况下。如果你用卡进行 5 美元的交易，银行和 Visa 根本不值得去判断这是否是欺诈行为。现在，因为一切都是数字化和即时的，他们可以判断这是否是欺诈行为。

During the pilot, banks and merchants that were participating in this program reduced chargebacks to the system by 82% relative to what was happening before. A massive amount of fraud gets eliminated.

在试点期间，参与该计划的银行和商家将系统的拒付率降低了 82%，相对于之前的情况，大量的欺诈行为被消除了。

Ben: Which actually should totally justify a lower interchange. If you're not paying for all the fraud in the system, then the system should cost less to run.

本：这实际上应该完全证明较低的交换是合理的。如果你不为系统中的所有欺诈买单，那么系统的运行成本就应该更低。

In many ways that hey, we're going to reward you with lower interchange to install these terminals, at the end of the day, Visa probably could have maintained a margin, and all the banks could have maintained a profit margin and not lost any margin percentage, because just implementing this technology lower the cost of running the whole thing.

在很多方面，嘿，我们将通过降低安装这些终端的交换费来奖励你，最终，Visa 可能会保持一个利润率，所有银行也可以保持一个利润率而不损失任何利润百分比，因为仅仅实施这项技术就降低了整个运营的成本。

David: Two other results from now having all parts of the system them aggregated digitally. (1) This is what enables the modern payments world we know today. You walk up to a terminal, you double-click your Apple Watch, or you insert a card and you tap, whatever, and it just works, and it gets authorized and you get your thing immediately. This is the backbone to all that being possible. (2) For Visa as a company and Visa as a business, they are now fully digital. They can scale infinitely with essentially zero marginal cost.

大卫：现在将系统的所有部分数字化聚合后产生的另外两个结果。（1）这就是我们今天所知的现代支付世界的实现方式。你走到一个终端，双击你的 Apple Watch，或者插入一张卡并轻触，无论如何，它都能正常工作，并获得授权，你立即得到你的东西。这是所有这些成为可能的基础。（2）对于 Visa 作为一家公司和 Visa 作为一个业务，他们现在完全数字化。他们可以在基本上零边际成本的情况下无限扩展。

Ben: We will later talk about what an astonishing financial profile this business has. But for now, just know that at this point, they got to stop spending money. They got to only make every dollar after this basically fell to the bottom line.

本：我们稍后会谈到这家企业令人惊叹的财务状况。但现在，只需知道在这一点上，他们必须停止花钱。他们必须确保从现在起每一美元基本上都落到净利润上。

David: This unlocks just an unfathomably good business model. Before this, some element of adding scale into the system required manual labor. Now, it's all just ones and zeros.

大卫：这解锁了一个难以想象的优秀商业模式。在此之前，向系统添加规模的某些元素需要人工劳动。现在，这一切都只是零和一。

Ben: Now the toll booth is fully built. It is a high functioning toll booth. It's immovable toll booth.

本：现在收费站已经完全建成。它是一个高效运作的收费站。它是一个不可移动的收费站。

David: It's digitized. It no longer has a human sitting there. They've got the fastpass system or whatever.

大卫：它已经数字化了。那里不再有人坐着。他们有快速通行系统或其他什么。

Ben: David, catch us up to today, I will give us a bunch of information about the business today, some changes to the business model, and then we can get into analysis.

本：大卫，跟我们说说今天的情况，我会给我们提供一些关于今天业务的信息，一些业务模式的变化，然后我们可以进行分析。

Before that, I know there's obviously the IPO event that we want to talk about in 2008 and how the structure of the whole thing changed, but I think you've got a marketing thing that you want to talk about, too.

在此之前，我知道显然有我们想谈论的 2008 年 IPO 事件以及整个事情的结构如何变化，但我想你也有一个想谈论的营销事情。

David: There's one more really fun marketing piece that I want to come back to before we move on to today, and that's the Olympics. A lot of people, probably everybody listening, now knows Visa is associated with the Olympics.

大卫：在我们继续今天的内容之前，我想回到一个非常有趣的营销项目，那就是奥运会。很多人，可能是所有在听的人，现在都知道 Visa 与奥运会有关。

Ben: They're probably the most associated brand other than NBC.

本：除了 NBC，他们可能是最相关的品牌。

David: But that's only in America. NBC doesn't mean anything around the globe. Visa is the Olympics everywhere. This happens right around the same time as the digitization of point of sale in the cards. It's 1986. The Olympics, for the first time, are going around to companies and offering a global Olympic sponsorship. This is just like the NFL episode.

大卫：但那只是美国的情况。NBC 在全球范围内没有意义。Visa 是全球的奥运会。这发生在卡片销售点数字化的同时。那是 1986 年。奥运会首次向公司提供全球奥运赞助。这就像 NFL 的那一集。

Before this, you could sponsor the Olympics in specific countries. You could sponsor whatever broadcast, whatever television radio was covering the Olympics in certain countries. You could have billboards and whatnot, but you couldn't do a global sponsorship. There's no event like the Olympics that could really do this. Certainly not the Super Bowl, not even the World Cup, you're missing a large part of America. This is the only thing, where you're going to reach everybody in the world.

在此之前，您可以在特定国家赞助奥运会。您可以赞助任何广播、任何电视广播在某些国家报道奥运会。您可以有广告牌等等，但您不能进行全球赞助。没有像奥运会这样的活动可以真正做到这一点。当然不是超级碗，甚至不是世界杯，您会错过美国的大部分地区。这是唯一能让您接触到全世界每一个人的事情。

Up until this point, one of the main stay largest Olympic sponsors in America was American Express, because this fits perfectly with American Express. It's for American business people who are traveling abroad. Olympics, great, amazing.

直到这一点，美国最大的奥运会主要赞助商之一是美国运通，因为这与美国运通完美契合。它是为出国旅行的美国商人准备的。奥运会，太棒了，太惊人了。

The Olympics, the IOC, goes to Amex to try and sign them up to take this marquee global sponsorship slot. They think it's a no-brainer. They give Amex a sweetheart introductory offer deal. You're the first people we're going to, $14 million. Amex declines. They had their bite at the apple, and they missed it.

奥运会，国际奥委会，去找美国运通，试图让他们签约，拿下这个全球赞助的黄金位置。他们认为这是显而易见的。他们给了美国运通一个优惠的入门报价。你们是我们首先找的人，1400 万美元。美国运通拒绝了。他们曾有机会，但错过了。

A couple of years before this, right as the Visa empire was being completed with the full digitization of the network, Dee ends up getting ousted from the company. I think if he were still alive today, he would probably agree with the characterization that Dee was one of the most amazing zero-to-one entrepreneurs in history, not so much a one-to-n kind of guy, especially when the industry in which you're going from one-to-n and your shareholders and board is all some of the most conservative financial institutions in the world.

就在几年前，正当 Visa 帝国随着网络的全面数字化而完成时，Dee 最终被公司驱逐。我想如果他今天还活着，他可能会同意这样的描述：Dee 是历史上最了不起的从零到一的企业家之一，而不是那种从一到多的人，尤其是在你所处的行业是从一到多，而你的股东和董事会都是世界上最保守的金融机构之一的时候。

A lot of conflict starts to erupt. It ends up with Dee leaving the company in 1984. After this happens, Visa brings on a new global chief marketing officer, a guy named John Bennett who came from 20 years at American Express. He and his team see that Amex has passed on this new amazing global opportunity with the Olympics.

许多冲突开始爆发，最终导致迪在 1984 年离开公司。在此之后，Visa 聘请了一位新的全球首席营销官，一个名叫约翰·贝内特的人，他在美国运通工作了 20 年。他和他的团队发现，运通错过了这个与奥运会相关的新的惊人的全球机会。

They're also formulating the new Visa marketing strategy. Up into that point, the marketing strategy had been mostly generate category awareness for consumers around the world to the extent we competed with anybody, we competed with MasterCard, so we positioned against them.

他们还在制定新的 Visa 营销策略。在那之前，营销策略主要是为全球消费者创造类别意识，在我们与任何人竞争的程度上，我们与万事达卡竞争，因此我们针对他们进行了定位。

John comes in and he's like, no, no, the path to victory here is not positioning against MasterCard. The path to victory is positioning against American Express. Not because we want to kill American Express, we don't actually care. We're way, way, way bigger than American Express. But we need global ubiquity, adoption, and people to get comfortable with using Visa and using credit cards. Remember, there's still this social stigma that woman in 1993 in Burger King who's like, oh, it's sad if you're using debt to buy a hamburger.

约翰进来后说，不，不，这里的胜利之路不是与万事达卡对抗。胜利之路是与美国运通对抗。不是因为我们想要打败美国运通，我们实际上并不在乎。我们比美国运通大得多。但我们需要全球普及、采用，并让人们习惯使用 Visa 和信用卡。记住，仍然存在这种社会污名，就像 1993 年在汉堡王的那个女人，她觉得用债务买汉堡很可悲。

Ben: Which is so interesting, because a signature piece of the BankAmericard since it launched was that it is actually a charge card, where at the end of the first month, you have the option to turn it into a loan. I have never elected that option. I hold these things called credit cards, but that's a misnomer. I've never once used any credit.

本：这很有趣，因为自从 BankAmericard 推出以来，它的一个标志性特点就是它实际上是一张记账卡，在第一个月结束时，你可以选择将其转换为贷款。我从未选择过这个选项。我持有这些被称为信用卡的东西，但这是个误称。我从未使用过任何信用。

David: And if this were certainly 1986 and still 1993, you would not feel that way. You might feel that way about your American Express card, but you wouldn't feel that way about your Visa card.

大卫：如果这确实是 1986 年，甚至是 1993 年，你就不会有那种感觉。你可能会对你的美国运通卡有那种感觉，但你不会对你的 Visa 卡有那种感觉。

Ben: Although I should say, it's probably false to say I've never used any credit. The bank does float you the money for a month, but they have a one month grace period where you have no interest.

本：虽然我应该说，说我从未使用过任何信用可能是假的。银行确实会给你一个月的资金，但他们有一个月的宽限期，在此期间你没有利息。

David: Yes. You are using debt, you're just not paying interest.

大卫：是的。你在使用债务，只是没有支付利息。

Ben: Yes. 本：是的。

David: Which, hey, that's a great thing to do.

大卫：嘿，那是件很棒的事情。

Ben: That's an amazing gift that these banks give the world.

本：这些银行给予世界的礼物真是太棒了。

David: It's the American way. So John had just started. The strategy is use American Express to eliminate the stigma around Visa, and by association paint MasterCard as having that stigma, because we're not even bothering to talk about them.

大卫：这是美国的方式。所以约翰刚刚开始。策略是使用美国运通来消除围绕 Visa 的污名，并通过关联将万事达卡描绘成有这种污名，因为我们甚至懒得谈论他们。

How do we go after American Express? The network is much smaller. The American Express merchant network at the time was about 25%, the size of Visa's. They design a whole marketing campaign around going after American Express. The tagline of the campaign, they showed these exotic locales that the type of customers who would be using American Express, that they would be dining at these restaurants, going to these events, or going on these vacations.

我们如何追赶美国运通？网络要小得多。当时美国运通的商户网络大约是 Visa 的 25%。他们设计了整个营销活动来追赶美国运通。活动的标语展示了使用美国运通的客户类型会去的异国情调的地方，他们会在这些餐厅用餐，参加这些活动，或去这些度假胜地。

At the end, folks of our similar age probably remember exactly the words here. If you go there, remember to take your Visa card because they don't take American Express. It's so great. And then the second tagline to it was Visa, it's everywhere you want to be.

最后，我们这个年龄段的人可能还记得这里的确切词句。如果你去那里，记得带上你的 Visa 卡，因为他们不接受美国运通。这太棒了。然后第二句标语是 Visa，无处不在。

The Olympics come up. After Amex declines, John and the team get in touch with the IOC. The price tag has gone up to $17 million just for the rights. That's before any media buys, no advertising, it's just for the right to be a global sponsor of the Olympics.

奥运会即将来临。在美国运通拒绝后，约翰和团队与国际奥委会取得联系。仅仅是获得权利的价格就已经上涨到 1700 万美元。这还不包括任何媒体购买，没有广告，这只是为了获得成为奥运会全球赞助商的权利。

They pulled the trigger. They become the founding global Olympic sponsor. They spend another $23 million in media for the 1988 Olympics, so $40 million in total on one global event. There are two, there's the Summer and the Winter Olympics, but one year of global events.

他们扣动了扳机。他们成为全球奥林匹克创始赞助商。他们在 1988 年奥运会上又花费了 2300 万美元的媒体费用，因此在一个全球赛事上总共花费了 4000 万美元。有两个，一个是夏季奥运会，一个是冬季奥运会，但一年只有一个全球赛事。

Ben: That's about $110 million in today's dollars.

本：这大约是今天的 1.1 亿美元。

David: Yeah, wild. Way more than they spent on any of the technology projects that we were just talking about.

大卫：是啊，太疯狂了。比我们刚才谈到的任何技术项目花的钱都多得多。

Ben: R&D costs money, but go-to-market costs more.

本：研发需要花钱，但市场推广花费更多。

David: What's the line? First time founders focus on technology, second time founders focus on distribution?

David：这句话怎么说？第一次创业者专注于技术，第二次创业者专注于分销？

Ben: Yup. 本：是的。

David: The real kicker, they, of course, become the exclusive payment provider at the Olympics. Everybody now coming to the Olympics, which is a lot of people from around the world that are going to the Olympics, the only payment card provider accepted there is Visa.

大卫：真正的关键是，他们当然成为了奥运会的独家支付提供商。现在所有来奥运会的人，来自世界各地的很多人去奥运会，那里唯一接受的支付卡提供商是 Visa。

They're training all these people that are going to the Olympics year after year after year. It has now been 37 years that Visa is the exclusive payments global sponsor of the Olympics. They're contracted through 2032, so it will be at least 46 years where Visa is the only card accepted at the Olympics.

他们年复一年地培训所有要参加奥运会的人。Visa 现在已经连续 37 年成为奥运会的全球独家支付赞助商。他们的合同签到了 2032 年，所以至少有 46 年的时间，Visa 是奥运会上唯一被接受的卡。

Ben: That's not that big of a deal, because there's not that many people that go relative to the people that see the media and understand the brand association.

本：这不是什么大不了的事，因为相对于看到媒体并了解品牌关联的人来说，去的人并不多。

David: Of course. But the reason we're talking about this is it's an awesome story. But to the last outstanding piece of enabling the global Visa empire, this last thing is the stigma. How do they get rid of the stigma of I can use my credit card and not feel like it's a taboo? This was it. Position against AmEx, go to the Olympics, it's the perfect event. You're around the world, the type of people who go to the Olympics, the type of people who use AmEx, they use their Visa cards and they're proud of it.

大卫：当然。但我们谈论这个的原因是这是一个很棒的故事。但对于最后一个使全球 Visa 帝国成为可能的杰出部分，这最后一件事是污名。他们如何摆脱使用信用卡而不觉得这是禁忌的污名？就是这样。与 AmEx 对抗，参加奥运会，这是完美的事件。你环游世界，去奥运会的人，使用 AmEx 的人，他们使用他们的 Visa 卡并为此感到自豪。

Ben: Love it. David, take us to the IPO. This thing was an organization that was owned but not with stock.

本：喜欢。大卫，带我们去 IPO。这件事是一个被拥有但没有股票的组织。

David: A for-profit, non-stock membership organization.

David：一个营利性、无股份的会员组织。

Ben: And now they're an enormously profitable public company. How did we get from there to here?

本：现在他们是一家利润丰厚的上市公司。我们是如何从那里到达这里的？

David: Just about a half a trillion dollar market cap. The precipitating event wasn't actually the banks trying to get greedy and monetize their asset, although they did monetize the asset.

大卫：市值大约是半万亿美元。引发事件的原因实际上并不是银行试图贪婪地货币化他们的资产，尽管他们确实货币化了资产。

Ben: They were monetizing it just fine the way that they currently owned it.

本：他们通过目前的拥有方式很好地将其货币化。

David: Yes. The profits being spit out of the system were just fine. In 2005, there finally was another huge antitrust lawsuit, I think, against both Visa and MasterCard.

大卫：是的。系统产生的利润还不错。我想在 2005 年，终于又有一起针对 Visa 和 MasterCard 的巨额反垄断诉讼。

Ben: It actually is a class action lawsuit that the merchants brought. They basically got fully fed up with interchange. Every 10 years, there's some meaningful merchant push to try to change interchange, and they either do it in Congress, or they do it in a class action case. There's variety of different ways.

本：这实际上是商家提起的集体诉讼。他们基本上对交换费完全厌倦了。每隔 10 年，就会有一些有意义的商家推动尝试改变交换费，他们要么在国会进行，要么在集体诉讼案件中进行。有各种不同的方法。

This particular class action suit in 2005 is still running today. The numbers have mostly been figured out of how much Visa will owe from a 2012 ruling that then got appealed, so it's still going on. But basically, there was a lot of uncertainty in the 2005 and 2006 timeframe of, geez, what's the liability here going to be?

