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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?

#261

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

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…

You seem to have described Google pay and its tokenization scheme.

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

#262

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Animats wrote: post #138
KronisLV wrote: post #70

You know what I find odd? The fact that we don't seem to have nice payout services that I'm aware of, that would let me payout some money to a service provider from a platform accout, like "Hey, here is my bank account, here's their account and here's how much I want to transfer to their bank, give me an API to handle it without me needing to think about PSD2." PayPal requires the other person to either also have a P…

In the US, you can do an ACH transfer, bank account to bank account. Some US banks support FedNow, which does roughly the same thing as ACH, but in seconds rather than days. It's not widely used yet. $0.045 per transaction.

In the US, there is also a "pay a person" scheme, where you only need to know someone's phone number or email to send them money.

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

#263

Post by null0pointer »

kinakomochidayo wrote: post #219
jakeinsdca wrote: post #6

[dead]

I don't think anybody would enjoy the UX with Lightning where payments regularly fail. And if you're asking them to use custodial services, that just introduces additional risk. Not to mention the fluctuation in value of BTC. Better to use USDC on Base or Ethereum instead. or maybe USDT on Tron like many people around the world do.

Not to mention using custodial services for cryptocurrencies defeats the entire purpose.

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

#264

Post by null0pointer »

jakeinsdca wrote: post #6

[dead]

As far as I’m aware the base layer bitcoin blockchain still doesn’t have the capacity to onboard a significant fraction of the population. Additionally you need to keep your LN node always online otherwise you risk losing your funds, which is an utterly impractical requirement for the vast majority users. And if you’re going to suggest people should use custodial/centralized services to make bitcoin/lightning transactions then what is even the point of using crypto.

Sorry if that sounds unnecessarily harsh. It’s not directed at you, parent commenter. I agree that this is the exact use case crypto was meant to solve. I just think it’s a tragedy how Blockstream and co have crippled bitcoin and its development.

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

#265

Post by anonzzzies »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #252
Nextgrid wrote: post #199

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?

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 responsibility for the seller to refund/replace and in other cases you go through a process of mediation. I had it once in my life, which is now 50 years. It sounds like Americans willy-nilly chargeback whatever because they can (fries were not hot or cold enough): seems not very good for the fees. Most people who travel have creditcards here and the most ones I know have no idea they can chargeback or ever needed it.

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

#266

Post by immibis »

l3x4ur1n wrote: post #208
immibis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I don't know from where you are, but in my country this is considered generally a bad or not safe idea. When you send money directly to someone, if they are fraudsters, it is very hard to get that money back. On the other hand, it's generally easier when you paid with your debit card. And even easier and safer if it was a credit card.

The victim is identifiable by their bank and therefore traceable by the law enforcement agencies. If they're fraudulent, men with uniforms and guns come to their house and put them in jail. It's a clever system, really.

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

#268

Post by [deleted] »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #262
Animats wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, you can do an ACH transfer, bank account to bank account. Some US banks support FedNow, which does roughly the same thing as ACH, but in seconds rather than days. It's not widely used yet. $0.045 per transaction.

In the US, there is also a "pay a person" scheme, where you only need to know someone's phone number or email to send them money.

[deleted]

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

#269

Post by jeremyjacob »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #262
Animats wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, you can do an ACH transfer, bank account to bank account. Some US banks support FedNow, which does roughly the same thing as ACH, but in seconds rather than days. It's not widely used yet. $0.045 per transaction.

In the US, there is also a "pay a person" scheme, where you only need to know someone's phone number or email to send them money.

Are you referring to Zelle? I think the issue for users that keeps them on services like Venmo is primarily the UX. The Zelle experience varies depending on the customer’s bank. It’s a service run by and between the banks, who are generally not as user experience-focused as tech companies. One example of this is that there is no feedback when sending money to a phone number that is not on the platform. The funds just go into the void and are returned a couple days later. By contrast, Venmo lets the payer verify the payee with their profile picture, username, and phone number.

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

#270

Post by ADent »

Nextgrid wrote: post #199
martinald wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word yes. You'll still get a lot of chargebacks by the way. With a lot of ecomm I've been involved with the fraud you are talking about is actually a small part of chargeback volume. Most is unhappy or demanding customers, or another type of low level fraud, claiming goods didn't arrive despite a photo of the person literally accepting them from the delivery company. This is absolutely rampant in b2c with smalle…

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…

Zelle did that, but then the news had stories about Granny sent money to a scammer and the bank won’t give back her money.
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