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Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

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301–310 of 377 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#301
post #164

Just imagine how different the Internet would look like today if receiving payments would’ve been as easy as receiving email from the beginning. That it is not trivial for a single person on the Internet to receive payments without a third-party involved, in my mind, leads directly to an Internet that is based on ads and on monopolies: You can’t make a living posting stuff online on your own private website. Because…

it's not just not trivial, it's quite cumbersome. but micropayments exist. assume I made some content and users wanted to give me 10 cents for it. if they didn't want to pay the 30 cent visa tax, they'd have to: create a Coinbase account, fund it, buy some crypto, install a wallet, move the crypto to the wallet, and connect the wallet to my website, before finally sending 10 cents my way. even if we handwave that the…

Only needs to be done once though. I tip and buy things all the time with my crypto wallet now, and it's less than a cent per transaction. Just waiting on more sites and stores to support it.

Credit cards were also a PITA when they first came out.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#302
post #33

This is why I was excited about Libra (later renamed to Diem.) which was Meta's feeless digital currency that was scrapped. It could have been a Western WeChat Pay, which charges no fees up to 200 RMB ~= 20 GBP. I don't see why they should get to shave a slice off of every transaction. It takes relatively little upkeep and they rake in huge profits. The fees nudge businesses to use cash (well, to avoid tax too, somet…

Coinbase + USDC are essentialy this now. They've started working with many merchants both in the real world and online to add USDC pay and transactions are less than a cent with Coinbase charging no additional fees.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#303
post #124

Unless you've worked for a payment processing company, or for a major retailer that does a lot of payment processing, you have no idea how much fraud or attempted fraud happens in transactions (you can even see it as a small retailer if you are getting sales online and say you'll ship international).

Visa enables the fraud with their insecure payment system, then place the blame on merchants with chargeback fees.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#304

Stripe, Block, and PayPal each solved a massive pain point. PayPal provided a way to pay people and vendors without giving away your credit card number. Square made it easy to accept payment in person on a phone, without an extensive upfront underwriting experience and without expensive fixed monthly fees. Stripe did the same as Square, but for accepting online payments. Fraud and Risk come in many forms, and these p…

The challenger to these will solve for a different problem. Not every transaction needs complex fraud detection or being able for the customer do to chargebacks. For a 3% discount, would customers agree to use something that worked just like cash, where the transfer was instant and couldn't be undone? Then you don't have to worry about fraud, chargebacks, etc.

Would the customer still agree to that 3% discount, after their computer got infected with a virus and 100% of their money was irrevocably gone?

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#305
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue here is who is paying the fee and where is the fee surfaced. A free market solution would work here, but it requires some regulating to create the transparency required. Everyone pays their own credit card fee as a line item on the receipt, merchants are required to print it on the receipt. If customers actually had to pay their own fee's on each swipe you'd see a lot less people reaching for the Pl…

Technically the merchant is paying the fee, and he perhaps is passing some or all of it to you. The reason merchants might not pass it all to you if that they get a lot more sales volume when they support credit cards, so they can still be more profitable while paying for some of those fees. I know I'm going to get hated for saying this, but the businesses that charge extra for credit card use under $10 are trying to…

The reason merchants don't pass fees onto credit card customers only is that the credit card network prohibits them from doing so. If they were to charge a credit card fee, they'd get banned from processing credit cards at all.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, if you eliminate the risk of unauthorized transactions, you can then reasonably discontinue the concept of chargebacks as a whole, replacing it with a mediation/arbitration service that consumers can opt-in for an additional fee. This would open the door to cheap or even completely fee-free transactions if the user doesn't want to opt-in to additional protection, which they reasonably may not want when the…

How do you handle the part of chargebacks that currently validly apply to authorized non-fraudulent transactions, like services/product not delivered or not as described, or accidental double charges from vendors like random taxi drivers with whom you don't have a way to arrange a refund?

My point is that this would become optional and the cardholder chooses whether to opt-in (and pay an extra fee) at the time of payment.

If the cardholder doesn't opt-in then the payment is as good as cash (with the same recourse available as if you paid cash).

This could allow low/no-fee transactions for low-stakes situations where the chargeback protection wasn't going to be used anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#307

Stripe, Block, and PayPal each solved a massive pain point. PayPal provided a way to pay people and vendors without giving away your credit card number. Square made it easy to accept payment in person on a phone, without an extensive upfront underwriting experience and without expensive fixed monthly fees. Stripe did the same as Square, but for accepting online payments. Fraud and Risk come in many forms, and these p…

A lot of the fraud hinges on the fact that all you need to drain an account is a static card number. A lot of hacks are subsequently piled on top of that to try and make it harder (SCA/3D Secure, captchas, etc), and a lot of busywork is spent tidying up the consequences of that (chargeback handling, etc). You could eliminate a lot of the fraud by moving off a mostly-static identifier to merchant, amount and time-limi…

Portugal like many European banks already has a working solution to this for 20 years where you can create temporary card numbers and use that instead or, as of late, pay directly through an app that enables this same behaviour.