这起 2005 年的集体诉讼案至今仍在进行。大多数数字已经从 2012 年的裁决中得出，之后又被上诉，所以它仍在继续。但基本上，在 2005 年和 2006 年期间，对这里的责任会是什么存在很大的不确定性。

MasterCard had gone public and did not sort through this issue at all. They just said, we're going public and shareholders, yup, there are lots of uncertainty in our future, and we'll see, but buy our stock. That, as you can imagine, did not go well at all.

万事达卡已经上市，并没有解决这个问题。他们只是说，我们要上市，股东们，是的，我们的未来充满不确定性，我们会拭目以待，但请购买我们的股票。可以想象，这一点都不顺利。

As they're getting ready to go public, for lots of reasons, basically it was time, they wanted to have some liquid currency that floated for acquisitions. They had to be competitive with MasterCard who was going public. Amex was already public. You can reward and retain talent easier. There are just lots of reasons why you would want this thing to be a standalone entity, especially at this point in history.

由于种种原因，他们准备上市，基本上是时候了，他们希望拥有一些用于收购的流动货币。他们必须与即将上市的万事达竞争。美国运通已经上市。你可以更容易地奖励和留住人才。有很多理由说明为什么你希望这个东西成为一个独立的实体，尤其是在历史的这个时刻。

What they had to do was they created these B shares, and they isolated all the liability from this class action suit to the B shares. While MasterCard had a pretty flubbed IPO, Visa had a great IPO because they said, whatever the courts rule, the banks who own the B shares, the pre-existing shareholders will own all that liability and all the A shares, the new people who are coming in as owners of the company, will be protected.

他们所做的是创建了这些 B 股，并将所有来自该集体诉讼的责任隔离到 B 股上。虽然万事达的 IPO 相当失败，但 Visa 的 IPO 却很成功，因为他们表示，无论法院如何裁决，持有 B 股的银行，即原有股东将承担所有责任，而 A 股，即新进入公司成为所有者的人，将受到保护。

David: That's awesome. I didn't realize that in the research. It finally happens in 2008. Visa goes public right as the financial crisis is starting, which obviously wasn't planned but ends up being great for the banks and probably for Visa, too. It becomes the largest US IPO in history up to that point. They raised $18 billion at a $90 billion initial market cap, but that $18 billion wasn't primary capital to the company's balance sheet because obviously Visa was incredibly profitable, did not need capital.

大卫：太棒了。我在研究中没有意识到这一点。它最终发生在 2008 年。Visa 在金融危机开始时上市，这显然不是计划中的，但最终对银行和可能对 Visa 来说都是好事。它成为当时美国历史上最大的 IPO。他们以 900 亿美元的初始市值筹集了 180 亿美元，但这 180 亿美元并不是公司资产负债表上的主要资本，因为显然 Visa 非常盈利，不需要资本。

Ben: It prints money. Why would you want to raise capital and dilute?

本：它印钞票。你为什么想要筹集资金并稀释股份？

David: That $18 billion was secondary selling to the banks that own the company, which I think for many of them proved to be a total lifeline through the financial crisis that helped them survive.

大卫：那 180 亿美元是向拥有该公司的银行进行的二次出售，我认为对他们中的许多人来说，这被证明是金融危机中的一条生命线，帮助他们生存下来。

Ben: Yup. Now, Visa is owned mostly by big institutional shareholders, the Vanguards and Fidelities of the world. The banks are much smaller shareholders.

本：是的。现在，Visa 主要由大型机构股东持有，比如全球的先锋集团和富达投资。银行是较小的股东。

David: At this point, Visa's market cap is significantly larger than any of its former member banks.

大卫：此时，Visa 的市值显著大于其任何前成员银行。

Ben: It's wild. Dee Hock basically was right. That's the TLDR on this. This thing, this information network that doesn't have to take on any of the risks of any of these transactions, it's purely about connecting buyers to sellers and moving information back and forth, has proven to be maybe the best business model ever. Let's go through the shape of the business today, and listeners, you can decide.

本：这太疯狂了。迪·霍克基本上是对的。这就是这件事的简要说明。这个东西，这个信息网络，不需要承担任何这些交易的风险，纯粹是关于连接买家和卖家并来回传递信息，已经被证明可能是有史以来最好的商业模式。让我们来看看今天的业务形态，听众们，你们可以自己决定。

David and I have made passing references to the idea to this ludicrously cash-generative business. I think it's time to actually examine interchange fees today, how they've changed over time, how they flow, who benefits, what's Visa's cut, all of that, so you can understand it.

我和大卫曾提到过这个荒谬的现金生成业务的想法。我认为现在是时候真正研究一下今天的交换费，它们是如何随着时间变化的，它们如何流动，谁受益，Visa 的分成是多少，所有这些，以便你能理解。

Visa's business model. The first thing to know is almost nothing has changed since the 80s to today on how the transactions work. The authorization flow is exactly the same as it was, where all the auth flows upstream, the merchant runs the card, checks with their bank who checks with VisaNet, who checks with the issuers bank. Is this account in good standing to make this transaction or not?

Visa 的商业模式。首先要知道的是，自 80 年代以来，交易的运作方式几乎没有变化。授权流程与以前完全相同，所有授权流程都是上游的，商家刷卡，与他们的银行核对，银行再与 VisaNet 核对，VisaNet 再与发卡行核对。这个账户是否状况良好以进行这笔交易？

Once they get the yes, then the response flows all the way back down the chain in the order that ultimately the flow of funds will happen later on. Within milliseconds, unbelievably short period of time, no matter where you are in the world and no matter what currency you are transacting in, your transaction can happen.

一旦他们得到同意，响应就会按照最终资金流动的顺序一路返回链条。在毫秒内，令人难以置信的短时间内，无论你身处世界何地，无论你使用何种货币进行交易，你的交易都可以完成。

Pretty unbelievable. Amazing that within seconds, you can know for certain that someone is vouching for the customer's money and paying in full. Well, nearly in full, minus a merchant discount rate.

难以置信。令人惊讶的是，在几秒钟内，你就可以确定有人为客户的钱担保并全额支付。嗯，几乎是全额支付，减去商户折扣率。

What is this merchant discount rate? There are a few things at play here. There are interchange fees, and those interchange fees, go to the issuing bank. There are assessment fees or network fees, and that network fee goes to Visa, MasterCard, et cetera. And then there are payment processing fees. Those go to the acquiring bank, the bank that acquired the merchant, this is the merchant’s bank, and the technology provider of whatever they're using to process their payments. Three fees—interchange, network fees, payment processing fees.

什么是商户折扣率？这里有几个因素在起作用。有交换费，这些交换费支付给发卡银行。有评估费或网络费，这些网络费支付给 Visa、MasterCard 等。然后还有支付处理费。这些费用支付给收单银行，即收购商户的银行，这是商户的银行，以及他们用来处理支付的技术提供商。三种费用——交换费、网络费、支付处理费。

Here's what those could look like. Again, I say could, because they are different in every scenario. There's a very long PDF on Visa's website that is available with every different concoction you can imagine. Here's an example of a large merchant in the United States, so no foreign transaction, accepting a credit card. It is obviously different whether we're talking debit, smaller merchants, but large merchant, US credit card.

这就是它们可能的样子。我再次强调可能，因为在每种情况下它们都是不同的。在 Visa 的网站上有一个非常长的 PDF，其中包含了您能想象到的每种不同组合。这里是一个美国大型商家的例子，所以没有外币交易，接受信用卡。显然，如果我们谈论的是借记卡、小型商家，那就不同了，但这是大型商家，美国信用卡。

The merchant is charged a 2% discount off the sale price. It was $100 pair of shoes, you're now making $98. What happens to that 2%? That 2%, the lion's share of it is the interchange. The 1.6% goes to the bank that issued the card.

商家需支付销售价格的 2%折扣。这是一双 100 美元的鞋子，现在你赚 98 美元。那 2%去哪了？那 2%中的大部分是交换费。1.6%给了发卡银行。

David: To the cardholder, to the consumer?

David：给持卡人，给消费者？

Ben: Right. When everybody on the planet is marketing credit card offers to you, they get the lion's share of the interchange. They actually have a lot to play with in customer acquisition for their cards, because they make the lion's share of the transaction, the interchange. There's a lot of cost in there, too, because they bear all the fraud risk. There are a lot of things they got to do, but they get most of the money.

本：对。当全世界的人都在向你推销信用卡优惠时，他们获得了大部分的交换费。他们在客户获取方面有很多可以操作的空间，因为他们在交易中获得了大部分的交换费。这里面也有很多成本，因为他们承担了所有的欺诈风险。他们有很多事情要做，但他们获得了大部分的钱。

A small amount on the order of 0.2%, or 20 bips for you finance people out there, goes to the bank that acquired the merchant. This could be Chase, Pfizer, Wells Fargo. This is the merchant’s bank. It is important to know, this may also get split with a technology provider. Sometimes the financial institution directly has technology that you can use, but other times the checkout terminal or software that you're using is not actually the financial institution behind it, so that 0.2% can get split between the financial institution and the technology provider.

大约 0.2%或 20 个基点的少量金额会支付给收单商户的银行。这可能是 Chase、Pfizer、Wells Fargo。这是商户的银行。重要的是要知道，这也可能与技术提供商分成。有时金融机构直接提供您可以使用的技术，但其他时候您使用的结账终端或软件实际上并不是背后的金融机构，因此这 0.2%可能在金融机构和技术提供商之间分成。

David: Those are folks like First Data and stuff like that, right?

David：那些是像 First Data 这样的公司，对吧？

Ben: Yes. 0.15%–0.2% goes to the network. This number is actually quite hard to find. You read Visa's entire annual report and you're like, wait, but what part of the split do you actually get? It's because they get it in a variety of different ways. I would say, I don't know if the Visa people would tell you this is intentionally obfuscated or if it just ends up being obfuscated, but it's not super easy to figure this out.

本：是的。0.15%–0.2%归网络。这一数字实际上很难找到。你读完 Visa 的整个年度报告后会想，等等，但你实际得到的是哪一部分的分成？这是因为他们通过多种不同的方式获得。我会说，我不知道 Visa 的人会不会告诉你这是故意模糊的，还是最终变得模糊，但要弄清楚这一点并不容易。

Visa, let's round it to 0.2%, gets 20¢ of that $100 shoe sale. But the cool thing about their 20¢ is there are basically no variable costs. It's not dealing with fraud. It's not moving heavy data around. Merchants are allowed to have a 20-character name in Visa's network. This is tiny amounts of data. Stack as much metadata as you want on top of that, we are not shipping around huge payloads here.

Visa，我们将其四舍五入为 0.2%，从那双售价 100 美元的鞋子中获得 20 美分。但关于他们的 20 美分，酷的地方在于基本上没有可变成本。它不处理欺诈问题。它不需要传输大量数据。商家在 Visa 的网络中可以有一个 20 个字符的名称。这是极少量的数据。无论你想在上面叠加多少元数据，我们这里并没有传输大量的数据包。

There are no NVIDIA chips that need to run in these data centers to do any crazy LLM processing. This is just shipping very small pieces of information around. The payload size of the data has remained infinitesimally small relative to the amount that technology has progressed. This 0.2%, the 20¢ on the $100 transaction, very low variable costs associated with that.

这些数据中心不需要运行任何 NVIDIA 芯片来进行任何疯狂的LLM处理。这只是传输非常小的信息片段。相对于技术进步的程度，数据的有效载荷大小仍然微乎其微。这 0.2%，即 100 美元交易中的 20 美分，与之相关的可变成本非常低。

A few caveats on this. Debit is significantly less in most cases, and often thanks to regulatory reasons. The logic here is nobody's actually taking any risk to extend credit, so banks should not get to make a bunch of money on debit. It's literally just moving money out of your account and into the merchant’s account. Debit cards are going to be less.

对此有几点注意事项。在大多数情况下，借记显著减少，这通常是由于监管原因。这里的逻辑是没有人真正承担任何风险来提供信贷，所以银行不应该通过借记赚很多钱。这实际上只是将钱从你的账户转移到商家的账户。借记卡会减少。

Smaller merchants often pay closer to 3% than 2%, because they're just doing lower volume. For these small businesses, the acquiring bank actually has to do a lot more work. Think about how difficult it is to market a credit card to an individual while small businesses behave like individuals. Because the acquiring bank actually has to do a lot more work and incur costs, they get to make more money.

较小的商家通常支付接近 3%而不是 2%，因为他们的交易量较低。对于这些小企业，收单银行实际上需要做更多的工作。想想向个人推销信用卡有多困难，而小企业的行为就像个人一样。因为收单银行实际上需要做更多的工作并承担成本，他们可以赚更多的钱。

There's this very interesting thing that has happened, where interchange is intentionally quite flexible. This is a playbook theme that I want to pull forward. This business is probably the greatest masterclass in the entire world on incentive alignment. I was talking with Lisa Ellis at Moffitt Nathanson who woke me up to this idea.

有一件非常有趣的事情发生了，交换有意地相当灵活。这是我想要推进的一个剧本主题。这项业务可能是全世界关于激励对齐的最伟大的大师班。我和 Moffitt Nathanson 的 Lisa Ellis 谈过，她让我意识到了这个想法。

The interchange pool has an elegance to it. Since the money never actually gets sent to the merchant, the network and its partner banks or constituent banks can figure out exactly how it should flow in each of these particular types of transactions. It's an envelope of value that the whole ecosystem can play with. I think an important thing to realize about interchange is that it's intentionally flexible.

交换池具有一种优雅。由于资金实际上从未被发送给商家，网络及其合作银行或组成银行可以准确地确定在每种特定类型的交易中资金应如何流动。这是一个整个生态系统都可以使用的价值信封。我认为需要认识到的一个重要点是，交换是有意灵活的。

David: Which brings up an obvious point that we perhaps didn't highlight specifically as we should have earlier. This network is actually a five-sided system. There's the consumer that is buying something, there's the merchant that is selling that something to them, there's the Visa network in the middle that's the third party, but then there also are the fourth and the fifth parties, which are the banks for each of the consumer, the issuing bank, and the merchant, the merchant's bank.

大卫：这就提出了一个显而易见的观点，我们可能没有像之前应该的那样具体强调。这实际上是一个五方系统。有购买商品的消费者，有向他们出售商品的商家，中间有作为第三方的 Visa 网络，但还有第四方和第五方，分别是消费者的银行，即发卡行，以及商家的银行，即商户银行。

This envelope of value concept makes sense, because those three parties in the middle, Visa and the two banks, need to split up the value. Depending on who is doing what work, it should be split different ways.

这个价值概念的信封是有意义的，因为中间的三个参与方，Visa 和两家银行，需要分割价值。根据谁在做什么工作，应该以不同的方式分割。

Ben: Visa has created these products where it's not just a Visa card. You might get a Visa Signature or a Visa Signature business. I don't even know what they are. They basically have said, why don't we come up with other types of Visa cards that just have higher interchange? The merchants are like, what do you mean just have higher interchange?

本：Visa 创建了这些产品，不仅仅是 Visa 卡。你可能会得到 Visa Signature 或 Visa Signature 商务卡。我甚至不知道它们是什么。他们基本上说，为什么我们不想出其他类型的 Visa 卡，只是有更高的交换费？商家就像，你是什么意思只是有更高的交换费？

David: Your new product is you're charging me more.

David：你的新产品就是你向我收取更多费用。

Ben: Visa says, well, the cool thing about higher interchange is that there's more money in the envelope to play with to reward other constituents in the transaction.

本：Visa 说，好处是更高的交换费意味着信封里有更多的钱可以用来奖励交易中的其他参与者。

Let's say we want to tell the issuing bank, hey, for this tier, this Visa Signature, you actually get more money. Well, then they turn around and say, cool, I'm going to go, and I'm going to give better rewards to higher spending, more credit-worthy customers, and then Visa's argument back to the merchant is, well, hey, because we're actually taking more money on this fancier card, you're getting access to customers that we've now brought onto our network, who are much better customers that you really want to have at your establishment.

假设我们想告诉发卡银行，嘿，对于这个级别，这个 Visa Signature，你实际上会得到更多的钱。那么他们就会转过来说，酷，我要去，我要给高消费、更有信用的客户更好的奖励，然后 Visa 对商家的论点是，嘿，因为我们实际上在这张更高级的卡上赚了更多的钱，你可以接触到我们现在带入我们网络的客户，他们是你真正想要在你的机构中拥有的更好的客户。

It's this very interesting, again, envelope of value, I think is the way to describe it. I'm sure the merchants wish they could be more a part of the decision process. But it does, theoretically, enable incentives to be spread around that benefit everyone in the ecosystem.

