31–40 of 317 posts
So what is the solution to this duopoly except for crypto? I envision a third payment processor that isn't Visa or Mastercard and not even crypto. It isn't Stripe or PayPal either, something completely different. Thoughts?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
So what is the solution to this duopoly except for crypto? I envision a third payment processor that isn't Visa or Mastercard and not even crypto. It isn't Stripe or PayPal either, something completely different. Thoughts?
Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…
The chargeback system (MED) is only so-so right now, but expected to get better.
There is a lot to like about Pix, but the spec is extremely complicated and hard to implement.
Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…
So what is the solution to this duopoly except for crypto? I envision a third payment processor that isn't Visa or Mastercard and not even crypto. It isn't Stripe or PayPal either, something completely different. Thoughts?
Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…
My understanding is that Pix took over because the Brazilian gov did transfer payments during covid and the (only?) way to get those payments was via Pix. So it forced everyone to start using it. And once people had more familiarity with Pix, merchants started pushing for it because it charges ACH level fees. The chargeback system (MED) is only so-so right now, but expected to get better. There is a lot to like about…
You don't have to give your credit card details and refunds go straight back to your account.
In fact, it really impressed me that Aliexpress got it working before many Brazilian sites.
An action the payment companies took extrajudicially at the behest of the US government because the US gov was't happy with Wikileaks. Wikileaks' crime was that they'd been very successful at getting true information to the public about what governments were doing.
This was quite shocking to me (and at least some others, presumably) at the time, in 2011. I guess if we were taking it seriously, we would have been obliged to say: oh, how fundamentally authoritarian and anti-democratic.
When progressives/democrat/left types shout "fascism!" now on account of something Trump did or said, the cynical part of me says that a lot of them probably just want Obama/Clinton/Biden-flavoured authoritarianism rather than "ugly" lower-middle-class Trumpian authoritarianism.
The last section in the article speaks about RuPay but isn't this just one of the many implementations of UPI[1] ? In any case, imo, it is the start of the end for the duopoly and it is my hope that an truly open standard and protocol (unlike UPI) emerges (and no, the blockchain is not it -- crypto would just be accidental complexity in any potential solution). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Inter…
From 8 June 2022, RBI allowed the linking of RuPay credit cards with India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In the absence of a physical card, customers can use their credit limit through for transactions.