The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.
Maybe. But the 39 billion in profits visa made last year suggests they make a fair bit more than that stuff costs.
Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
81–90 of 278 posts
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#82I'm calling it-- 5 years and this will be vaporware. We live in a world where you have to 1) compete with VISA, Mastercard and 2) compete with Bitcoin Lightning Network.
I was an early adopter of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. If my memory serves correctly, I made one (real) payment with it. That was almost 10 years ago now, and I haven't even seen the chance to use it since.
Mostly because it is still innovated upon. Async payments (offline receival) and trampoline payments are in the pipeline, allowing true self-custodial wallets on the smartphone.
That aside, I only use lightning with my Bitcoin-friends to settle stuff for fun. I live in a city of 300k people, and there are 3 restaurants that accept Lightning payments. Right now it is in its infancy, but I see Lightning as the only solution to actually enable web micro-payments (which failed as a standard because no credit card can provide .10 to .20 cent payments due to high fees)
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#83The modified scrolling on the website is the worst!
Why do designers do this?
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#84the home page says "ZENOBIA PAY IS NO LONGER ACTIVE" so this is a farewell post disguised as open source announcement?
It’s both? Giving up and opening the code up. Most companies should do this. Why throw away all that work and effort if it could be useful to someone else.
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not think most people are even slightly familiar with what transpired this year with regard to stablecoins. The biggest players that move money are going forward with it. This means Amazon, Walmart, and numerous other big players. They don't like paying credit card companies, and why should they. It's going to be a game changer.
If you want an Amazon stablecoin, fund an Amazon gift card with an ACH. (They already offer this, and they love it, as it bypasses the credit card companies. I often get offered a bonus for recharging this way.) Because that's fundamentally what it's gonna wind up being.
It's not about what I want. It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute, and what is already legal.
Yes, in a manner of speaking it could be like that, except that stablecoins can be self-custodied, safely be sent to others, and be exchanged for other stablecoins and forms of money, etc. I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people.
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#86When you start at the wrong premise, you typically end up in the wrong place. The premise is that credit cards (visa / Mastercard) is broken. When actually it works really well. For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Merchants might pay 3%, (and ultimately yes, th…
> For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands.
Haha, if only that were true. I’d say roughly 20% of my purchases are rejected because of a badly tuned fraud algorithm somewhere.
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#87The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.
> fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance
Visa and Mastercard’s pre-tax income margins for the quarter ending on 30 June were 62% and 57% respectively [1][2]. That is $10bn a quarter in absent competition.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/V/financials/ $6.33 on 10.2bn
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MA/financials/ 4.67 on 8.13bn
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#88The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.
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Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that even when I pay for something in cash or using debit, because of the possibility I'd use my credit-card the merchant had +3% their price?
Almost but not exactly, any rational merchant would estimate how much they pay monthly in credit card fees and find a way to add that back to their revenue. For most practical cases, the business is started already after the existence of credit cards, so when modeling revenue in your business plan this should already be baked in and the prices you come up with already cover it. So it doesn't mean they increase the pr…
In particular, that is what happens when costs are imposed industry wide, as with credit card fees.
If the cost is only being paid by one vendor then that vendor can't raise prices or else customers would patronize one that had lower costs and passed on the savings. But if every vendor has to pay 3% then prices are going up 3%, because then the competition has no cost advantage they can pass on and people only stay in business if they're making enough to justify not doing something else. (3% is more than the entire net margin in many industries.)
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive.
> even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash this is not true as it is not what "legal tender" means. Legal tender is something that the government must accept as payment, not private enterprise. > Businesses don’t have to accept cash.[0] > There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or service…
They have to accept cash, huh?
* Cash Payment Method Will No Longer Be Accepted A Notice by the Patent and Trademark Office on 10/03/2017*
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21...