我认为，这正是一个非常有趣的价值包络，是描述它的方式。我相信商家希望他们能更多地参与决策过程。但从理论上讲，它确实能够在生态系统中传播对每个人都有利的激励。

David: For merchants of scale today, they're cutting on this, too. There's the Alaska Airlines mileage card, there's the Costco card. Merchants are able to, by working with banks, be part of this discussion, too, if you're of a certain size.

对于当今规模较大的商家，他们也在削减这一点。有阿拉斯加航空里程卡，还有好市多卡。商家可以通过与银行合作，成为这场讨论的一部分，如果你达到一定规模的话。

Ben: In the olden days, if you're the affinity logo that got printed in the top stripe, the way that works today is you have a special deal with the issuing bank where you're going to say, hey, we're going to help you get more card members by putting our logo on the card. Even though oftentimes, we're the merchant, actually what we're doing is we're helping you distribute cards on the issuing side. Maybe there are cool things we can do when those cards are spent at our establishment where we give extra awards, but it's effectively marketing channel for the issuing bank. They get to split some of those economics.

本：在过去，如果你是印在顶部条纹上的亲和标志，今天的运作方式是你与发卡银行有一个特别的协议，你会说，嘿，我们会通过在卡上印上我们的标志来帮助你获得更多的持卡人。即使我们常常是商家，实际上我们是在帮助你在发卡方分发卡片。也许当这些卡在我们的店里消费时，我们可以做一些很酷的事情，比如给予额外奖励，但这实际上是发卡银行的营销渠道。他们可以分享其中的一些经济利益。

David: I guess at the absolute very highest levels of scale, you have something like the Amazon and JP Morgan Chase relationship, where JP Morgan Chase is the merchant bank, and JP Morgan Chase is one of the largest issuing banks for cards in the world.

大卫：我想在绝对最高规模的层面上，你会看到像亚马逊和摩根大通这样的关系，摩根大通是商人银行，摩根大通是世界上最大的发卡银行之一。

The Amazon Chase credit card that I have—I do all my shopping on Amazon with, and all my shopping at Whole Foods with—is able to give me 5% cashback rewards. Amazon or JP Morgan and in this case, the two of them working together, represent three of the five parties in this transaction. The only people not party to this are the consumer and Visa the network itself. Thus, that's how they're able to do so much special stuff. They can control so much to that envelope of value.

我拥有的亚马逊 Chase 信用卡——我在亚马逊上购物和在 Whole Foods 购物时使用——能够给我 5%的现金返还奖励。亚马逊或摩根大通，在这种情况下，他们两者合作，代表了这笔交易中的五方中的三方。唯一不参与其中的是消费者和 Visa 网络本身。因此，这就是他们能够做这么多特别事情的原因。他们可以控制如此多的价值范围。

Ben: It is worth pointing out, the system today is pretty tough to change absent government intervention. Consumers who spend the most love the system the way that it is. A huge amount of the fees that merchants pay come back to these consumers in the form of rewards. The issuers and the networks end up with the consumer as their advocate for the system as it exists today. Meanwhile, no retailer owns enough of the total transactions to actually go invent their own better system.

本：值得指出的是，今天的系统在没有政府干预的情况下很难改变。消费最多的消费者喜欢现有的系统。商家支付的大量费用以奖励的形式回馈给这些消费者。发行者和网络最终让消费者成为现有系统的拥护者。同时，没有零售商拥有足够的总交易量来真正发明他们自己的更好系统。

When merchants have tried to go and get consumers to go direct and give them their bank account information, typically consumers won't do it unless they get some very high number of percent back, and that's actually more expensive than the interchange.

当商家试图让消费者直接提供他们的银行账户信息时，通常消费者不会这样做，除非他们能获得非常高比例的返现，而这实际上比交换费更昂贵。

The way that you end up having to pay your consumers in order to change their behavior away from credit cards that they love the rewards so much on is to do something non economic. You have to believe that there's some long-term benefit to doing it.

为了让消费者改变他们对信用卡的行为，你最终不得不付钱给他们，因为他们非常喜欢信用卡的奖励，解决办法是做一些非经济性的事情。你必须相信这样做有一些长期的好处。

David: Famously, Walmart and Target too, I think, have been trying to do this for years and years and years, and they never can make it work.

大卫：众所周知，我想沃尔玛和塔吉特也一直在尝试这样做多年，但他们从未能成功。

Ben: The reason is basically, no one can ever figure out how to incentivize all the parties that need to change behavior, enough to change the behavior.

本：原因基本上是，没有人能够想出如何激励所有需要改变行为的各方，以足够改变行为。

David: The merchant, in most cases, is really the only party that is not thrilled with this arrangement.

大卫：在大多数情况下，商人实际上是唯一对这种安排不感到兴奋的一方。

Ben: The most negative way someone could paint the ecosystem as it exists today is that the whole credit card system is a wide scale bribe of the American consumer to extort the world's retailers using the retailer's own money, but that is a very cynical way to view it.

本：有人可能会以最消极的方式描述现有的生态系统，认为整个信用卡系统是对美国消费者的大规模贿赂，利用零售商自己的钱来敲诈世界各地的零售商，但这是一种非常愤世嫉俗的看法。

David: I guess you could take that one step further and say, consumers actually do bear the brunt of it, because merchants will just raise their prices to compensate for it.

大卫：我想你可以更进一步地说，消费者实际上确实承受了其冲击，因为商家只会提高价格来弥补。

Ben: That's a strong argument. There's been independent research firms that have looked into this, and basically determined that this is a reverse Robin Hood scenario that the wealthiest consumers are the ones who have rewards cards, because all the goods are marked up to accommodate interchange.

本：这是一个有力的论点。有独立的研究公司对此进行了调查，基本上确定这是一个反向罗宾汉的情形，最富有的消费者是那些拥有奖励卡的人，因为所有商品的价格都被提高以适应交换费。

David: No matter who's buying the goods and marked up.

大卫：无论是谁购买商品并加价。

Ben: Right. If you aren't someone that has a rewards-based credit card, then your stuff just got more expensive. The research firm that looked into this, actually, I think it was the Fed. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston determined that on average each year, a household that uses cash to pay for things pays $149 inflated prices, because all prices no matter how you pay have to go up in order to make it so that paying in cash and cards is equivalent, because in most states, it's actually illegal to charge a meaningful premium to people who are using credit cards. On average, a cash using household pays $149...

本：对。如果你不是那种拥有奖励信用卡的人，那么你的东西就变得更贵了。研究机构实际上是美联储，我想是波士顿联邦储备银行，他们确定每年平均使用现金支付的家庭需要支付149美元的价格溢价，因为无论你怎么支付，所有价格都必须上涨，以便使现金支付和信用卡支付在价格上等同，因为在大多数州，实际上禁止对使用信用卡的人收取较高的费用。平均而言，一个使用现金的家庭支付149美元……

David: Effectively in subsidy.

David：有效补贴。

Ben: Yes, but a card using household receives $1100 in value.

本：是的，但使用家庭的卡片可获得 1100 美元的价值。

David: $1100? I guess that makes sense thinking about the value of the rewards I get every year.

大卫：$1100？考虑到我每年获得的奖励价值，我想这很合理。

Ben: It’s, on average, 2% of everything you put on your card.

本：平均来说，是你卡上消费总额的 2%。

David: Especially us running a business, we put a lot of stuff on cards.

大卫：尤其是我们经营业务时，我们把很多东西放在卡上。

Ben: That is the other argument that this is net bad for the world, is that it's regressive in who it rewards and who it penalizes.

本：另一个认为这对世界净不利的论点是，它在奖励和惩罚对象上具有倒退性。

The other reason why it's really hard to change the system is this whole thing is the chicken or the egg problem. Every two-sided marketplace is a chicken or the egg problem. BankAmericard solved this when there were no regulations by dropping 65,000 credit lines on unwitting Americans. You can't do that now. How do you bootstrap one side of the marketplace when you can't do something like a drop?

另一个很难改变系统的原因是整个事情是先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题。每个双边市场都是一个先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题。BankAmericard 在没有监管的情况下，通过向毫无戒心的美国人发放 65,000 条信用额度解决了这个问题。你现在不能这样做。当你不能做类似投放的事情时，如何启动市场的一方呢？

对大型科技公司来说不是问题，苹果有10亿活跃的ID。

David: They were in a unique position at that moment in time in California, where they had such large market share of both consumers and merchants that they could effectively create this network themselves.

大卫：当时在加利福尼亚，他们处于一个独特的位置，拥有如此大的消费者和商家市场份额，以至于他们可以有效地自己创建这个网络。

Ben: What you're basically relying on now is some extrinsic paradigm shift, probably a technology paradigm shift, that enables a new entrant to bootstrap one side of the marketplace in one way or the other to create a new system. Without a new paradigm emerging, this is the system. It's a new paradigm or the government intervention. This is the system that we've made our bed and we're stuck with for good and for bad.

本：你现在基本上依赖的是某种外在的范式转变，可能是技术范式的转变，使得新进入者能够以某种方式在市场的一侧启动一个新系统。如果没有新的范式出现，这就是现有的系统。要么是新的范式，要么是政府干预。这是我们已经选择的系统，无论好坏，我们都要接受。

David: I love my rewards cards.

大卫：我喜欢我的奖励卡。

Ben: And look at all of the economic value that it created by enabling ecommerce. It is truly astonishing that without UPS to ship packages and without credit cards to let us pay for things on the Internet, it just wouldn't have happened. It's trillions of dollars of transactions in the economy that would not exist.

本：看看它通过支持电子商务创造的所有经济价值。令人惊讶的是，如果没有 UPS 运送包裹，没有信用卡让我们在互联网上支付，这一切就不会发生。这是经济中本不会存在的数万亿美元的交易。

The arguments to merchants are that people spend more when they use a card. There's a broader range of buyers that use a card. Very cool feature of these credit cards and debit cards is there's guaranteed payment with no risk. There's instant authorization for this consumer wants this thing.

商家认为，人们使用卡时会花更多钱。使用卡的买家范围更广。这些信用卡和借记卡的一个非常酷的功能是有保证的付款且没有风险。消费者想要这个东西时会立即获得授权。

Now, they could return it, but you know for sure that they're good for the money, and you're going to get the money very soon when they walk out the door, which that wouldn't happen in checks. There's a cost to checks.

现在，他们可以退货，但你知道他们有支付能力，而且当他们走出门时你很快就会收到钱，而这在支票中是不会发生的。支票是有成本的。

David: If you're going to accept a check from somebody, there's a strong element of trust that you have to have with that individual or entity.

大卫：如果你要接受某人的支票，你必须对那个人或实体有很强的信任。

Ben: Yup. If you're saying, you better come in here bearing cash or a cashier's check, you're going to have way fewer customers. Not to mention, there's totally a cost of facilitating cash.

本：是的。如果你说，你最好带着现金或银行本票来这里，你的顾客会少得多。更不用说，处理现金是有成本的。

It's one thing for a coffee shop. But let's say you run a running shoe store, and everything you sell is $150–$250. There's a pretty meaningful amount of cash that piles up in your establishment, so you need to make sure that you have security. Let's pick an even higher ticket item thing like a jewelry store. You need security, you need to move that cash somewhere, you need to make time to go to the bank to deposit it.

对于咖啡店来说，这是一回事。但假设你经营一家跑鞋店，你卖的所有东西都是 150 到 250 美元。在你的店里会积累相当可观的现金，所以你需要确保安全。让我们选择一个更高价的商品，比如珠宝店。你需要安全措施，你需要把现金转移到其他地方，你需要腾出时间去银行存款。

David: The operational overhead associated with that.

David：与此相关的运营开销。

Ben: There is a value to providing payment, and there is a cost to whatever the payment method is. Am I saying that the cost is 3%, or in the old days 5% or 7%? Absolutely not. But there certainly is some cost no matter what form of payment is used.

本：提供支付是有价值的，无论支付方式是什么，都是有成本的。我是不是在说成本是 3%，或者在过去是 5%或 7%？绝对不是。但无论使用何种支付方式，肯定是有一些成本的。

David: Absolutely. 大卫：当然。

Ben: The business today, what does visa look like? Last year, Visa processed $14 trillion of volume through their network, which is an almost meaninglessly large number. How do you even think about that?

本：今天的业务，Visa 看起来怎么样？去年，Visa 通过他们的网络处理了 14 万亿美元的交易量，这是一个几乎无意义的大数字。你怎么理解这个？

David: One fun way to think about that I calculated is if you start from 1971, the first full year that the BankAmericard network was liberated from Bank of America, the growth in payment volume on the network since then has been 17.3% compounded annually for 51 years.

大卫：我计算过的一个有趣的想法是，如果从 1971 年开始，即美国银行卡网络从美国银行解放的第一个完整年份以来，该网络的支付量增长每年复合增长率为 17.3%，持续了 51 年。

Ben: Oh my God. 本：天哪。

David: Wild. David：狂野。

Ben: It turns out, the world eventually did want to pay with frictionless, fast, and often credit-extending methods. Wow, 17% compounded for 51 years.

本：事实证明，世界最终确实希望使用无摩擦、快速且经常提供信用扩展的方法进行支付。哇，51 年复合增长 17%。

David: This is Berkshire levels of compounding that is happening here. It's not like people may think, oh, 17%, oh, I have seen IRRs greater than that. Have you seen them greater than that over 51 years? Not many of those.

大卫：这里发生的是伯克希尔级别的复利增长。人们可能会想，哦，17%，哦，我见过比这更高的内部收益率。你见过超过 51 年的更高收益率吗？这样的情况不多。

Ben: It's amazing. The number of transactions they processed last year was over 190 billion. That is 27 transactions per person on earth, including young children every single year.

Ben：这太惊人了。他们去年处理的交易数量超过了 1900 亿。这意味着地球上每个人每年，包括幼儿在内，平均进行了 27 笔交易。

David: Hey, man, young children require a lot of commerce, let me tell you.

大卫：嘿，伙计，小孩子需要很多花费，让我告诉你。

Ben: So I hear. There are 4.1 billion Visa cards in circulation. Their net revenue is $29 billion. That's up from $22 billion two years ago.

本：我听说有 41 亿张 Visa 卡在流通。他们的净收入是 290 亿美元。两年前是 220 亿美元。

There's an interesting thing that I didn't really realize with Visa, which is it had a hell of a decade. In my head, Visa has been the steady state thing in the world as has MasterCard, but the last decade has been the story of Visa's incredible dominance in revenue, in transactions, and in volume. It's just actually true that a lot of their growth has been recent in the last decade.

有一件有趣的事情，我之前没有真正意识到，那就是 Visa 在过去十年里表现非常出色。在我看来，Visa 和 MasterCard 一直是世界上稳定的存在，但过去十年是 Visa 在收入、交易和交易量方面令人难以置信的主导地位的故事。事实上，他们的很多增长确实是在最近十年中实现的。

Their value added services—this is an interesting thing that I want to come back to—was $6 billion. Look at their overall revenue number of $29 billion, their value added services is $6 billion. We'll talk about what that means.

他们的增值服务——这是我想回过头来谈的一件有趣的事情——是 60 亿美元。看看他们的总收入是 290 亿美元，他们的增值服务是 60 亿美元。我们将讨论这意味着什么。

The most shocking thing about the business is they have 50% net income margins. Of the $30-ish billion that they made in revenue, their net income was $15 billion.

关于这项业务最令人震惊的是，他们的净收入利润率为 50%。在他们获得的大约 300 亿美元的收入中，他们的净收入为 150 亿美元。

David: This is absurd. All the picture we painted in the whole story, it was all building toward that climax of they have created something with essentially zero marginal costs in, perhaps, the largest market out there, certainly one of them is global commerce—both e- and non-ecommerce.

大卫：这太荒谬了。我们在整个故事中描绘的所有画面，都是为了那个高潮而铺垫，他们在可能是最大的市场中创造了一些边际成本几乎为零的东西，当然其中之一是全球商业——包括电子商务和非电子商务。

Ben: As Visa would argue, both consumer but also B2B commerce.

本：正如 Visa 所主张的，既有消费者也有 B2B 商务。

David: Fifty percent net income margins on $30 billion in revenue. There it is.

大卫：300 亿美元收入的净利润率为 50%。就是这样。

Ben: You might say, wait, if they have 50% net income margins, what is their gross margin? Because is it SaaS level good at 75%–85%? Their gross margins are 98%. There are no variable costs in this business. There are no cost of goods sold. It's crazy.

本：你可能会说，等等，如果他们的净利润率是 50%，那么他们的毛利率是多少？因为它是 SaaS 级别的 75%–85%吗？他们的毛利率是 98%。这个业务没有可变成本。没有销售成本。这太疯狂了。

I think with 50% net income margins, this is literally the most profitable large-scale company in the world. I don't know of any other businesses of this size or even 5 or 10 times smaller that have over a 50% net income margin, including MasterCard, which is 43%.