The Netherlands had a similar system where they used physical totp (I believe) terminals which generated them from your bank card + pin, completely offline. Nowadays everyone uses iDEAL identically to what you describe.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle the part of chargebacks that currently validly apply to authorized non-fraudulent transactions, like services/product not delivered or not as described, or accidental double charges from vendors like random taxi drivers with whom you don't have a way to arrange a refund?

My point is that this would become optional and the cardholder chooses whether to opt-in (and pay an extra fee) at the time of payment. If the cardholder doesn't opt-in then the payment is as good as cash (with the same recourse available as if you paid cash). This could allow low/no-fee transactions for low-stakes situations where the chargeback protection wasn't going to be used anyway.

Ah, you're proposing to remove US credit card customers' statutory right to those chargebacks except if they opt into a surcharge on a per-transaction basis.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#309
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3DS exists and it is widely supported.

Doesn't that just trade one symmetric secret for another? (your password) I suppose it's a little better because you probably haven't written your password on the side of your card, but everytime I have to go through it it feels like I'm getting phished. Also, SSL seems kind of messy for the job. You've already got the processor as a third party, now the CA's are a fourth party, plus whoever gets to install certs on…

3ds is usually done with inapp confirmation these days. Your bank is responsible for the experience.

Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle the part of chargebacks that currently validly apply to authorized non-fraudulent transactions, like services/product not delivered or not as described, or accidental double charges from vendors like random taxi drivers with whom you don't have a way to arrange a refund?

mediation/arbitration It already works like that here (eu) for debit cards (which most people have; very few have credit cards although they don't know the difference). Double charges from taxi drivers is not possible as it's tapping or dipping your card and you are there for that (we are assuming some system that prevents someone stealing your card like biometrics or whatnot); products not as delivered is responsibi…

> Double charges from taxi drivers is not possible as it's tapping or dipping your card and you are there for that (we are assuming some system that prevents someone stealing your card like biometrics or whatnot)

You'd be surprised - at least in the public transit context with iOS Express Mode, double Apple Pay taps by transit systems have absolutely been recorded plenty of times. I admit I haven't heard about this in the taxi situation, but unless the technical problem is specific to Express Mode and not general to tap-to-pay, I don't know why it wouldn't ever happen.

> products not as delivered is responsibility for the seller to refund/replace and in other cases you go through a process of mediation.

This assumes the seller is willing to do their job or go through the process of mediation, and/or that the buyer has sufficient legal insurance or available cash to cover the up-front cost of lawyers plus any related expenses plus the possible attorney's fees of the other side if the court decides against them.

Even in the EU, this is far from always true, especially for low-price purchases or when dealing with foreign online merchants who are more likely to ignore EU lawsuits or mediation attempts than to cooperate.

Of course, trying to resolve things with the seller is always the right first step, and that's the usual approach even in the US. It's just great to be able to have the leverage of the chargeback option as extra incentive for the merchant to be reasonable. (By the way - the chargeback right is not unconditional even when the reason claimed is one of the allowed reasons. The merchant can dispute it and can sometimes win depending on the circumstances, the evidence, and the bank.)

> It sounds like Americans willy-nilly chargeback whatever because they can (fries were not hot or cold enough)

To be honest, no, the idea that chargebacks are something Americans rush to do is a stereotype and not true. They're pretty rare when neither the buyer nor the seller is doing something shady, but having the option to charge back is pretty important in order to make US single-factor (no-pin / no app-based verification / no meaningful signature verification) credit cards secure enough for customers to rely on, especially for online purchases from random small merchants who can't be relied upon.

And "fries were not hot or cold enough" would pretty much never be a valid reason for a chargeback, since usually a specific temperature isn't promised before purchase.

> seems not very good for the fees

It definitely affects the fees, but honestly, a bigger impact is that the US does not cap what fees credit card issuers can charge the merchants, so the fees are much higher than the typical EU consumer card regardless of chargebacks. Some of that is of course kept by the banks as profit, but much of it is returned to customers as reward points, cash back, or other perks. It's among the reasons why I continue to use my US credit card as my primary form of payment even here in Germany. Zero foreign transaction or currency conversion fees, great perks. (This card does require a decent US credit history and has an annual transaction fee, but I get enough value out of it to outweigh that fee.)

How many chargebacks have I done in my entire life for a reason other than actual fraudulent / unauthorized transactions? Probably under 5, maybe 1-2 at most. Plus most of the fraudulent transactions were noticed proactively by the bank rather than me having to bring it up to them. Because it's a true credit card and not a debit card, I never had to pay for those fraudulent transactions.

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