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

#161

Post by olejorgenb »

blacklion wrote: post #115
oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

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…

PayPal: In Netherlands there is system called iDeal which provide online payments via tokens, without giving any of your data to seller (recipient). It is supported by all banks. It is super-convinient, you scan QR code by bank app on your smartphone if you pay on other device (laptop, computer) or link is opened by your bank app on mobile and you approve payment. You don't need to enter anything, only select your ba…

I believe Vipps in Norway is similar as well

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

#162

Post by immibis »

Nextgrid wrote: post #120
oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

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…

I often make medium-to-large purchases using SEPA bank transfer. The merchant gives me a bank account number, a random or serialized reference code, and a week to make payment. I go to my bank, and send the money to the bank account, inputting the same reference code. Once it arrives (usually within the day or the next morning) the thing is paid. This works for most online purchases that are not urgent and support the payment type.

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

#163

Post by t0mas88 »

blacklion wrote: post #115
oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

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…

PayPal: In Netherlands there is system called iDeal which provide online payments via tokens, without giving any of your data to seller (recipient). It is supported by all banks. It is super-convinient, you scan QR code by bank app on your smartphone if you pay on other device (laptop, computer) or link is opened by your bank app on mobile and you approve payment. You don't need to enter anything, only select your ba…

iDeal is working on international expansion, so it may become available in other European places.

The main downside of iDeal for consumers is that it's irreversible. If you pay and then never receive the product, you can't get your money back. While PayPal and credit cards do offer that extra protection to consumers.

So iDeal is really only good for the merchants due to the very low transaction costs.

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

#164

Post by leobg »

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 since you cannot receive money, any value that you add online can never be translated into value offline. So you need to post on someone else’s site, which then acts as a publisher, and has the economies of scale necessary to make taking payments viable. Or otherwise, you need to monetize your content by placing ads, again, using some middleman, who is big enough to be able to afford access to payments.

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

#165

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Nextgrid wrote: post #120
oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

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…

Can I understand this flow?

I want to buy a CD from Amazon for 19.99. I click on my bank application (or maybe some QR code on Amazons site) And that tells my bank app on my phone to authenticate my phone agains the bank And ask for a 16 digit number that is solely for amazon, 19.99 and 20240812

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

#166

Post by warkdarrior »

konschubert wrote: post #80

It’s the ultimate two sided marketplace and super hard to bootstrap. But if you find a way to debit peoples bank account with 0 fees and 0 default risk and The problem is: Getting merchants and customers on board. I’m personally super interested in this topic. If anyone what’s to chat about this: mail@konstantinschubert.com

Some things to keep in mind from the merchant perspective. A merchant will care about cost per transaction, cost of fraud/chargebacks, acceptance by customers, and integration into their backend systems. Once you have these solved, merchants will flock to you.

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

#167

Post by BirAdam »

xnx wrote: post #25

Central Bank Digital Currency takes away some (but not all) of the purpose for credit cards and other digital payment services. https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-currency...

The problem is that the ownership of the Fed is by the member banks. A CBDC is therefore a no-go in the USA. It would disintermediate money transfer and banks would lose billions.

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

#168

Post by warkdarrior »

xnx wrote: post #25

Central Bank Digital Currency takes away some (but not all) of the purpose for credit cards and other digital payment services. https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-currency...

CBDC does not solve fraud, liquidity, or disputes.

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

#170

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

levelz wrote: 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).

A credit card number is a symmetric secret that's printed on the outside of something that you hand to strangers all day. That's not exactly best practice.

If we moved to a PKI where the private keys live in secure enclaves, you could cut that fraud down significantly. But that won't happen, because then how would they justify the fees?

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