我认为，净收入利润率达到 50%，这实际上是世界上最赚钱的大型公司。我不知道还有其他同等规模甚至小 5 到 10 倍的企业净收入利润率超过 50%，包括万事达卡，其为 43%。

Just to throw some numbers out for people that are not looking at financial statements all the time, Microsoft, 34% net income margins. Microsoft sells software, they ship bits. Apple, 25%. They have an incredibly marked-up product that is differentiated wildly by brand, 25% net income margins. Google has a monopoly in a market of information. What are the costs involved in that business? Twenty-one percent net income margins.

只是为了给那些不经常查看财务报表的人提供一些数字，微软，34%的净利润率。微软销售软件，他们传输数据。苹果，25%。他们有一个通过品牌极大差异化的高价产品，25%的净利润率。谷歌在信息市场上拥有垄断地位。那项业务涉及的成本是什么？21%的净利润率。

David: Wow, I would have thought Google will be higher. As we were talking in my mind, I was like, well, Google's probably the only one that can come close, but wow, Microsoft is higher. I didn't realize that.

大卫：哇，我本以为谷歌会更高。在我脑海中我们谈论时，我想，嗯，谷歌可能是唯一能接近的，但哇，微软更高。我没意识到这一点。

Ben: It's nuts. 本：太疯狂了。

David: It's nuts. 大卫：太疯狂了。

Ben: They do have 27,000 employees. In some ways, it feels an oddly large number. In other ways, it feels small, but I think we should talk about that in the context of the value added services. Interestingly, there is another company that we have talked about recently on Acquired that does $30 billion in revenue and has 27,000 employees. Do you know what it is, David?

本：他们确实有 27,000 名员工。在某些方面，这个数字显得异常庞大。在其他方面，它又显得小，但我认为我们应该在增值服务的背景下讨论这个问题。有趣的是，我们最近在 Acquired 上谈到的另一家公司有 300 亿美元的收入和 27,000 名员工。你知道那是什么吗，David？

David: That would be NVIDIA.

David：那应该是英伟达。

Ben: Yeah, so weirdly mirror image.

本：是的，真是奇怪的镜像。

David: Even NVIDIA doesn't have gross margins like Visa. It is the ultimate solution. I think that is the takeaway.

大卫：即使是英伟达也没有像 Visa 这样的毛利率。这是最终的解决方案。我认为这是要点。

Ben: Visa does 707 million transactions per day. That is 8600 transactions per second, every second throughout the year. A big takeaway should be like, my God, they have built high throughput infrastructure globally. That's an unbelievably impressive thing. With almost no downtime, it is 99.999% uptime, which I am not a site reliability engineer, but I think that is five nines.

本：Visa 每天处理 7.07 亿笔交易。也就是说，每秒处理 8600 笔交易，一年中的每一秒都是如此。一个重要的收获应该是，天哪，他们在全球范围内建立了高吞吐量的基础设施。这是一个令人难以置信的壮举。几乎没有停机时间，正常运行时间为 99.999%，我不是一个网站可靠性工程师，但我认为这是五个九。

David: Which is wild. You hear about AWS going down more frequently than you hear about Visa going down.

David：这真是太疯狂了。你听说 AWS 宕机的频率比听说 Visa 宕机的频率更高。

Ben: That's 16,000 banks in 200 countries. They have six data centers distributed across the world. It's amazing it's only six, to be honest, with that kind of reliability and uptime.

本：那是 200 个国家的 16,000 家银行。他们在全球分布了六个数据中心。说实话，只有六个真是令人惊讶，考虑到那种可靠性和正常运行时间。

David: Related to that, though, you raised a good point earlier. The data envelope, as opposed to the value envelope, although I guess it is the same, is also not that large, relative to the importance in the value.

大卫：关于这一点，你之前提到了一个很好的观点。数据包络，相对于价值包络，虽然我想它是一样的，相对于价值的重要性来说也不是那么大。

Ben: This is not YouTube.

本：这不是 YouTube。

David: The transactions themselves, in part because this was all architected in the 70s...

大卫：交易本身，部分原因是因为这一切都是在 70 年代设计的……

Ben: That is definitely why. Lots of people in this ecosystem would love it if you could send entire receipts in machine readable form across this network. You can't. We're stuck with the lowest common denominator protocol that we're shipping very crude pieces of information across.

本：这绝对是原因所在。如果你能通过这个网络以机器可读的形式发送完整的收据，这个生态系统中的很多人都会喜欢。你不能。我们被困在最低公分母协议中，只能传输非常粗略的信息。

I will say, there are other people that are participants in this ecosystem that are perfectly fine with it having almost no information or minimal information going across it. An example of which is the banks.

我会说，在这个生态系统中，还有其他参与者，他们完全可以接受几乎没有信息或只有极少信息流通的情况。一个例子就是银行。

The banks don't want to be sharing any of this information that could put them at a strategic disadvantage. Your bank knows your name, knows your social security number, knows your address. Visa, I'm running transactions across their network all the time. All it knows is my card number. It has no notion of identity. Isn't that crazy?

银行不想分享任何可能使其处于战略劣势的信息。你的银行知道你的名字，知道你的社会安全号码，知道你的地址。Visa，我一直在他们的网络上进行交易。它只知道我的卡号。它对身份一无所知。这不是很疯狂吗？

David: I didn't realize that. Yeah, that is crazy.

大卫：我没意识到。是啊，那太疯狂了。

Ben: The banks like that, because then the banks get to say, no, no, this is my customer. Visa, we will use your network, because it is the way that I need to accomplish something for my customer, but I'm not just going to turn my customer into your customer. Why would I do that?

本：银行喜欢这样，因为银行可以说，不，不，这是我的客户。Visa，我们会使用你的网络，因为这是我为我的客户完成某事的方式，但我不会仅仅把我的客户变成你的客户。我为什么要那样做？

David: One of the things we didn't talk about it in the story, because it was long enough as is, is the whole debit card struggle. Obviously, debit cards are a big part, and debit transaction is a big part of the visa network today. But when Visa first tried to introduce them, this was one of the things that led to Dee Hock's ouster. The banks were like, no, no, no, no, no, debit cards, that sounds like banking relationships.

大卫：我们在故事中没有谈到的一件事，因为故事已经够长了，就是整个借记卡的斗争。显然，借记卡是今天 Visa 网络的重要组成部分，借记交易也是如此。但当 Visa 首次尝试引入它们时，这正是导致迪·霍克被驱逐的原因之一。银行当时的反应是，不，不，不，不，借记卡，这听起来像是银行关系。

Banking relationships are my domain. That's where I make my money. Those are my deposits. You look like you're trying to reach your hand across from being in service of us into competing with us. Obviously, debit cards did eventually become part of the system, but not in the way that it was looking like Dee initially wanted them to.

银行关系是我的领域。这是我赚钱的地方。这些是我的存款。你看起来像是想从为我们服务转变为与我们竞争。显然，借记卡最终确实成为了系统的一部分，但并不是像迪最初想要的那样。

Ben: It's pretty fascinating that debit came later. Functionally, to me, as a consumer, even though I get floated for a month, my credit card is essentially a debit card, where if I want to, I can turn it into a loan at the end of 30 days.

本：令人着迷的是，借记卡出现得更晚。对我来说，作为消费者，尽管我可以享受一个月的免息期，但我的信用卡本质上就是一张借记卡，如果我愿意，我可以在 30 天后将其转变为贷款。

David: It's a debit card with a lot of benefits.

大卫：这是一张有很多好处的借记卡。

Ben: Obviously, I get to keep the money for 30 more days, so it's not quite the same thing. But debit is a simpler product. It's so interesting that debit came decades after credit cards on the Visa network. You would think they would have started with debit, but of course they couldn't have started with debit. The banks would never have gone for that.

本：显然，我可以再保留这笔钱 30 天，所以这不完全是同一回事。但借记卡是一个更简单的产品。有趣的是，借记卡是在信用卡之后几十年才在 Visa 网络上出现的。你会认为他们会从借记卡开始，但当然他们不可能从借记卡开始。银行绝不会同意那样做。

David: That was the domain of the banks. Actually, there was a big fight between Visa and all the ATM networks. Dee wanted your Visa card to also be your ATM card. It makes sense. Why would you have different cards?

大卫：那是银行的领域。实际上，Visa 和所有 ATM 网络之间发生了一场大战。迪希望你的 Visa 卡也能成为你的 ATM 卡。这是有道理的。为什么要有不同的卡呢？

Ben: Mine is today. They basically are now.

本：我的是今天。他们基本上现在是。

David: But for many, many years, they weren't, and they certainly weren't back in Dee's day.

大卫：但在很多很多年里，他们不是，当然在迪的时代也不是。

Ben: I think part of the reason why debit cards were forced into existence was that consumers basically demanded it, where they were like, look, if I can pay with a card for this high value purchase, and I don't want to use credit, you're telling me that if I don't want credit, then I have to walk down the street, withdraw cash from my bank, and bring the cash. Is there not something like a credit card but doesn't extend me a loan?

本：我认为借记卡被迫出现的部分原因是消费者基本上要求它，他们就像，看，如果我可以用卡支付这笔高价值的购买，而我不想使用信用卡，你告诉我如果我不想要信用卡，那我就得走到街上，从我的银行取现金，然后带现金来。难道没有像信用卡但不提供贷款的东西吗？

In closing on the numbers today, this is the important number to know and one that may make you uncomfortable, but I'm curious how this lands for you, David. US merchants paid an estimated $93 billion in Visa and MasterCard credit card fees last year according to the Nielsen report and industry publication. That $93 billion was up from $33 billion in 2012.

在总结今天的数据时，这是一个重要的数字，可能会让你感到不安，但我很好奇你对此的看法，David。根据尼尔森报告和行业出版物，美国商家去年支付了约 930 亿美元的 Visa 和 MasterCard 信用卡费用。这个 930 亿美元比 2012 年的 330 亿美元有所增加。

David: Wow, that's a lot more billions.

大卫：哇，那多了很多十亿。

Ben: That's a lot more billions. We've talked a lot here about the interchange and how Visa makes money in the transaction. I will say, half of Americans carry a credit card balance, which is absolutely brutal since those interest rates right now are around 22%.

本：那是更多的数十亿。我们在这里谈了很多关于交换以及 Visa 如何在交易中赚钱。我会说，一半的美国人有信用卡余额，这绝对是残酷的，因为现在的利率大约是 22%。

David, you and I learned in doing some research that the reason why we all get these credit cards from North Dakota is because every state used to have anti usury laws. No one was allowed to make usurious loans, and North Dakota was the first to drop them. That's why all the banks issued all their card programs out of North Dakota, because you could do things like have 22% loans made to consumers and have that be entirely fine. That's the sad history of why your credit cards always get mailed from there.

大卫，你和我在做一些研究时了解到，我们都从北达科他州获得这些信用卡的原因是因为每个州过去都有反高利贷法。没有人被允许发放高利贷，而北达科他州是第一个取消这些法律的州。这就是为什么所有银行都从北达科他州发行他们的信用卡计划，因为你可以做一些事情，比如向消费者提供 22%的贷款，并且完全合法。这就是为什么你的信用卡总是从那里寄来的悲惨历史。

David: There's no denying, that is really sad and unfortunate on the consumer debt side of all this. On the fee side, on the one hand, I'm tempted to say, oh, obviously tripling the amount of fees that merchants are paying for credit card processing over 10 years, that's ridiculous.

David：不可否认，这在消费者债务方面确实令人悲伤和不幸。在费用方面，一方面，我很想说，哦，显然在 10 年内将商家支付的信用卡处理费用增加三倍，这太荒谬了。

Ben: But transaction value has meaningfully gone up, too. Gross volume is way up.

本：但交易价值也显著上升。总量大幅增加。

David: Yes, transaction value. But also, I have to imagine a big part of that is share of commerce that's happening as ecommerce versus traditional commerce. The credit card networks, really are providing a huge amount of value to ecommerce, as you were saying earlier. They are to physical commerce, too. Nobody wants to pay with cash or check anymore these days, but ecommerce, there's no other way that that can happen. Does it make sense that the credit card networks and their associated parties take more value in that world? I think so.

大卫：是的，交易价值。但我也认为，这很大一部分是电子商务与传统商务的份额。正如你之前所说，信用卡网络确实为电子商务提供了巨大的价值。它们对实体商务也是如此。如今没有人愿意用现金或支票支付，但在电子商务中，没有其他方式可以实现这一点。在这种情况下，信用卡网络及其相关方获取更多价值是否合理？我认为是的。

Ben: There has been downward pressure on interchange for a long time. I think industry average right now is down around 2.24, which is compelling considering we started at 7%. That downward pressure has been easy to give on by Visa for things like in-person transactions with card present. But for a lot of their super high margin online transactions where the growth is, that's where they decide, oh, actually, we have a really high interchange for that area.

Ben：长期以来，交换费一直面临下行压力。我认为目前行业平均水平下降到大约 2.24，这很有说服力，考虑到我们起初是 7%。对于 Visa 来说，这种下行压力在面对面交易中很容易让步，比如持卡交易。但对于他们很多高利润的在线交易来说，增长就在那儿，他们决定，哦，实际上我们在那个领域的交换费非常高。

Visa master of packaging figuring out, how can we take some things and make them more affordable to our merchants or give them away for free while also figuring out, how can we move things around or invent new products that are super high margin that give us a lot of rim to run in the future?

Visa 包装大师正在研究，如何将一些东西变得对我们的商家更实惠或免费赠送，同时还在研究，如何移动物品或发明新的高利润产品，为我们未来的发展提供更多空间？

David: And it makes sense to just do the thought exercise. Let's say you're a physical merchant, and you decide to walk away from Visa and all the credit card networks. Let's say your only cash or check. You probably are committing suicide as a business, but you could operate. If you're providing enough value like ATMs exist, you can operate.

David：进行这样的思维练习是有意义的。假设你是一个实体商家，并且决定放弃 Visa 和所有信用卡网络。假设你只接受现金或支票。你可能是在自杀作为一个企业，但你可以运营。如果你提供足够的价值，比如 ATM 机的存在，你可以运营。

Ben: There are plenty of cash-only bars.

本：有很多只收现金的酒吧。

David: Exactly. Bars, great example. If you're on the Internet, and you say I'm walking away from the credit card companies, you are literally committing suicide.

大卫：没错。酒吧，就是个很好的例子。如果你在互联网上说我要远离信用卡公司，那你简直是在自杀。

You could use PayPal, I guess?

我想你可以用 PayPal？

Ben: But you're paying just as much for that. Unless you are literally getting people to type in their account and routing numbers, you're paying credit card-like fees to accept payments on the Internet.

本：但你为此支付的费用是一样的。除非你真的让人们输入他们的账户和路由号码，否则你在互联网上接受付款时支付的费用就像信用卡费用一样。

It's worth sharing. While we're in the revenue streams here, the money that card issuers make, only a minority of it is actually from the interchange. Keep in mind, the card issuers are the ones that make that 1.6% the bulk of the transaction. Most of the money that card issuers make is from interest payments.

值得分享。当我们谈论收入来源时，发卡机构赚的钱中，只有一小部分实际上来自交换费。请记住，发卡机构是那些从交易中赚取 1.6%的人。发卡机构赚的大部分钱来自利息支付。

David: They're banks, that's the thing. All the way back to the beginning of the episode, what was the motivation for Bank of America in the early days? It was turbocharge my banking operations. What is your banking operation? Take in deposits, make loans with them, make money on the interest rates on those loans. Nothing has changed in the banking industry.

David：它们是银行，就是这样。回到这一集的开头，美国银行在早期的动机是什么？是加速我的银行业务。你的银行业务是什么？吸收存款，用它们发放贷款，通过这些贷款的利率赚钱。银行业没有任何改变。

Ben: Visa's incentives are more transactions, because we want more 0.2%. The issuers’ incentives are carry a balance, because that's where we make most of our money.

本：Visa 的激励是更多的交易，因为我们想要更多的 0.2%。发行人的激励是保持余额，因为这是我们赚大部分钱的地方。

David: Because even though they're getting the lion's share of the transaction fee, that's going all right back to the consumer in the form of rewards.

大卫：因为即使他们获得了大部分的交易费用，这些费用也会以奖励的形式返还给消费者。

忠诚度计划是个心理学的游戏。

Ben: And anti-fraud measures and other value added services that they have to buy from Visa. Probably a good time to introduce, that $6 billion that Visa is doing and value added services is all brand new high margin products that they've invented in the last 10 years or so, that they're trying to sell to merchants.

本：以及他们必须从 Visa 购买的反欺诈措施和其他增值服务。可能是个好时机介绍一下，Visa 正在做的 60 亿美元和增值服务都是他们在过去 10 年左右发明的全新高利润产品，他们正试图向商家销售这些产品。

David: High margin product. There's no higher margin product than the core product, brand new, also high margin products.

