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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?

#241

Post by Loughla »

jahabrewer wrote: post #210
leobg wrote: 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…

> You can’t make a living posting stuff online on your own private website. There are many counterexamples to this.

I'm not trying to be stupid but can you name some?

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

#242

Post by intelVISA »

Nextgrid wrote: post #142
tebbers wrote: post #119

No we don’t need to pay billions. There are moves afoot in the UK to do direct bank to bank payments with Open Banking. HMRC (the UK tax authority) has been doing this for years. When I pay my tax bill, I select my bank, scan a QR code with my phone, that launches my banking app, I authorise the payment and off it goes in just a few seconds. Instant and a few pence, even for thousands of pounds. This particular imple…

Open Banking is an overengineered and terrible solution, requires middlemen and there's nothing "open" about it. Do not fall for the hype. Basically, instead of having a URL scheme to represent a bank transfer request that your banking app could register itself for and handle, they'd rather rely on a middleman to get a broad read/write access token to your bank account so they can initiate the payment from there. The…

Based on your description one imagines the 'open' part is where it opens your data up for aggregation.

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

#243

Post by lobsterthief »

tonymet wrote: post #211

Consumers have an easy solution: pay with cash or check. Sadly, cash buyers will still pay the fees indirectly through price increases. The government could do some easy deregulation here and force vendors to expose the transaction fees to the consumer. Similar to gas stations : pay 3% more for Visa than cash. This will have a big impact on big ticket items like appliances. Truth is: businesses and government agencie…

Also, it’s kind of weird that we hand someone a piece of paper (a check) that has our account and routing number on it

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

#244

Post by simfree »

treflop wrote: post #227
Nextgrid wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think standard oAuth. Github has multiple flows that should cover most purposes here: https://docs.github.com/en/apps/oauth-apps/building-oauth-ap... . The key is that payment data is encoded in oAuth-like scopes, so all authorizations are scoped by amount and lifetime, and are implicitly merchant-specific. Browser-based flow, where you're already logged into the bank in an existing browser tab: * Amazon redirects yo…

This is a technical solution to a non-technical problem. My risk to my credit number being stolen is honestly low. The risk is the merchant providing a substandard service 99% of the time, and an OAuth style payment flow does nothing for that. Someone like Amazon who is a trusted merchant already negotiates fees with their banks and they likely already have an extremely low fee rate. What Stripe, Square and PayPal pr…

Walmart, Amazon, and the other big companies are not interchange exempt. They are not able to get a significant discount below interchange, hence why they keep financing lawsuits against Visa, MasterCard and such over the bundling of all Visa or MasterCard branded low-cost (non-rewards) and high-cost rewards cards under one banner that they are forced to accept as a bundle.

Merchants would love to reject all cards that are a Visa Signature and above, leaving only the very low cost cards as accepted. The Card Networks have engineered via branding and contracts that this does not occur though.

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

#247

Post by jordanb »

Schnitz wrote: post #246

I think the question you are really asking is if payment rails should be a public utility or publicly owned (government run) service.

This is basically what FedNow is.

You've probably heard a lot of really bad things about it. The people who say these things probably are incentivized to do so.

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

#248

Post by drstewart »

jakub_g wrote: post #151
BeetleB wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a 3% discount, It is fantasy to think they'd get a 3% discount. The goods in stores that take only cash do not tend to be cheaper than those that do. They know what people are willing to pay and will charge the price. If they see people are willing to pay $99 with a credit card, then they'll be willing to pay that with cash.

In Poland, the default way for computer shops in 2000-2010s was to offer 2% discount when paying in cash. (The prices displayed were assuming cash, so if you paid by card, you'd pay more.) I didn't see this anywhere else though. It probably made sense for computer shops because most transactions one would do there would be sporadic, big, and planned. (Since then, the Mastercard/Visa fees went down to 0.2-0.3% due to…

>In Poland, the default way for computer shops in 2000-2010s was to offer 2% discount when paying in cash

Yes, being able to illegally evade taxes is an easy way for businesses to lower prices slightly.

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

#249

Post by drstewart »

Yeul wrote: post #222

In the Netherlands people use a system called iDeal. It was a masterstroke worthy of Sun Tzu by the banks at the onset of e-commerce to keep the American credit card companies out of the loop.

Yeah, it's so nice to see the small guys (e.g. Rabobank - Revenue €12 billion (2022) or ING Group - Revenue €18.561 billion (2022)) get a win

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

#250

Post by drstewart »

jordanb wrote: post #247
Schnitz wrote: post #246

I think the question you are really asking is if payment rails should be a public utility or publicly owned (government run) service.

This is basically what FedNow is. You've probably heard a lot of really bad things about it. The people who say these things probably are incentivized to do so.

This is the opposite of what iDEAL is, since it's privately owned by a consortium of banks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currence).

You've probably heard a lot of really good things about it. The people who say these things probably are incentivized to do so.

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