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Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

zenobiapay.com

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Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#131

Post by ttoinou »

closewith wrote: post #128
ttoinou wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best players to disrupt Visa Mastercard duopoly would rather be a consortium of payment processors such as Shopify / Stripe / Google Pay / Apple Pay and banks taking in sandwhich Visa and Mastercard (where the money is stored, where the money is spent)

Pix, UPI, etc have definitively shown that Governments are the best players to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

There might be survivorship bias here. One could also argue that Governments are the best players to get and maintain a monopoly or duopoly (:

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#132

Post by Tor3 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #50
Tor3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive for merchants to accept cards for payment is that it'll increase number of sales. And it does. In principle this should even out over all sales.. but cards do make it easier for consumers do purchase stuff, and I'm absolutely sure that I personally spend money way easier with a card than without (not that I spend more than I make, mind). The total number of sales go up. I haven't used cash in my home co…

> A lot of shops, restaurants, and other establishments have stopped accepting cash, even if it's illegal to do so (legal tender etc). No. This is a misunderstanding of legal tender. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm "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 services. Private businesses are fr…

As I wrote elsewhere: You're seeing this from inside the USA. USA is not the world. What's translated as "Legal tender" when wanting to write in English is just the closest term. That doesn't mean that your local definition of legal tender then applies. Cash, to be specific, must be accepted as payment (with certain limited) exceptions, in my country. And still some places will refuse it. They even accept paying fines now and then because of it.

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#133

Post by closewith »

ttoinou wrote: post #131
closewith wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pix, UPI, etc have definitively shown that Governments are the best players to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

There might be survivorship bias here. One could also argue that Governments are the best players to get and maintain a monopoly or duopoly (:

Well, that's definitely true, and it's also how the MasterCard and Visa monopoly remains dominant. Just look at the extreme backlash of Trump's administration against the Brazilian Central Bank's plans to sell the Pix protocol abroad.

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#136

Post by JumpCrisscross »

vidarh wrote: post #100
jader201 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but for rules-following merchants taking cash isn't any cheaper than paying the credit card fees. That’s not true at all, particularly for large purchases. If I go to an electronics and check out with $5000 in electronics, there’s no way that handling cash incurs the same expense to the store as the 3% fee ($150). Maybe for nickel and dime purchases, but that’s rarely the case. Even a $50 dinner doesn’t cost the re…

Average cash handling cost is typically estimated in the range of 4%-15%. You're right that there might be individual differences in what it would cost to handle a single transaction, but a store isn't in a position to pick and choose - they handle an aggregate. If your electronics store only handles large transactions, maybe their percentage would be lower, but that's extremely rare. And even so, handling large cash…

> Average cash handling cost is typically estimated in the range of 4%-15%

I think the assumption is they declare only a portion of their cash receipts.

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#137

Post by vidarh »

Hunpeter wrote: post #98
vidarh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handling cash costs more on average at least for smaller businesses than typical card fees. It's typical to estimate the cost of handling cash anywhere from 4% to as high as 15% depending on takings and size of transactions.

As someone with little financial knowledge, I'm curious why that is the case and how those estimates are calculated. I've seen stores offering a discount on cash payments, citing card-related fees as the reason.

Fraud done by shop owners is one reason why they might still offer a discount, but also a lot of the time I simply think stores don't actually realise how much it is costing them.

E.g. they might not include staff time and incidental costs around cash transactions that aren't obvious because they're not linked to the individual transactions, such as reconciliation, time spent transporting the cash, costs of depositing the cash, insurance to cover storage of cash.

Also consider that it takes very little theft to tilt the balance, and even a tiny amount of theft by cashiers not putting through all cash transactions can make a big difference.

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#138

Post by Xss3 »

ttoinou wrote: post #121
soared wrote: post #2

Super interesting read! I work in payments for context and see tons of different payment methods every day. People tend to find a payment method they like, and really only ever use that one method. It’s very hard to get someone to switch - even if an alternative is better. It’s just so ingrained to swipe that same card, click the same autofill button, etc. Digital wallets did somehow over come this, and those would b…

The best players to disrupt Visa Mastercard duopoly would rather be a consortium of payment processors such as Shopify / Stripe / Google Pay / Apple Pay and banks taking in sandwhich Visa and Mastercard (where the money is stored, where the money is spent)

I'm hoping steam builds their own.

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#139

Post by vidarh »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #136
vidarh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average cash handling cost is typically estimated in the range of 4%-15%. You're right that there might be individual differences in what it would cost to handle a single transaction, but a store isn't in a position to pick and choose - they handle an aggregate. If your electronics store only handles large transactions, maybe their percentage would be lower, but that's extremely rare. And even so, handling large cash…

> Average cash handling cost is typically estimated in the range of 4%-15% I think the assumption is they declare only a portion of their cash receipts.

I think that is commonly the reason why some businesses do offer discounts, but note the person above replied to "but for rules-following merchants taking cash isn't any cheaper than paying the credit card fees" which seems to have specifically anticipated exactly that.

Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

#140

Post by Nursie »

soared wrote: post #2

Super interesting read! I work in payments for context and see tons of different payment methods every day. People tend to find a payment method they like, and really only ever use that one method. It’s very hard to get someone to switch - even if an alternative is better. It’s just so ingrained to swipe that same card, click the same autofill button, etc. Digital wallets did somehow over come this, and those would b…

Pix seems to be working really well in Brazil.

I'm adjacent to it in that we provide some of the infrastructure around identity etc in Brazil, and it seems to be really popular. I think there's a similar system in India.

In the UK you can do payments via Open Banking. I'm not sure how popular it is, but I've used it a few times to send money to Wise to then send over to Australia.

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