大卫：高利润产品。没有比核心产品利润更高的产品，全新产品也是高利润产品。

Ben: Right, merchants, banks. They're basically trying to sell products to people in the ecosystem, anti-fraud, analytics, and it's working very well. They're making a lot of money on that, and they view that as a high growth area in the future, too.

本：对，商人，银行。他们基本上是在向生态系统中的人们推销产品，反欺诈，分析，而且效果很好。他们在这方面赚了很多钱，并且也将其视为未来的高增长领域。

But again, it's a little bit of shifting things around in the same picture like, look, there's downward pressure on interchange, and we can demonstrate to you that interchange is going down. Oh, but we have this great product that is helpful and basically necessary that you also should buy. And there's a lot of that going on.

但同样地，这有点像在同一幅画中移动事物，比如，看，交换费面临下行压力，我们可以向你证明交换费正在下降。哦，但我们有这个很棒的产品，它很有用，基本上是必需的，你也应该购买。而且这种情况很多。

All right, that basically covers the high-level stats on the business today so that we can go into analysis. You can have a general shape of the business we're talking about, but 11th largest company in the world, valued at half a trillion dollars, around 30 billion in revenue, and they get to keep half of that at the end of the day, and they take no financial risk, and they are just moving information around. Mind-blowing.

好的，这基本涵盖了今天业务的高层次统计数据，以便我们可以进行分析。你可以对我们所谈论的业务有一个大致的了解，但这是全球第 11 大公司，估值达五千亿美元，收入约三百亿美元，最终能保留其中的一半，并且不承担任何财务风险，他们只是在传递信息。令人震惊。

David: They get to keep half of that after taxes at the end of the day.

大卫：到头来，他们在缴税后可以保留一半。

Ben: That's wild. 本：太疯狂了。

David: There's actual cash in the bank.

大卫：银行里有现金。

Ben: Right. This is not EBITDA, this is net income. Crazy. All right, David, power. Does that sounds good to you?

本：对。这不是 EBITDA，这是净收入。疯狂。好的，大卫，权力。你觉得这样好吗？

David: Let's talk power. 大卫：让我们谈谈权力。

Ben: All right, listeners, this is where we talk through Hamilton Helmer's Seven Powers' framework, which is trying to figure out what is it about this particular business that enables it to achieve persistent differential returns, be more profitable than their closest competitor, and do so sustainably.

本：好的，听众们，这就是我们讨论汉密尔顿·赫尔默的《七种力量》框架的地方，该框架试图弄清楚这家特定企业的哪些方面使其能够实现持续的差异化回报，比其最接近的竞争对手更具盈利能力，并且能够可持续地做到这一点。

David: It's an interesting one here.

大卫：这很有趣。

Ben: This is a lot like the Lockheed Martin episode, where I'm actually not sure we can apply the formal definition where we say, what enables them to be more profitable than MasterCard, because together they're like this government enabled duopoly.

本：这很像洛克希德·马丁的情况，我实际上不确定我们是否可以应用正式定义来说，是什么使他们比万事达卡更有利可图，因为他们共同构成了一个政府支持的双头垄断。

The way that we did this in the Lockheed Martin episode was we said, let's look at the five defense contractors as one entity and say, what enables the five of them collectively to out-compete new entrants? I think that's the right thing to do here with Visa and MasterCard, too.

在洛克希德·马丁那一集里，我们的方法是，把五大国防承包商视为一个实体，并问，是什么使他们五个能够集体击败新进入者？我认为在这里对 Visa 和 MasterCard 也应该这样做。

At the end of the day, Visa and MasterCard have basically no sustainable competitive advantage over each other. It's just operational excellence, who's slightly more clever on the bets they're willing to make for these value added services or next product lines.

归根结底，Visa 和 MasterCard 在彼此之间基本上没有可持续的竞争优势。这只是运营卓越的问题，谁在愿意为这些增值服务或下一个产品线下注时稍微聪明一些。

David: I think the one area where there is difference between them, and it's probably less so today but was quite strong through the 90s and 2000s was brand. I do think Visa made a genius move positioning against American Express, going up market in perception, and partnering with the Olympics.

大卫：我认为他们之间的一个不同之处，可能在今天不那么明显，但在 90 年代和 2000 年代却相当强烈，就是品牌。我确实认为 Visa 在与美国运通竞争中采取了一个天才的举措，在市场认知上提升自己，并与奥运会合作。

Ben: It's funny that even though it's a commodity, them and MasterCard are commodity, they somehow position themselves as more premium.

本：有趣的是，尽管它是一种商品，他们和万事达卡都是商品，但他们却以某种方式将自己定位为更高端。

David: Sugar water is a commodity, too. That's why brand matters in these markets.

大卫：糖水也是一种商品。这就是为什么品牌在这些市场中很重要。

Ben: I guess it's for the banks, because consumers are never making a buying decision on whether it's Visa or MasterCard. That is not how you decide what card to get.

本：我想这是为了银行，因为消费者从来不会根据是 Visa 还是 MasterCard 来做购买决定。这不是你决定要办哪张卡的方式。

David: The brand is like the Intel Inside. It's an ingredient brand. Yes, the banks make the decision, but really the consumers make the decision, because if consumers have a preference for Visa or MasterCard, they'll demand it from the banks.

大卫：这个品牌就像英特尔内置。这是一个成分品牌。是的，银行做出决定，但实际上是消费者做出决定，因为如果消费者偏好 Visa 或 MasterCard，他们会向银行提出要求。

Ben: No, they're just not differentiated enough to demand it. I just so don't see that any consumer ever has sway there. I got the Chase Sapphire Reserve card five years ago, because it was by far the best rewards card for the type of thing that I spend money on as probably what half of our audience, and I think it's a Visa Infinite, which I'm sure is one of their high fee things, which is why they can pass on so many rewards.

本：不，他们的差异化不够明显，无法要求这样。我实在看不出任何消费者在这方面有影响力。我五年前办了 Chase Sapphire Reserve 卡，因为它是我花钱的类型中最好的奖励卡，可能也是我们一半观众的选择，我认为它是 Visa Infinite，我确信这是他们的高费用项目之一，这就是他们能提供如此多奖励的原因。

David: I think today, that's true. But I do think, based on the research and I was maybe too bias towards Visa, but I think Visa did accelerate past MasterCard. I think there was a strong brand element of that. I think it's more equal today.

大卫：我认为今天这是真的。但我确实认为，基于研究，我可能对 Visa 有些偏见，但我认为 Visa 确实超过了万事达。我认为这其中有很强的品牌因素。我认为今天更平等了。

Ben: It's interesting. It's funny how it used to feel more like you were getting a Visa card that was somehow powered by a bank, and now it feels more like you are getting a custom proprietary product that a bank invented for you, that happens to either Visa or MasterCard audit.

本：这很有趣。过去感觉更像是你得到了一张由银行支持的 Visa 卡，而现在感觉更像是你得到了一款银行为你发明的定制专有产品，恰好由 Visa 或 MasterCard 审核。

David: Totally agree. 大卫：完全同意。

Ben: Or a merchant. When you have the Alaska card, you feel like you have the Alaska card. You're like, sorry, there's a bank behind this and like, oh, is it Visa or MasterCard? I don't know, I don't care. It's the Alaska card.

本：或者是商人。当你有阿拉斯加卡时，你会觉得你有阿拉斯加卡。你会觉得，对不起，这背后有一家银行，然后像，哦，是 Visa 还是 MasterCard？我不知道，我不在乎。这是阿拉斯加卡。

David: I think there's totally also a story that's beyond the scope of this episode, about how banks and in particular Chase aid American Express' customer base over the last set of years.

大卫：我认为还有一个超出本集范围的故事，关于银行，特别是大通银行，如何在过去几年中帮助美国运通的客户群。

Ben: In part, that's just bad strategy on Amex's part that, eventually, it was going to happen that they would not be the scale player. Being a closed-loop network, you're just going to be a more niche player. How do you win as a niche player? You need to retain your highest value customers and your highest margin customers.

本：在某种程度上，这只是美国运通策略不佳，最终，他们不会成为规模玩家。作为一个闭环网络，你只能成为一个更小众的玩家。作为一个小众玩家，你如何获胜？你需要留住你最高价值的客户和最高利润的客户。

David: They missed the generational transfer. I think they did retain their highest value, highest margin customers. I think those customers are just 80 years old now.

大卫：他们错过了代际转移。我认为他们确实保留了最高价值、最高利润的客户。我认为那些客户现在已经 80 岁了。

Ben: It's true. I think there are less affluent people in our generation who have Amexes versus the premium products from banks or merchants.

本：确实如此。我认为我们这一代拥有美国运通卡的人比拥有银行或商家提供的高端产品的人要少。

So Visa and MasterCard together, which of the seven powers do they have today? If you want to also do the analysis, which did they have early days? I will start. I think there's an easy no brainer that you have scale economies. Any investment that Visa or MasterCard makes get amortized across 16,000 member banks, across 4 billion cards, across half the humans on the planet, or whatever it is.

那么 Visa 和 MasterCard 加在一起，他们今天拥有哪七种力量？如果你也想做分析，他们早期拥有哪种力量？我会开始。我认为有一个显而易见的优势，那就是规模经济。Visa 或 MasterCard 所做的任何投资都会在 16,000 家会员银行、40 亿张卡片、地球上一半的人口或其他任何地方摊销。

Good luck competing with any fixed cost investment that Visa is going to make. It'll pay back instantly if it works to the extent that they can roll it out to any tiny fraction of their customer base. It's just so huge that it fits the scale economies thing, where if Netflix goes and buys a piece of content, they can pay more for it because they can show it to more people. Visa is the exact same thing with all of their fixed R&D costs.

如果 Visa 进行任何固定成本投资，祝你好运与之竞争。如果他们能够将其推广到客户群的任何一小部分，那么如果成功的话，它会立即回本。它的规模如此之大，以至于符合规模经济的概念，就像 Netflix 购买一部内容，他们可以支付更多费用，因为他们可以向更多人展示。Visa 在所有固定研发成本方面完全相同。

David: Tell me if you think otherwise on this. I think there's basically a law of economic nature, that if your gross margins exceed (call it) 75%–80%, and you are of a certain revenue scale threshold like our gross margins exceed 75%–80% but we're a two-person company with a de minimis amount of revenue in the global economy. But say you're in the billions of dollars of revenue scale, you must have scale economy power.

David：告诉我你是否有不同的看法。我认为基本上有一条经济自然法则，如果你的毛利率超过（比如说）75%–80%，并且你达到了一定的收入规模门槛，比如我们的毛利率超过 75%–80%，但我们是一家只有两个人的公司，在全球经济中收入微不足道。但如果你的收入规模达到数十亿美元，你一定拥有规模经济的力量。

Ben: It's almost stupid to say this one because it's like, okay, yeah, but that's actually not what gives the business. That's not what's so special about it. The network economies are what's so special about it.

本：说这个几乎是愚蠢的，因为就像，好吧，是的，但这实际上不是业务的关键。这不是它特别之处。网络经济才是它特别之处。

David: Yes, of course, But yeah, you simply must, if you have those margins at that revenue scale, have scale economies.

大卫：是的，当然，但是是的，如果你在那个收入规模上有这些利润率，就必须有规模经济。

Ben: That's a great point. Okay, explain to us the network economies.

本：这是个很好的观点。好的，给我们解释一下网络经济。

David: This is even better than the classic two-sided network. This is the classic five-sided network effect.

David：这甚至比经典的双边网络更好。这是经典的五边网络效应。

Ben: Where you have an amplifier on each side, because you have the banks going and using all of their scale to amplify your own go to market motion.

本：因为你在每一侧都有一个放大器，因为你有银行在使用他们的所有规模来放大你自己的市场推广动作。

David: I think this is also true. With network economies and network power, the more participants in a network, the greater complexity grows, and the harder it is to actually pull off the network. There are plenty of single-sided networks. Facebook is a single-sided network. At least on the user base side, there are advertisers. You could argue that's a second side, but everybody's the same node in the network.

大卫：我认为这也是正确的。随着网络经济和网络力量的发展，网络中的参与者越多，复杂性就越大，实际上要实现网络就越困难。有很多单边网络。Facebook 是一个单边网络。至少在用户基础方面，有广告商。你可以说这是第二面，但在网络中每个人都是相同的节点。

There are two-sided networks. Airbnb is the classic one or something like that. There are three-sided networks out there, probably some four. Clearly, this is an example of a five-sided network. But as you add sides to the network, the number of successful examples goes way, way, way, way, way down because it's just so hard.

有双边网络。Airbnb 是一个经典的例子或类似的东西。外面有三边网络，可能还有一些四边网络。显然，这是一个五边网络的例子。但是，当你向网络添加边时，成功的例子数量会大大减少，因为这实在是太难了。

Ben: Because they're way harder to pull off, but they're so locked in once they're in.

本：因为它们更难实现，但一旦实现就非常稳固。

David: I think this whole story that we told of how incredibly freaking hard and unlikely it was that this happened means that you have a five-sided network effect business, and it's basically unbreakable.

大卫：我认为我们讲述的整个故事，关于这件事发生是多么难以置信的艰难和不可能，意味着你有一个五边网络效应的业务，而且它基本上是牢不可破的。

Ben: Totally agree on network economies. I don't think there's much process power. I don't think there's really any switching cost. In fact, that's probably a bear case, too. Any card company today, especially with digital payments, you don't even have to carry cards with you anymore.

本：完全同意网络经济。我认为没有太多的流程能力。我认为实际上没有任何转换成本。事实上，这可能也是一个看空的理由。如今的任何卡公司，尤其是数字支付，你甚至不必再随身携带卡片。

I should go get approved for 50 cards and write a script to make it so that whatever the most interesting card for that given transaction pops the top of my wallet. I think there are almost no switching costs anywhere really, because when any of these banks have their contract up, they just go and talk to Visa and MasterCard and say, who gives me a better deal? Because you guys are both the same.

我应该去申请批准 50 张卡，并编写一个脚本，使得在给定交易中最有趣的卡片弹出我的钱包顶部。我认为几乎没有转换成本，因为当这些银行的合同到期时，他们只需去找 Visa 和 MasterCard，问谁给我更好的交易？因为你们都是一样的。

David: This is true after the first antitrust lawsuit when duality was introduced and banks could multihome. Before then, yes, after then, zero.

大卫：在第一次反垄断诉讼之后，当双重性被引入并且银行可以多址时，这是真的。在那之前，是的，在那之后，零。

Ben: Before then, there's interesting analysis to do between Visa and MasterCard. Now there is none.

本：在那之前，有关 Visa 和 MasterCard 之间有有趣的分析要做。现在没有了。

David: Which is exactly what Dee Hock predicted.

大卫：这正是迪·霍克所预测的。

Ben: Is there switching costs between the Visa, MasterCard oligopoly and someone else? I suppose, yes, there isn't another option. If you were a bank that wanted to issue a bunch of cards that weren't Visa or MasterCard...

本：在 Visa、MasterCard 寡头垄断和其他公司之间是否存在转换成本？我想，是的，没有其他选择。如果你是一家想要发行一堆不是 Visa 或 MasterCard 的卡的银行……

David: I'm going to guess there's Discover.

大卫：我猜有发现。

Ben: No, that's a closed-loop network, too. They are their own bank. Pretty interesting.

本：不，那也是一个闭环网络。他们是自己的银行。很有趣。

David: Nobody else. Counter positioning, the last one, none now, I think.

大卫：没有其他人。反向定位，最后一个，现在没有了，我想。

Ben: You almost can't have it as an incumbent.

本：作为现任者，你几乎无法拥有它。

David: But there was incredible counter positioning back in the day with Bank of America. They were the only institution in America that could pull this off, that could absorb the losses, that had minimum viable customer base on the consumer side and on the merchant side, that had the dynamics that they did within California, that even though New York was still bigger as a state, the market was so fragmented there that none of the banks had enough power to pull this off. They were literally the only one who could do this.

大卫：但在过去，美国银行有着令人难以置信的对抗定位。他们是美国唯一能够做到这一点的机构，能够吸收损失，在消费者和商家方面拥有最低可行的客户基础，在加州内部拥有他们的动态，尽管纽约作为一个州仍然更大，但那里的市场如此分散，以至于没有一家银行有足够的实力来做到这一点。他们确实是唯一能做到这一点的。

Ben: That's absolutely right. All right, I think that's it for power. Playbook?

本：完全正确。好吧，我想这就是电力的全部。剧本？

David: Let's do it. 大卫：我们开始吧。

Ben: The first one is this business is a toll booth, and toll booths make for great businesses, especially when everyone has to drive on your road or the road next to yours, and both of them charge the same toll.

本：第一个是这个生意是一个收费站，而收费站是很好的生意，尤其是当每个人都必须在你的路上或你旁边的路上行驶，并且两者都收取相同的费用时。

David: Well put. I'm going to do my best Charlie Munger. I have nothing to add on that one.

