291–300 of 377 posts
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Bitcoin is way behind visa because it sucks as a payment system. Have you ever tried buying something in bitcoin? The fees are insane and nearly all merchants require multiple confirmations which can take over an hour.
Try Bitcoin Cash. It's Bitcoin as it was intended. Transactions are practically free, and zero-conf hasn't been crippled by RBF!
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…
Paypal etc basically exist to deal with the backward underinvested USA payment systems.
In Poland there is a bank-to-bank payment system called BLIK. It works incredibly well and avoids the payment processing providers entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik Basically it works like this: when you go to pay online, open the bank app on your phone, pick “pay by Blik”, copy the temporary 6 digit code, and paste it on to the online store’s website. You then also have to confirm the transaction on your…
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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.
I'm not sure subjecting everyone to poorly regulated (even in the EU it's fair from ideal) monopolies/oligopolies that are legally entitled to literally tax every single transaction in the economy (in addition to the complete loss anonymity and all the implications of that) is not a too high price to pay for some reduction in tax fraud...
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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…
Just back from Poland- they have a great system 'BLIK' that sounds like iDeal... Most merchants have a BLIK button... you click it, enter a 6 digit code created on your banking app. Purchase complete. Takes a few seconds. No card numbers, CCV etc..
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Getting scammed is a problem but it's not super common and the banks have a policy of refunding the money. Society bears the cost that way, and has the incentive to prevent and educate, rather than that it ruins some individual's life
The banks where you live, you mean? Here they won't care, once you send it, it's gone forever even if it was a scam.
In Poland there is a bank-to-bank payment system called BLIK. It works incredibly well and avoids the payment processing providers entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik Basically it works like this: when you go to pay online, open the bank app on your phone, pick “pay by Blik”, copy the temporary 6 digit code, and paste it on to the online store’s website. You then also have to confirm the transaction on your…
The reliance on a phone seems terrible, I would never install a banking application unless sufficiently threatened. I prefer our (Czech) more-or-less direct bank transfers, for which I don't need to leave my web browser.
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>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.
And how would that work accounting wise? Would they just claim that a bunch of PCs "fall off" a truck? I'm not sure subjecting everyone to poorly regulated (even in the EU it's fair from ideal) monopolies/oligopolies that are legally entitled to literally tax every single transaction in the economy (in addition to the complete loss anonymity and all the implications of that) is not a too high price to pay for some re…
In many jurisdictions, cash payments can allow the retailer to avoid on-paying sales tax or VAT, as well as mark stock shrinkage as a loss for their own tax purposes.
Countering this would require very careful auditing of electronic toll records and paper receipt processes, which are in most cases trivial to evade if well-prepared.
And you can’t always be sure that the shrinkage - without the cash - is reported to the manager of the retailer by the person on the till, especially if an unofficial handwritten receipt is provided by the cashier.
I recall seeing a situation involving a very large champagne purchase on New Year’s Eve in cash for 25% off and a “till receipt problem”.
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This has been done with Zelle and people are crying because they're dumb enough to fall victim to obvious scams.
The idea of buying stuff from a dodgy website just seems strange to me. One of the most fundamental basics of trading has always been trust.