# What industries are there no small/obscure players? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 22, 2013, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944 "2013-12-22T09:03:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2013, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/61 "2013-12-23T22:19:57Z")
Credit Card Payment processors … VISA and Master Charge, any others? ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/62 "2013-12-24T00:42:44Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Credit Card Payment processors … VISA and Master Charge, any others? Discover & Amex but yes, good example. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/63 "2013-12-24T02:56:36Z")
[QUOTE=watchwolf49] Credit Card Payment processors … VISA and Master Charge, any others? [/QUOTE] Dozens, probably at least 100, most of which are on the small side. VISA, MasterCard, Amex and Discover are brands of cards that may or may not do processing. For CC processors, Leaders is huge, Fiserv, Card Systems, Concord and Heartland aren’t exactly small, then there’s smaller guys like PayPal, Chase Paymentech, BluePay, and Square. And even with credit card brands, there are small players in the US market like JCB. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/64 "2013-12-24T04:27:51Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#): > > Dozens, probably at least 100, most of which are on the small side. VISA, MasterCard, Amex and Discover are brands of cards that may or may not do processing. > > For CC processors, Leaders is huge, Fiserv, Card Systems, Concord and Heartland aren’t exactly small, then there’s smaller guys like PayPal, Chase Paymentech, BluePay, and Square. > > And even with credit card brands, there are small players in the US market like JCB. I’m assuming watchwolf49 was referring to credit card networks. In the US, JCB uses the Discover network but it appears to run an independent network around the globe. ---
**Author:** ![oz0ne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9fc348/32.png) [@oz0ne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oz0ne)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/65 "2013-12-24T04:30:29Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > Here is the [site](http://vtlyon.com/Lyon%20Home.html) for the Lyon project. Awesome. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/66 "2013-12-24T05:05:56Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#): > > And even with credit card brands, there are small players in the US market like JCB. Yes but if you travel outside the US good luck getting any card accepted that isn’t Visa or Mastercard. Even Amex is not accepted in many places in Asia etc. Effectively Visa and Mastercard have a duopoly for overseas travel. ---
**Author:** ![Alba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea666f/32.png) [@Alba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alba)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/67 "2013-12-24T09:00:28Z")
Stevia extract suppliers. Still quite a new product. I couldn’t find any small companies doing that. There are of course smaller farms, but there are only 4 suppliers. [http://www.just-food.com/management-briefing/from-cargill-to-purecircle\_id118747.aspx](http://www.just-food.com/management-briefing/from-cargill-to-purecircle_id118747.aspx) ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/68 "2013-12-24T14:56:09Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > I’m assuming watchwolf49 was referring to credit card networks. In the US, JCB uses the Discover network but it appears to run an independent network around the globe. You’ve forgotten what is arguably the biggest of the lot - China UnionPay… ---
**Author:** ![Emerald\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Emerald\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emerald_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/69 "2013-12-24T18:41:07Z")
I’m not sure if it’s in the spirit of the OP, but there are some industries that are too small to support more than one or two companies. For example, there was only one pinball machine manufacturer for over ten years. Apparently a new one just opened according to [In The World Of Pinball, An Underdog Takes On The Giant : NPR](http://www.npr.org/2013/12/22/256328172/in-the-world-of-pinball-an-underdog-takes-on-the-giant). ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/70 "2013-12-24T19:06:33Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > Tires might meet that criteria, I can’t think of any real small tire manufacturers. Even if there aren’t any, there are a lot of major companies and brandnames (Bridgestone, Continental, Goodyear, Cooper, Pirelli, and Michelin are all separate companies, which own some more of the familiar names) so it doesn’t fit the more restrictive question of a couple of companies controlling the entire market. That would imply that there are smaller companies about, and the wiki list of tire manufacturers agrees. There’s some definite small ones on this list, even if you consider manufacturers like Hankook and Kumho to be major: > **[List of tire companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tire_companies)** > > This is a list of all the tire companies. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2013, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944/71 "2013-12-25T23:00:02Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I also recall that IBM and Fujitsu made hard disks, but I’m not sure if IBM actually made their disks in-house or if they were OEM’d. I thought Samsung made their own HDDs too? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-industries-are-there-no-small-obscure-players/676944.md?page=3)