大卫：说得好。我会尽力模仿查理·芒格。对此我无话可说。

Ben: There you go. The next one that I think is pretty interesting is Visa, as I read their whole annual report, have a narrative around these new things that they're launching, especially the value added services being good for consumers. Everything that is good for consumers, often for security and privacy, is also good for Visa. That is the playbook that Visa runs.

本：给你。我认为下一个非常有趣的是 Visa，因为我读了他们的整个年度报告，他们围绕这些新推出的东西有一个叙述，特别是增值服务对消费者有利。对消费者有利的一切，通常对安全和隐私也有利，对 Visa 也有利。这就是 Visa 的策略。

They figure out, what is something that we can advertise as a benefit to you that also helps us either increase number of transactions, margin, or lock in? That is the way to analyze their entire product suite. You hear something is launched, you're like, okay, which of those three needles isn't moving for them? That's my main one. I've got more analysis to do in bear-bull, but what do you have?

他们想出，我们可以宣传为对您有利的东西，同时也帮助我们增加交易数量、利润率或锁定？这就是分析他们整个产品套件的方法。你听到某个东西被推出，你会想，好吧，这三个指标中哪个对他们没有变化？这是我的主要观点。我在熊市和牛市中还有更多分析要做，但你有什么？

David: The two that jumped out to me are one, just like our NFL episode, just like our benchmark episodes, communist capitalism.

大卫：让我印象深刻的有两个，一个是，就像我们的 NFL 节目一样，就像我们的基准测试节目一样，共产主义资本主义。

Ben: Yes. The best example?

本：是的。最好的例子？

David: Yes. (1) It is the best example of communist capitalism, certainly, that we've ever studied, probably in the world, hard to imagine what better. (2) It's like a special breed of communist capitalism.

大卫：是的。(1) 这是我们研究过的最好的共产主义资本主义例子，当然，可能是世界上最好的，很难想象有什么更好的。(2) 这就像是一种特殊的共产主义资本主义。

You're going to laugh at this that I foreshadowed. Democratic communist capitalism, the ultimate irony. It's this idea of like, yes, it's capitalism. Its competitors banding together to create more value than they could alone, but this is at a massive scale. With Benchmark, it's five partners. With the NFL, it's 30–32 teams, something like that.

你会笑我之前埋下的伏笔。民主共产资本主义，终极讽刺。这种想法是这样的，是的，这是资本主义。竞争者们联合起来创造比他们单独能创造的更多的价值，但这是在一个巨大的规模上。对于 Benchmark 来说，是五个合伙人。对于 NFL 来说，是 30-32 个球队，类似这样的情况。

Ben: This is our whole global financial infrastructure that is decided to do this together.

本：这是我们整个全球金融基础设施决定一起做的事情。

David: This is thousands of banks that have decided to do this together. It is its own separate class of this, I think. Way, way, way harder to pull off. Ben, you and me together, Acquired is communist capitalism, for sure. If we were starting a venture capital firm with three of our friends, can we pull it off with five people? Sure. Could we pull this off with 200 banks? No.

大卫：这是成千上万家银行决定一起做的事情。我认为这是它自己独立的一类。要实现这一点要困难得多。本，你和我在一起，Acquired 是共产主义资本主义，肯定的。如果我们和三个朋友一起创办一家风险投资公司，我们能和五个人一起做到吗？当然。我们能和 200 家银行一起做到吗？不能。

Ben: Especially when you're not starting from scratch. The 200 banks that they pulled it off with, they all had an agreement in place where they owned a franchise. You had to go to them and say, you have to forfeit your franchise and instead sign this other agreement. You're not starting from zero, you're starting from negative.

本：尤其是当你不是从零开始的时候。他们成功合作的 200 家银行都有一个协议，他们拥有一个特许经营权。你必须去找他们，说你必须放弃你的特许经营权，转而签署另一个协议。你不是从零开始，而是从负数开始。

David: Bank of America, the franchisor, Dee had to go to them and say, hey, you're going to forfeit the whole asset.

大卫：美国银行，特许经营商，迪不得不去找他们说，嘿，你将放弃整个资产。

Ben: That's a great point.

本：这是个很好的观点。

David: That's one. The other two, I think it's the twin stories of innovation here, which really had tipped to Dave Stearns for tipping us off on here. The socio-technical innovation, the organizational stuff, the communist capitalism, the democratic capitalism, everything we're talking about, incredible.

David：这是一个。其他两个，我认为是这里的创新双重故事，真正要感谢 Dave Stearns 在这里给我们的提示。社会技术创新、组织的东西、共产主义资本主义、民主资本主义，我们谈论的一切，令人难以置信。

Also, the technology story here, incredible. Neither of which, because of this weird nature of who owned it and how it was set up, people really understood, but both of which are just world class, incredible stories.

此外，这里的技术故事令人难以置信。由于其所有权和设置方式的奇怪性质，人们并不真正理解这两个故事，但它们都是世界级的，令人难以置信的故事。

Ben: Super true. 本：超级真实。

David: And right here in Silicon Valley.

大卫：就在硅谷这里。

Ben: Who would have thought that success story out of Silicon Valley? They've gotten so beat up over the last few years, they really deserve this.

本：谁能想到硅谷会有这样的成功故事？他们在过去几年里受到了如此多的打击，他们真的应得这一切。

David: That's what I find so funny. Nobody knows that this is a Silicon Valley company.

大卫：这就是我觉得好笑的地方。没有人知道这是一家硅谷公司。

Ben: Do you ever run into these people, hanging out around San Francisco?

本：你有没有在旧金山附近遇到过这些人？

David: Exceedingly rarely. I take that back. In the tech and venture capital world, exceedingly rarely. In the corner of San Francisco that very much exists, which is the old money, finance, the legacy of Bank of America, absolutely in that world.

大卫：极其罕见。我收回这句话。在科技和风险投资领域，极其罕见。在旧金山的一个角落，这种情况确实存在，那就是旧钱、金融、美国银行的遗产，绝对在那个世界里。

And Jenny's in that world, because those are the folks who are on the board of The Valet who are the Patreons with donors, the longtime chairman of the board of The Valet was the CEO of Visa USA for many years. There are a lot of Visa people in that world here. It's funny, though, that you would think it would have bled more into the Silicon Valley world, but it really hasn't.

珍妮也在那个世界里，因为那些是 The Valet 董事会的成员，他们是有捐赠者的 Patreons，The Valet 的长期董事会主席曾是 Visa USA 多年的首席执行官。这个世界里有很多 Visa 的人。不过有趣的是，你会认为它会更多地渗透到硅谷的世界，但实际上并没有。

Ben: You would think. Every tech company would love to be Visa. The financial profile of Visa's business is more tech than any of the tech companies. It is what they all wish they could have.

本：你会这么想。每家科技公司都希望成为 Visa。Visa 业务的财务状况比任何科技公司都更具科技性。这是他们都希望拥有的。

David: Yes. 大卫：是的。

Ben: Fascinating. All right, do you want to do value creation and value capture?

本：太有趣了。好吧，你想做价值创造和价值捕获吗？

David: Yes. 大卫：是的。

Ben: Originally, interchange was supposed to cover the costs of operating the network—creating a trusted system, preventing fraud, offering innovation every few years to improve the system.

本：最初，交换费应该覆盖运营网络的成本——创建一个可信的系统，防止欺诈，每隔几年提供创新以改善系统。

With the incredible profit margin that Visa makes today, not to mention whatever the card issuing banks make, it is very clear that the market has evolved such that these players can charge more in a transaction than is necessary to cover their costs.

如今，Visa 的利润率如此之高，更不用说发卡银行的利润了，很明显，市场已经发展到这些参与者在交易中收取的费用超过了其成本所需的程度。

I'm not sitting here demonizing anyone who doesn't use cost-plus pricing. I am a capitalist. I fully embrace the idea that a business can and should achieve pricing power if it can position itself to do so in a market.

我并不是在这里妖魔化任何不使用成本加成定价的人。我是一个资本主义者。我完全接受这样的理念：如果企业能够在市场中定位自己，它就可以并且应该实现定价权。

David: We're looking for high gross margins to invest in.

David：我们正在寻找高毛利率的投资项目。

Ben: Exactly. But it's interesting that because of the multi-layered network effect, David, that you brought up in the power section, it is not easy and potentially impossible for the free market to do its thing and have some new player that actually applies margin pressure here.

本：确切地说。但有趣的是，由于你在权力部分提到的多层网络效应，大卫，自由市场很难甚至可能不可能发挥作用，并在这里出现一些真正施加利润压力的新参与者。

The free market is clearly not playing out. Other than a big technology innovation that shifts the paradigm in a huge way, these entities have massively optimized their costs and continued to scale in a huge way, such that they just get to capture way more value than it costs them to create seemingly indefinitely.

自由市场显然没有发挥作用。除了能够极大改变范式的大型技术创新之外，这些实体已经大幅优化了成本，并继续大规模扩展，以至于它们能够捕获的价值远远超过其创造成本，似乎是无限期的。

David: There's a lot more to talk about in bear-bull there.

大卫：关于熊市和牛市还有很多话要说。

Ben: The worst place that this shows up is the couple of percent plus 30¢ that feel small.

本：最糟糕的地方是那几个百分点加上 30 美分，感觉很小。

David: Yeah. The 30¢ is really pernicious.

David：是的。30¢真的很恶劣。

Ben: It's pernicious especially for small transaction items like coffee shops. There's an example of a piece that we'll link to in the episode sources of a coffee roaster and shop, where their line item of what they had to pay in payment processing fees is actually larger than what they paid for beans.

本：这对像咖啡店这样的小额交易项目尤其有害。我们将在剧集来源中链接到一个咖啡烘焙店和商店的例子，他们在支付处理费用上的支出项目实际上比他们为咖啡豆支付的费用还要多。

David: Wow, that's crazy.

大卫：哇，那太疯狂了。

Ben: Even large retailers that run pretty thin margins, it is often the case that their EBITDA is the same size as their card processing fees.

Ben：即使是利润率很低的大型零售商，其 EBITDA 往往与其卡处理费用相当。

David: Anytime where your average transaction value is less than $10, that 30¢ is a killer.

大卫：任何时候，只要你的平均交易额低于 10 美元，那 30 美分就是个杀手。

Ben: That's where the 30¢ kills you. But anytime that you are a low margin business, which many retailers are, if you're a discounter, if you're a Walmart, you're paying 2%–3% of the whole transaction. But when you look at the margin profile, the way that that gets amplified is that you're paying 15% or more of your available gross margin on that item.

本：这就是 30 美分让你吃亏的地方。但只要你是一个低利润的企业，许多零售商都是这样，如果你是一个折扣商店，如果你是沃尔玛，你要支付整个交易的 2%–3%。但当你查看利润率时，这种情况被放大的方式是，你在该商品上支付了 15%或更多的可用毛利。

The only place where this doesn't kill you is if you're a high gross margin, high ticket item business. That's when you can be like, card fees, whatever. But if you're selling too high priced of goods, then you often get into a scenario where you are doing less frequent transactions, more considered purchases, and you can go around the system.

唯一不会对你造成伤害的地方是，如果你是一家高毛利、高票价的企业。那时你可以不在乎卡费之类的。但如果你销售的商品价格过高，那么你通常会遇到一种情况，即交易频率较低，购买更为慎重，并且你可以绕过系统。

This is a bear case on Visa. Are they ever going to participate in real estate or cars? No, not at these interchange rates. Why would anyone ever buckle to pay these things for things that cost $1000 or more?

这是对 Visa 的看空观点。他们会参与房地产或汽车行业吗？不会，以目前的交换费率来看。为什么有人会愿意支付这些费用来购买价值 1000 美元或以上的东西呢？

David: Before we go into bear and bull, where I know we have a lot of talk about what could potentially disrupt Visa and MasterCard, I think it is worth just one minute on the value creation side of this. I really think you hit the nail on the head a while back when you said ecommerce.

大卫：在我们讨论熊市和牛市之前，我知道我们有很多关于可能扰乱 Visa 和 MasterCard 的讨论，我认为值得花一分钟来谈谈这方面的价值创造。我真的认为你之前说电子商务时一针见血。

Yes, all that other stuff we were just talking about, the 30¢, everything, that is a lot of value capture. There's a lot of value capture that Visa is doing and MasterCard too.

是的，我们刚才谈到的所有其他东西，30¢，所有这些，都是大量的价值捕获。Visa 和 MasterCard 也在进行大量的价值捕获。

On the other hand, I don't think ecommerce really would have happened. There's plenty of other value creation out there too, lots and lots and lots, but let's just take ecommerce. I feel like this is Passover, like that would have been enough. Ecommerce would have been enough, because I don't think it would have happened without credit cards.

另一方面，我不认为电子商务真的会发生。还有很多其他的价值创造，很多很多很多，但我们就拿电子商务来说。我觉得这就像逾越节，那就足够了。电子商务本身就足够了，因为我认为如果没有信用卡，它就不会发生。

Ben: Or at least it would have been many years behind because you needed to invent some new mechanism to enable payments over the Internet.

本：或者至少会落后很多年，因为你需要发明一些新的机制来实现互联网支付。

David: Yup, and PayPal and all that, but that would have been a long slog if PayPal had to get an adoption for all payments on the Internet to happen.

大卫：是的，还有 PayPal 之类的，但如果 PayPal 必须获得所有互联网支付的采用，那将是一段漫长的过程。

Ben: That's a good point. By the way, PayPal is on a shockingly large number of websites today. PayPal has a lot of market power because they have penetrated America. They are deep in terms of people's preferred payment method, which was something I've been blind to.

本：这是个好观点。顺便说一下，今天有惊人数量的网站使用 PayPal。PayPal 拥有很大的市场力量，因为他们已经渗透到美国。他们在人们的首选支付方式中占据了很深的地位，这一点我之前没有注意到。

David: Really? I missed that in the research. That's quite surprising to me. That leads us right into bear and bull.

大卫：真的吗？我在研究中错过了这一点。这让我很惊讶。这直接引导我们进入熊市和牛市。

Ben: PayPal is an especially interesting company right now, because they're strategically pretty well-positioned, but they're going through a leadership transition. You don't actually know what the new strategy is going to be yet.

本：PayPal 目前是一家特别有趣的公司，因为他们在战略上处于相当有利的位置，但他们正在经历领导层的过渡。你实际上还不知道新的战略会是什么。

David: Okay, bear and bull. Let's do it.

大卫：好的，熊和牛。我们开始吧。

Ben: Okay, bear. Before I actually go into it, a tongue in cheek joke is if they ever get to stop making the insane margins that they do on FX transactions, that's the ultimate bear case. It's something like a hundred times the margin that they make on domestic ones.

本：好的，熊。在我真正开始之前，有一个半开玩笑的说法是，如果他们能停止在外汇交易上赚取疯狂的利润，那就是最糟糕的情况。这大约是他们在国内交易上赚取利润的一百倍。

If you look at how Visa breaks out segments, you're like, oh, my God, the international transactions are ludicrously profitable whenever they have to do a currency conversion. That's worth knowing when you're trying to understand the shape of the business. The more international, the better for them.

如果你看看 Visa 如何划分细分市场，你会觉得，哦，天哪，国际交易在需要进行货币兑换时利润极高。这在你试图了解业务形态时值得知道。越国际化，对他们越有利。

But my real bear case is that their business model has basically always been tied to the digitization of consumer payments. Ever since they rolled out the three key technologies you were talking about, David.

但我真正的看空理由是，他们的商业模式基本上一直与消费者支付的数字化紧密相连。自从他们推出你提到的三项关键技术以来，David。

At this point in global history, which is amazing we're finally here, over 50% of consumer payments to merchants go on cards now. It took forever to get here, 40 years or something like that, 50 years. But we will start decelerating because we've already shifted more than half the payments to happen on cards.

在全球历史的这一点上，令人惊讶的是我们终于到了这里，现在超过 50%的消费者支付给商家是通过卡进行的。花了很长时间才到达这里，大约 40 年或 50 年。但我们将开始减速，因为我们已经将超过一半的支付转移到卡上进行。

David: We're on the back half of the adoption curve.

David：我们处于采用曲线的后半段。

Ben: That is this tailwind that has been with Visa forever. Anytime you could come up with any bear case, it was always just trumped by the idea that, well, more people are going to do digital transactions, so they're just going to outrun any headwinds in their way.

本：这就是一直伴随 Visa 的顺风。无论何时你能提出任何看空的理由，总是会被这样的想法所压倒：更多的人将进行数字交易，所以他们将超越任何阻碍他们的逆风。

That will start to slow. It's not like Visa's core business revenue is going to flatline, decline, or anything like that. But they will have less of the growth tailwind from this amazing secular thing that's been happening, which is people shifting payments to cards and digital methods as the years progress.

