Agreed...I've been waiting for months now to increase my quota for a specific Azure VM type by 20 cores. I get an email every two weeks saying my request is still backlogged because they don't have the physical hardware available. I haven't seen an issue like this with AWS before...
Hey, sorry to hear you're going through this. I know this doesn't solve your immediate problem with your funds on hold, but I run a payment processor and we might be able to help you process payments without a reserve which could open up some more cashflow to supplement the held funds. Would love to learn more about your business and see if we can help. My email is anand at payclair dot com (a little obfuscated to hopefully avoid spam bots).
That's just how Riot does Worlds now, it's not specific to Korea. I was at last year's Worlds in San Francisco and it looked like it had a similar production value.
This is not true. Anyone in the US who has told you this is confused or getting ripped off by a predatory ISO (the companies that offer credit card processing).
Numbers below are only looking at the percentage, not the flat per txn fee or the other fees like assessments, etc... Only apply to the US. Also assuming you do less than 1 million a year in card volume.
First let's look at actual merchant services costs:
Stripe, Braintree/PayPal (online) you pay the same fee for all cards. Around 2.90%
Wells Fargo (in-person) charges the same rate for all cards until you are high volume. Around 2.40%
Chase (in-person) charges the same rate for all cards until you are high volume. Around 2.60%
Bank of America (in-person) charges the same rate for all cards until you are high volume. Around 2.65%
Now let's look at the actual amount the card issuer charges for a restaurant to accept a card (assuming you're working with an ISO that does OptBlue, all the above do). The markup you pay your merchant services provider is added on top of this.
I'm assuming it will be just like any other time a card portfolio is sold or transferred (Costco Card: Amex -> Citi, REI Card: US Bank -> Capital One, GM Card: Capital One -> Marcus (which is Goldman, ironically I think they want to get rid of this card too), etc...). Unless Apple discontinues the card completely, they will choose a new bank, that bank will take on the existing portfolio, everyone will get new cards (maybe numbers depending on how they did the BINs)...but with the physical card not having a visible number, the apple pay card being able to be automatically updated, and the virtual card's number being right there in the app it should be pretty painless.
Since Apple manages the whole thing through their own app and not a Goldman Sachs app, it should be fairly seamless as everything should look the same and you won't need to make a new login or worry about how to start paying a new bank. If there's new cards to be issued it's likely it will just show up in the Wallet app and they'll mail you a new physical one. Last year Apple moved the Apple Cash card from Discover to Visa and most people didn't even know that happened. There was even a button to switch it over sooner if you wanted to.
With the Savings Account I expect it will be similar as long as they can find a bank willing to offer a similar APY. Especially for people who just use it with the Apple Card and don't deposit directly to it using the routing/account number, you probably won't really notice.
source: all speculation, but I have worked extensively in payments for years and have launched banking products.
What do you mean by "an environment like that"? It was just them outside by a pool...it's not like they were at a Vegas pool party... Different kinds of people work well in various environments.
I sit outside and work all the time, often by the pool. It's actually very relaxing and I can get a lot done when I have my headphones in... Sure, sometimes it gets distracting...and that's when I go back to my desk.
Most large SaaS companies do this. It's hard to get enterprise customers to take the time to write a review, but with some incentive...they might. They didn't ask for a good review, they just asked for an honest review and in return you get a gift card. There's nothing unethical about this.
It's definitely not the same, but it's not bad...especially given the times. My friends and I have been trying to do everything we normally do, just online instead. We have happy hours, play jackbox or games on tabletop simulator on zoom/discord (some games like codenames you can just screenshare and everyone doesn't need to own tabletop sim). We also like electronic music and used to go to shows/festivals together...and a lot of DJs have been doing live streams now, so we'll watch them together over Zoom and all dance on a video call.