这将开始放缓。并不是说 Visa 的核心业务收入会持平、下降或类似情况。但他们将减少来自这一惊人长期趋势的增长顺风，这一趋势是随着时间的推移，人们将支付方式转向卡片和数字方法。

My next one is closed-loop systems like Alipay and Tencent's ecosystem, to the extent that super apps actually happened in the US the way that they did in China. You'd be telling a very different story. The amount of volume that flows in the mobile ecosystem there that is not a part of the credit card ecosystem, I actually don't know if it could have happened here, but the rise of that is super dangerous.

我的下一个是像支付宝和腾讯生态系统这样的闭环系统，以超级应用在美国像在中国那样实际发生的程度。你会讲一个非常不同的故事。流入那里的移动生态系统的交易量不属于信用卡生态系统的一部分，我实际上不知道这是否可能在这里发生，但这种崛起是非常危险的。

People often will cite, well, the Starbucks app is a very good example of people using a digital wallet that's native to a retailer here. How many people do you know that reload their Starbucks app with their direct checking account routing an account number? Everyone actually loads it using a credit card.

人们经常会提到，星巴克应用程序是一个很好的例子，说明人们如何使用本地零售商的数字钱包。你认识多少人用他们的直接支票账户路由和账户号码来充值他们的星巴克应用程序？实际上每个人都是用信用卡充值的。

That is not bad for them at all. It only becomes bad for them if they actually get disintermediated, where a bank and a merchant go direct to the merchant's consumer and managed to initiate a payment flow digitally that doesn't involve a card network.

这对他们来说一点也不坏。只有当他们实际上被去中介化时才会对他们不利，即银行和商家直接与商家的消费者联系，并设法启动不涉及卡网络的数字支付流程。

David: The two things I would want to investigate on the could what happened in China happened here. (1) Just the build out of infrastructure happened more concurrently in China. Payments infrastructures already built out here, technology infrastructure got built out afterwards. Whereas it all happened all together in China. (2) Maybe more important is just the government influence. I doubt the Chinese government wanted Visa, ostensibly American corporation, powering their payments.

大卫：我想调查的两件事是中国发生的事情是否会在这里发生。（1）在中国，基础设施的建设更为同步。支付基础设施已经在这里建成，技术基础设施是在之后建成的。而在中国，这一切是同时发生的。（2）也许更重要的是政府的影响。我怀疑中国政府会希望 Visa，一个表面上是美国公司的企业，来推动他们的支付系统。

Ben: There's actually this really interesting, weird deal that got cut between China UnionPay and Visa, where if you use a CUP card in China, it uses the CUP rails. But if you go internationally where there is no China Union Pay terminal at my local coffee shop here in Seattle, if you were to travel here and swipe it, it runs on Visa, but they have the national security benefit and the economic benefit of for people in China transacting in China that runs on China-owned payment rails.

本：实际上，中国银联和 Visa 之间达成了一项非常有趣且奇怪的协议，如果你在中国使用银联卡，它会使用银联的网络。但如果你在国际上使用，比如在我位于西雅图的本地咖啡店，没有中国银联终端，如果你来这里刷卡，它会通过 Visa 运行，但他们在中国进行交易时使用中国拥有的支付网络，具有国家安全和经济利益。

David: I'm going to guess, that is an associated bear case, China in and of itself. And could other governments around the world start adopting similar postures?

大卫：我猜这是一个与中国本身相关的看空案例。其他国家的政府会开始采取类似的立场吗？

Ben: The next one is similar but a little bit different. Real time payment networks are starting to become a thing. The instant bank transfers that these provide are not exactly a payment system. It lacks a lot of the features that you would need for payments like the ability to refund is a prominent one. When you just initiate a bank transfer, there's no insurance around the chargeback, a refund, or anything like that, but you could build payment type features on top of it. Real time payments are starting to become a thing in a lot of countries.

本：下一个类似但有点不同。实时支付网络开始成为一种趋势。这些提供的即时银行转账不完全是一个支付系统。它缺乏许多支付所需的功能，比如退款能力是一个显著的缺点。当你只是发起银行转账时，没有关于退款、退单或类似的保险，但你可以在其基础上构建支付类型的功能。实时支付在许多国家开始成为一种趋势。

In the US, of course we have FedNow, but the adoption of that is slow, because there's not a Fed mandate for it to happen the way that it has happened in other countries. In Brazil, Pix had very fast uptake. UPI in India is another one. The UK has something called Faster Payments. This can get especially scary for Visa when they start working across geographies.

在美国，当然我们有 FedNow，但其采用速度缓慢，因为没有像其他国家那样的联邦强制要求。在巴西，Pix 的采用速度非常快。印度的 UPI 也是一个例子。英国有一个叫做 Faster Payments 的系统。当这些系统开始跨地域运作时，这对 Visa 来说可能尤其可怕。

Singapore and India have already linked to theirs up. That is a method of transferring money between countries that has nothing to do with Visa. That, I'm sure, something they're keeping a very close eye on and trying to figure out, is there a way that we can become the real time payment system that governments decide that their country should adopt?

新加坡和印度已经连接起来了。这是一种在国家之间转账的方法，与 Visa 无关。我确信，他们对此密切关注并试图弄清楚，我们是否可以成为政府决定其国家应采用的实时支付系统。

David: Technology, infrastructure, and ecosystem is getting built on this, obviously, around the world and here too. Our great friends of the show, Modern Treasury, are enabling a lot of this.

大卫：显然，技术、基础设施和生态系统正在全球范围内以及在这里建立。我们节目的好朋友，Modern Treasury，正在推动这一切。

Ben: Totally. Apple, I just think it's a general bear case here, but here's my specific implementation.

本：完全同意。苹果，我只是认为这是一个普遍的看空案例，但这是我具体的实施方案。

David: Specifically Apple Pay, right?

David：具体是 Apple Pay，对吧？

Ben: Yeah. On an Apple Pay transaction, I'm pretty sure Apple makes about as much as Visa does, because they stack an extra 15 basis points on top of the other three fees that we talked about, the one to go to the issuer, the one to go to the merchant's bank, and the one to go to Visa itself. If Apple has convinced merchants that it's fine to lose another 15 basis points on every transaction because it's so freaking convenient that users get to tap their phone or their watch, that is just step one in an equation.

本：是的。在一次 Apple Pay 交易中，我很确定苹果赚的钱和 Visa 差不多，因为他们在我们谈到的其他三项费用之上又加了 15 个基点，一个给发行方，一个给商户的银行，还有一个给 Visa 本身。如果苹果已经说服商户在每笔交易中再损失 15 个基点是可以的，因为用户可以非常方便地用手机或手表支付，那只是这个等式的第一步。

Here's the really extreme Apple payment bull case. If Apple were to have payment terminals, then they could totally run all of those Apple Pay payments on their own network. As it happens right now, you need to have a card issued by a bank that likely is issued on Visa, MasterCard, Amex, or Discover, and then it goes over those payment rails. Apple just puts a little charge on top of it, and then it's the same way any other transaction happens. But if I were to Apple Pay with my Apple card at an Apple point of sale, why would that ever need to run on Visa's network?

这是苹果支付的极端看涨案例。如果苹果拥有支付终端，那么他们可以完全在自己的网络上运行所有这些 Apple Pay 支付。目前的情况是，你需要有一张由银行发行的卡，这些卡可能是 Visa、MasterCard、Amex 或 Discover 发行的，然后通过这些支付网络进行交易。苹果只是在上面加一点费用，然后就像其他交易一样发生。但如果我在苹果销售点用我的苹果卡进行 Apple Pay 支付，为什么还需要在 Visa 的网络上运行呢？

Apple doesn't make point of sale hardware today. But if they were to acquire Square, or if they were to do something way out of their DNA and go acquire Verifone or a legacy provider, they could create their own closed-loop network, where they're actually the payment method and the merchant's technology provider.

苹果目前不生产销售点硬件。但如果他们收购 Square，或者做一些超出其 DNA 的事情，去收购 Verifone 或一家传统供应商，他们可以创建自己的闭环网络，在这个网络中，他们实际上是支付方式和商家的技术提供商。

David: I actually don't even think they need to do that. They're Apple. They just use iPads. As part of Apple Pay, they would have Apple Pay for merchant software that would be on the iPads.

大卫：我其实甚至不认为他们需要那样做。他们是苹果。他们只用 iPad。作为 Apple Pay 的一部分，他们会在 iPad 上安装商户软件的 Apple Pay。

Ben: No, that's too hard. That adoption curve sucks. I think they would pay Square's market cap, or Blocks. It's $30 billion or something right now. Apple could totally just go buy Block, do this overnight, and light up all the existing merchants.

本：不，那太难了。那个采用曲线很糟糕。我认为他们会支付 Square 的市值，或者 Blocks。现在大约是 300 亿美元。苹果完全可以直接去买 Block，立即完成这件事，并点亮所有现有的商家。

David: True. 大卫：确实。

Ben: What else are you going to do with $250 billion of cash? Maybe they would try, but Apple is not going to be in the business of directly having a sales force to sign up all these merchants, I don't think.

本：你打算用 2500 亿美元的现金做什么？也许他们会尝试，但我认为苹果不会直接组建销售团队来签约所有这些商家。

David: Agreed. I have a counterpoint to that, but I'll save it for the bull side of the ledger here.

大卫：同意。我对此有一个反驳意见，但我会留在这里的看涨方。

Ben: Okay. The lighter weight thing on Apple is, even if they don't try to build their own closed-loop thing, who really cares what's in your wallet when your wallet is your phone?

本：好的。关于苹果的轻量化，即使他们不尝试建立自己的闭环系统，当你的钱包就是你的手机时，谁会在意你的钱包里有什么呢？

For consumers now, if you're using your phone, in your head, your payment method is your phone. The card underneath it is not terribly important, other than the fact that you need to remember to auto pay it and ideally, it has the one with the best rewards. That's not what most people are thinking, because I think actually, the majority of people don't have rewards-based credit cards. But they loaded some card in there, they forgot about it, and they pay.

对于现在的消费者来说，如果你在使用手机，在你的脑海中，你的支付方式就是你的手机。下面的卡片并不是特别重要，除了你需要记得自动支付它，并且理想情况下，它是奖励最好的那张卡。这不是大多数人所想的，因为我认为实际上，大多数人没有基于奖励的信用卡。但他们在里面加载了一些卡，他们忘记了它，然后他们支付。

Apple is actually the means of payment, not the card. Even though it's flowing over their rails, consumers don't think of it that way. I don't know exactly how that will manifest and chiseling away at Visa's value. But it certainly is fair to say that the card network and the card issuer have less of a role in the consumers' mind than they used to based on the fact that we now have mobile payments.

苹果实际上是支付手段，而不是卡。即使它在他们的轨道上流动，消费者也不会这样认为。我不知道这将如何表现并削弱 Visa 的价值。但可以肯定地说，基于我们现在有移动支付这一事实，卡网络和发卡机构在消费者心目中的作用比以前小了。

David: Apple Pay and Google Pay along with it are, I think, by many, many, many orders of magnitude, the most successful quasi alternative payment systems that have actually gotten install bases.

David：我认为，Apple Pay 和 Google Pay 是许多、许多、许多数量级上最成功的准替代支付系统，它们实际上已经获得了安装基础。

Ben: Google Pay is very popular, too.

本：Google Pay 也很受欢迎。

David: Yeah, but what else? There have been other alternative payment systems over the years, and none of them match at least domestically in the US, Apple and Google Pay.

大卫：是的，但还有什么呢？多年来还有其他替代支付系统，但在美国国内，苹果支付和谷歌支付至少没有一个能与之匹敌。

Ben: Yup. My TLDR on the bear case is the core business matures so that tailwind lessens. The debit networks gets chipped away at. More rails emerge for each use case that, again, has further chipping away at their available use cases, even if not the actual ones that they're using today but the ones that they could go tackle, and the future might get eaten by other people, and they spend bunch of wasted money trying to figure it out. Those were the best bear cases I can come up with.

本：是的。我对看空观点的总结是核心业务成熟，因此顺风减弱。借记网络被逐渐削弱。每个用例出现更多的轨道，这再次削弱了他们可用的用例，即使不是他们今天实际使用的那些，而是他们可能会去解决的那些，未来可能会被其他人吞噬，他们花费大量浪费的钱试图弄清楚。这些是我能想到的最好的看空案例。

The funniest thing is—we'll thank a bunch of people at the end of the show that we had conversations with—when we would ask people, hey, what's your bear and bull on Visa, basically everyone just gave us a bear case, because they're like, the bull case is obvious.

最有趣的是——在节目的最后，我们会感谢一群与我们交谈过的人——当我们问人们，嘿，你对 Visa 的看涨和看跌是什么时，基本上每个人都给了我们一个看跌的理由，因为他们觉得，看涨的理由是显而易见的。

David: Totally. I think the obvious bull case is, this is just an incredibly powerful network effect that's 50 years in the making, is five-sided, and Lord knows, I can't think of any other five-sided network effects.

大卫：完全同意。我认为显而易见的看涨理由是，这是一个经过 50 年打造的极其强大的网络效应，是五边的，天知道，我想不出其他任何五边的网络效应。

Ben: Riding a secular increasing market.

本：骑在世俗增长的市场上。

David: Riding a secular wave, and nobody has ever broken it, and past performance is a strong indicator of future performance in this domain.

大卫：乘着世俗的浪潮，没有人曾打破它，过去的表现是该领域未来表现的强有力指标。

Ben: The corollary of that, too, is lots of people have had lots of similar bear cases that they've said five years ago, ten years ago, and none of those things have come true. Visa has just continued to grow it low double digit percent growth every single year. I guess to your calculation of 17% over 51 years, people in the past have said many of these bear cases, but have never come true. That's the most obvious.

本：其结果是，很多人五年前、十年前就提出了很多类似的看空案例，但这些都没有成真。Visa 每年都以低两位数的百分比增长。我想根据你计算的 51 年 17%的增长率，过去很多人都提出过这些看空案例，但从未成真。这是最明显的。

Here are the few that are most evident to me that are potentials on top of their core business, because it is true that interchange is facing downward pressure. We talked about all the way from 7% down to 2% had change. They do these interesting other things.

在我看来，这些是他们核心业务之外最明显的潜力，因为确实交换面临下行压力。我们谈到了从 7%下降到 2%的变化。他们做了这些有趣的其他事情。

One benefit to them of digital payments, we talked about the potential drawback with Apple being able to maybe disintermediate in some way that's not exactly clear yet, is tokenization.

对他们来说，数字支付的一个好处是，我们谈到了苹果可能以某种尚不完全清楚的方式进行去中介化的潜在缺点，就是代币化。

The way that Apple Pay works is that your card doesn't actually get sent to the merchant, your card number. None of the identifying information on there goes. Instead, your card gets tokenized and a token representing your card does, which is, as Visa will tell you, amazing for security and privacy.

Apple Pay 的工作方式是，您的卡实际上并不会发送给商家，您的卡号也不会。上面的任何识别信息都不会发送。相反，您的卡会被标记化，并发送一个代表您卡的标记，正如 Visa 所说，这对安全和隐私来说是惊人的。

What it also does is allows them to create more proprietary services. In the old card number system, there was a lot more flexibility in what a merchant and their payment processor could actually do with the literal information on the card.

它还允许他们创建更多专有服务。在旧的卡号系统中，商家及其支付处理器在卡上的实际信息方面有更多的灵活性。

They could choose what network to run it on. There was more optionality with it when you had the raw information, and now Visa's like, hey, we got your token. Do you want us to do any of the cool token-based services that we have with it? Those are high margin for us. The tokenization is good for them.

他们可以选择在哪个网络上运行它。当你拥有原始信息时，它有更多的选择性，而现在 Visa 就像，嘿，我们有你的令牌。你想让我们用它做任何我们提供的很酷的基于令牌的服务吗？这些对我们来说利润率很高。令牌化对他们有好处。

They now have more digital tokens than card credentials. That's been growing really fast. It doubled last year. There are tokens on their network.

他们现在拥有的数字代币比卡片凭证更多。这一增长速度非常快。去年翻了一番。他们的网络上有代币。

Visa's quote on this is, "This marks a huge milestone, both for the transition to digital and in our work to secure the wider payments ecosystem. And you better bet that that's good for long-term margins and layering products later on."

Visa 对此的评论是：“这标志着一个巨大的里程碑，无论是向数字化的过渡，还是在我们努力保障更广泛的支付生态系统方面。你最好相信，这对长期利润率和后续产品叠加都是有利的。”

Other bull cases. This is my favorite one from there. Remember the NVIDIA slide of the trillion dollar TAM?

其他牛市案例。这是我最喜欢的一个。还记得英伟达的万亿美元 TAM 幻灯片吗？

David: Yup. 大卫：是的。

Ben: Here's Visa's version. All of payments is about $200 trillion of volume, and cards are only $20 trillion. Here, we've been playing in this tiny little fraction of the available market.

本：这是 Visa 的版本。所有支付的交易量约为 200 万亿美元，而卡片仅为 20 万亿美元。在这里，我们一直在这个可用市场的一小部分中竞争。

There are a few things that they call out that they want to move into, that B2B payments is about $120 trillion if they can access it. B2B commerce is actually just much larger than B2C commerce if you think about the amount of money that flows over invoices, that are paid via ACH or wire.

他们提到了一些他们想要进入的领域，B2B 支付大约是 120 万亿美元，如果他们能够进入的话。实际上，如果你考虑通过发票流动的资金量，这些发票是通过 ACH 或电汇支付的，B2B 商务实际上比 B2C 商务要大得多。

Visa, I think, is intensely aware that they're not going to take 2½% interchange on a company invoicing another company for a million dollar services provided thing, but there are elements of B2B that do have interchange. If you're issued a Ramp or Brex card, and you go swipe it, that's a B2B transaction. They're very excited about addressing B2B, both in their further push in cards but also developing B2B-specific products that have more appropriate monetization models.

我认为，Visa 非常清楚，他们不会对一家公司向另一家公司开具百万美元服务发票的情况收取 2½%的交换费，但 B2B 的某些元素确实有交换费。如果你持有 Ramp 或 Brex 卡，并刷卡消费，那就是一次 B2B 交易。他们对解决 B2B 问题非常感兴趣，不仅在进一步推动卡片业务方面，还在开发具有更合适货币化模式的 B2B 专用产品。

Also, we've been talking a lot about consumer to business. When I decide to pay for something at a business, if you flip that business to consumer, that is a $30 trillion TAM or a $30 trillion volume addressable opportunity. You can think of that as an insurance company needs to pay a payout after a car insurance, and they need to make that happen fast. Or refunds.

此外，我们一直在谈论消费者对企业。当我决定在一家企业支付某物时，如果你将该企业转为消费者，那就是一个 30 万亿美元的 TAM 或一个 30 万亿美元的可解决机会。你可以将其视为保险公司需要在汽车保险后支付赔款，并且他们需要快速实现这一点。或者退款。

Let's say you never bought anything, but a company still needs to send you some money. Or Uber needs to pay their drivers. There's a whole business they've created called Visa Direct, which is the business to consumer push-based payments, which is a new foray for them.

假设你从未购买过任何东西，但一家公司仍然需要给你汇款。或者 Uber 需要支付给他们的司机。他们创建了一个名为 Visa Direct 的业务，这是面向消费者的推送支付业务，这是他们的新尝试。

The last one is just expansion of cross border payments if they can do more international transactions. That is hugely, hugely profitable. That is me trying to faithfully represent the bull case that Visa paints for their shareholders. David, these bull cases are so easy. You should read the annual report. The whole thing's a bull case.

最后一个只是跨境支付的扩展，如果他们能进行更多的国际交易。这是非常非常有利可图的。这是我试图忠实地代表 Visa 为其股东描绘的乐观情况。大卫，这些乐观情况太简单了。你应该读一下年度报告。整个报告都是乐观的。

David: Right. One other additional I was going to add on bull case as a response to the Apple and by association, Google. Pretty much everybody we talked to pointed out as the number one most obvious bear case for Visa right now is Apple, Google, and the incredible progress and inroads that they have made into rails and transactions. But as you say, all those transactions are still just tokenized Visa, MasterCard cards.

大卫：对。关于牛市的另一个补充，我想回应苹果以及与之相关的谷歌。几乎所有我们交谈过的人都指出，目前对 Visa 最明显的熊市情况是苹果、谷歌，以及他们在支付网络和交易方面取得的惊人进展和突破。但正如你所说，所有这些交易仍然只是 Visa、万事达卡的代币化卡片。

Ben: It’s a bull case today.

本：今天是牛市。

David: Yeah, it's a bull case today. There may be nuance that I'm missing here, but if you play out how Apple decides, okay, we want to go after Visa, I'm not sure how Apple could actually do that really without becoming a bank themselves. Amex is a closed-loop system, it's a bank. Discover is a closed-loop system, it's a bank. Does Apple want to be a bank?

大卫：是的，今天是个看涨的情况。我可能遗漏了一些细微之处，但如果你考虑苹果决定去追赶 Visa，我不确定苹果是否真的能做到这一点而不成为一家银行。Amex 是一个闭环系统，是一家银行。Discover 是一个闭环系统，是一家银行。苹果想成为一家银行吗？

Ben: They could become like a Stripe.

本：他们可能会变得像 Stripe 一样。

David: I guess so. 大卫：我想是的。

Ben: Or like a Square. They're the technology providers, and they have merchant acquirer banks behind them.

本：或者像 Square。他们是技术提供商，背后有商户收单银行。

David: Sure, they could do that. Apple's finance and fintech operations do not exist in a vacuum. Is Apple going to take on the risk to the Apple franchise of all the regulation and scrutiny that comes from that?

大卫：当然，他们可以这样做。苹果的金融和金融科技业务并不是孤立存在的。苹果是否会承担由此带来的所有监管和审查风险，从而影响苹果品牌？

Ben: It depends. Apple will eventually saturate their market. They are looking for what the next frontier is in $200 trillion of volume moving around the global economy.

本：这要看情况。苹果最终会饱和他们的市场。他们正在寻找全球经济中 200 万亿美元流动量的下一个前沿。

David: I think, yes, absolutely. I'm not saying this won't happen, but Tim Cook board-level discussion on this. Let's play out the Dee Hock thought exercise. Apple succeeds, they do it. They eat Visa. Visa's market cap is now added to Apple's market cap. Great. Apple's market cap just grew by 25%.

大卫：我认为，是的，绝对是。我不是说这不会发生，但蒂姆·库克在董事会层面讨论过这个问题。让我们进行迪·霍克的思维练习。苹果成功了，他们做到了。他们吞并了 Visa。Visa 的市值现在被添加到苹果的市值中。太好了。苹果的市值刚刚增长了 25%。

Ben: I think they have to think that they can improve something. They won't go into this, unless they think they can improve both the user experience and create a better business out of it.

本：我认为他们必须认为自己可以改进一些东西。他们不会参与其中，除非他们认为可以改善用户体验并从中创造更好的业务。

David: Great point. 大卫：说得好。

Ben: The Vision Pro will come out, and we'll have to see if that is the future or not. But post that, they're going to do a car, or they're going to go into payments.

本：Vision Pro 将会推出，我们得看看那是否是未来。但在那之后，他们要么会造车，要么会进入支付领域。

David: They got to keep going after bigger and bigger markets. You're right.

大卫：他们必须继续追求越来越大的市场。你说得对。

Ben: The cute Apple that we know of years past is gone, and we just have to think about, what would a good capital allocator do with their strategic position?

本：我们所熟知的过去几年可爱的苹果已经不复存在，我们只需要考虑，一个好的资本分配者会如何利用他们的战略地位？

David: True. I'm not making the argument that they're still the cute Apple. I'm just saying, I think actually entering this arena introduces a significant amount of risk to the whole franchise that they have to weigh, in a way that some of these other markets don't.

大卫：没错。我并不是说他们仍然是可爱的苹果。我只是说，我认为实际上进入这个领域会给整个品牌带来相当大的风险，他们必须权衡，而其他一些市场则不需要这样做。

Ben: That's super true. Okay, I have one trivia thing for you before carve outs. You may already know this, but did you know that you can get a BankAmericard today?

本：那太对了。好吧，在切出之前，我有一个小知识要告诉你。你可能已经知道了，但你知道今天可以获得一张 BankAmericard 吗？

David: I did not. Is it a branded Visa product from Bank of America?

大卫：我没有。这是美国银行的 Visa 品牌产品吗？

Ben: It is a branded product from Bank of America available on bankofamerica.com. There's no annual fee. Click on their website to apply now. The beautiful irony that will tie a bow on this whole episode is the BankAmericard credit card by Bank of America runs on MasterCard's network.

本：这是美国银行的品牌产品，可在 bankofamerica.com 上获得。没有年费。点击他们的网站立即申请。为整个事件画上句号的美丽讽刺是美国银行的 BankAmericard 信用卡运行在万事达卡的网络上。

David: As you started to set that up, I was like, I know where you're going with this. Interbank for the win.

大卫：当你开始设置时，我就想，我知道你要怎么做。银行间交易赢了。

Ben: We'll link to it in the show notes. Get yourself a BankAmericard, and run your transactions over MasterCard's beautiful, stellar network.

本：我们会在节目备注中链接到它。给自己办一张 BankAmericard，通过 MasterCard 美丽、出色的网络进行交易。

David: Wow, that is hilarious. What a great place to leave the story.

大卫：哇，真是太搞笑了。真是个结束故事的好地方。

Ben: There can't be that many people that are applying for this thing, and you would think that Visa would try to go get this deal done just for nostalgia purposes.

本：不可能有那么多人申请这件事，你会认为 Visa 会为了怀旧目的而尝试完成这笔交易。

David: That's a crime against the Internet and business history. What a story, man.

David：这对互联网和商业历史来说是一个罪行。真是个故事，伙计。

Ben: Truly. Okay, carve outs?

本：真的。好的，例外情况？

David: Carve outs. David：剥离。

Ben: Mine is available on Netflix. It is a show called I Think You Should Leave. I have not laughed this hard in a long time. Each episode's 15 minutes. It's three comedy sketches with a guy named Tim Robinson as the brains behind it and is in many of the episodes.

本：我的可以在 Netflix 上观看。这个节目叫《我觉得你应该离开》。我已经很久没有笑得这么开心了。每集 15 分钟。它有三个喜剧小品，由一个叫蒂姆·罗宾逊的人策划，他也出现在许多剧集中。

David: We were talking about this at our drinks in New York.

大卫：我们在纽约喝酒时谈到了这个。

Ben: If I were you, listeners, and you haven't watched this yet, I would go to Season 3, Episode 1. My favorite skit of them all starts approximately six minutes in. Actually, the whole episode's good, but the skits two and three are the truly unbelievable ones. He's so outlandish.

本：如果我是你们，听众们，而且你们还没看过这个，我会去看第三季第一集。我最喜欢的小品大约在六分钟后开始。其实整集都很好，但第二和第三个小品才是真正令人难以置信的。他太古怪了。

It's everything that sketch comedy should be in the absolute highest production value you could possibly imagine, shot very convincingly, I think, using the same cinematographer, but using a completely different set of lenses, lighting, sets, post production, such that everything that they're trying to emulate, whether it's a game show, a dating show, or a commercial, feels like the appropriate thing that they're trying to emulate. It's just really good.

这就是素描喜剧在你能想象的最高制作价值中应该有的一切，拍摄得非常有说服力，我认为，使用了同一个摄影师，但使用了一套完全不同的镜头、灯光、布景、后期制作，以至于他们试图模仿的一切，无论是游戏节目、约会节目还是广告，都感觉像是他们试图模仿的合适的东西。真的非常好。

David: It's amazing. I'll have to check it out.

大卫：太棒了。我得去看看。

My carveout is a book. I think this is my first fun fiction book in a while. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It is an awesome fantasy novel, the first in the series, but you can read it as a standalone, too. It's been out for a long time and has many, many passionate fans out there.

我的书是一本书。我想这是我很久以来第一次读有趣的小说。布兰登·桑德森的《迷雾之子》。这是一本很棒的奇幻小说，是该系列的第一本，但你也可以把它当作独立作品来读。它已经出版很长时间了，并且有许多热情的粉丝。

It was recommended to me by a great friend of the show, Guy Podjarny, the founder of Snyk the last time we got together, which was super fun. Snyk is an amazing, very large cybersecurity company that I'm sure many of you know about.

这是我在上次聚会时由节目的好朋友、Snyk 的创始人 Guy Podjarny 推荐给我的，那次聚会非常有趣。Snyk 是一家令人惊叹的、非常大的网络安全公司，我相信你们中的许多人都知道。

Ben: Focused on developers, right?

本：专注于开发人员，对吗？

David: Yeah. Developer security. You see their billboards all up and down 101 here in San Francisco. He recommended it to me a while back, and it took me a while to get to it, toddler parenting. I read it. I thought it was awesome. Jenny read it. She's, of course, now done the whole series, because she's a voracious reader. The world building, the magical system, all the core fantasy elements are really great. The political intrigue, I highly recommend it.

大卫：是的。开发者安全。你会看到他们的广告牌在旧金山的 101 公路上到处都是。他前阵子推荐给我，我花了一段时间才开始看，因为要照顾小孩。我读了，觉得很棒。珍妮也读了。当然，她现在已经读完了整个系列，因为她是个贪婪的读者。世界构建、魔法系统，所有核心的幻想元素都非常出色。政治阴谋，我强烈推荐。

Ben: Awesome. We definitely have a few thank yous on this one. Huge thank you to Dave Stearns for spending the time with us and recanting his academic thesis, and it was just awesome reading the book. I have a personal thank you to a good friend of mine, Jason Pate of Plaid. Very helpful to get general, high level thoughts on payments industry.

本：太棒了。我们确实有一些感谢要表达。非常感谢戴夫·斯特恩斯花时间与我们在一起，并重述他的学术论文，读这本书真是太棒了。我个人要感谢我的好朋友，Plaid 的杰森·佩特。非常感谢他对支付行业的总体、高层次的想法。

Thank you to Lisa Ellis from Moffett Nathanson. Lisa did an amazing interview with Ben Thompson a few weeks back if you are a Stratechery subscriber. That is totally worth reading and I prefer listening, so go listen to that. After I read that, I shot her an email and I was like, we're about to do Visa. I would love to talk to you about some of this. A huge thanks to her.

感谢来自 Moffett Nathanson 的 Lisa Ellis。几周前，Lisa 与 Ben Thompson 进行了一次精彩的采访，如果你是 Stratechery 的订阅者，那绝对值得一读，我更喜欢听，所以去听听吧。读完后，我给她发了一封邮件，我说，我们要做 Visa 了。我很想和你谈谈其中的一些内容。非常感谢她。

Good friend of the show, Dimitri from Modern Treasury for helping us quickly get up to speed on payments, and good friend of mine and David's both, Ben Eidelson, who is a former product person from Stripe.

感谢节目中的好朋友，来自 Modern Treasury 的 Dimitri，帮助我们快速了解支付，以及我和 David 的好朋友，Ben Eidelson，他是 Stripe 的前产品人员。

Sign up for emails to find out about the latest Acquired episodes to get in on our teasers of what the next episode is going to be, and hear the follow-ups and corrections after we learn them from you.

注册电子邮件以了解最新的 Acquired 剧集，获取我们关于下一集内容的预告，并在我们从您那里了解到后，听取后续和更正。

You should join the Slack, acquired.fm/slack. You should check out ACQ2. In particular, our next episode, it is not out yet, but it is going to be a follow-up to this episode on Visa. Our buddy Gaurav from Thrive Capital is joining us for a follow up to analyze the payments landscape today. Gaurav has spent his entire career as a founder and investor in fintech companies. He actually gave a talk on the history of credit cards that we used for research in this episode. Check out ACQ2, search and subscribe to any podcast player.

你应该加入 Slack，acquired.fm/slack。你应该查看 ACQ2。特别是我们的下一集，它还没有播出，但将是本集关于 Visa 的后续。我们的朋友 Gaurav 来自 Thrive Capital，他将加入我们进行后续分析，探讨当今的支付格局。Gaurav 在金融科技公司担任创始人和投资者的整个职业生涯中积累了丰富经验。他实际上做过一个关于信用卡历史的演讲，我们在本集中用于研究。查看 ACQ2，搜索并订阅任何播客播放器。

Next week, maybe two weeks, our interview with Gaurav will come out. Be sure to check it out. With that, check out the merch store, acquired.fm/store. You can support some of this—I'm wearing the shirt right now—sweet swag around.

下周，也许两周后，我们与 Gaurav 的采访将会发布。一定要查看。与此同时，看看商品商店，acquired.fm/store。你可以支持一些——我现在穿着这件衬衫——很酷的周边。

David: You can pay some interchange fees.

大卫：你可以支付一些交换费用。

Ben: That's right. With that, listeners, we'll see you next time.

本：没错。听众朋友们，我们下次再见。

David: We'll see you next time.

大卫：我们下次见。

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

注意：获得的主持人和嘉宾可能持有本集中讨论的资产。本播客不是投资建议，仅用于信息和娱乐目的。在考虑任何金融交易时，您应自行研究并做出独立决策。

2023-11-27 Acquired.The Complete History & Strategy of Visa

2023-11-27 Acquired.The Complete History & Strategy of Visa

Article Comments Update

热门标签

Related Articles

2023-12-03 Gaurav Ahuja.Visa Follow-Up and Today's Payments Ecosystem

2024-07-23 Visa Inc. (V) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-12-03 Visa Inc. (V) UBS Global Technology and AI Conference (Transcript)

2024-10-29 Visa Inc. (V) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-09-29 ACQUIRED.Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg