Are these live private keys?
https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf...
Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
141–150 of 278 posts
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#142Cofounder of Lopay here - we have the same mission: offer free payments to businesses, but we're working with existing networks to do this.
QR code payments are particularly hard in countries like US and UK as you're trying to change consumer behaviour. I tried doing this in 2014 and again in 2019 - both failed to gain traction (aside from during COVID).
In the UK it's possible to accept card payments for 0% via Lopay, but only if you spend your earnings on our card (essentially, passing the fees onto the merchant/supplier you're paying). We're launching the same proposition in the US soon too.
If you don't use our card, our headline rate is 0.79%.
We're a lean team of just 36, supporting over 40k weekly transacting businesses with £1B+ in card processing. If anyone reading this is interested in this space, we're hiring and on the look out for driven people to join us!
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#143Cofounder of Lopay here - we have the same mission: offer free payments to businesses, but we're working with existing networks to do this. QR code payments are particularly hard in countries like US and UK as you're trying to change consumer behaviour. I tried doing this in 2014 and again in 2019 - both failed to gain traction (aside from during COVID). In the UK it's possible to accept card payments for 0% via Lopa…
Just curious, why is there an extra per transaction charge for tap to pay? Is there more that goes into that?
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
The price is the same if you use cash or card. Really, after reward points, card tends to be even cheaper. Visa/Mastercard/BNPL/Klarna etc. all have negotiated discounts for consumers, paid for by the merchant. I'm skeptical that merchants would lower prices (stepping away from $x.98, etc) instead of pocketing the higher margins themselves.
You're right that once prices have gone up, they rarely come back down. But if the price is the same, when you pay cash you're effectively subsidizing credit card reward programs, and lining Visa/Mastercard/issuer pockets.
Same can be said about health insurance: private insurance negotiate lower prices than the non-insured due to collective bargaining.
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it. I don't think so. A Jony Ive will not be in a position to solve the actual problem - what use is a non-universal payment mechanism to consumers and to retailers? I read the linked page and don't see answers to the main adoption problem: how is the purchaser supposed to pay? 1. Purchaser has to download the app? Okay, but purchaser already has a few e…
I'd argue that the problem is that QR codes shouldn't be an 'app' problem, and yes there's a chicken-egg problem with PoS terminals verifying incoming bank payments but that's a separate issue. If you want to do account-to-account payments you can show the customer the account/routing number, amount & invoice ID - but obviously that's high friction and the customer needs to login to their account and send a payment w…
Yup it’s that simple. That’s how QR code payments work in many countries in Europe.
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The price is the same if you use cash or card. Really, after reward points, card tends to be even cheaper. Visa/Mastercard/BNPL/Klarna etc. all have negotiated discounts for consumers, paid for by the merchant. I'm skeptical that merchants would lower prices (stepping away from $x.98, etc) instead of pocketing the higher margins themselves.
if all customers choose to us cash the merchant could lower price with 3%. If you are the only one paying cash then yes the price will stay the same.
Why would the merchant lower the price by 3% if consumers are willing to pay the current price?
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#147Are these live private keys? https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf...
These probably were live keys before they shuttered the project, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898330
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There’s a geopolitical reason for this. Ability to print a world reserve currency and apply sanctions to control capital flow are among the primary tools of American power.
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not factoring in "I won't go somewhere that doesn't take a credit card". A store that sells $5k electronics is gonna lose a lot of sales if they attempt to save that $150 by only taking cash.
Which is why you take both but make the credit card customer eat the fees. Then many customers will save you (i.e. themselves) the money by paying cash and the ones that insist on using a credit card are free to pay what it actually costs.
Why do I almost never see a cash discount like this in practice? An I shopping in the wrong places? Or does something else prevent it?
Re: Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks
#150US consumers are too conservative in the way they expect payments to work—checks are still in circulation and “swipe & sign” has barely been put to rest (has it?). Any system like this would require adoption by a few diverse and large-scale retail institutions to make it worthwhile for consumers to use. Or else it would be a mere alternative to “PayPal me”…
It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it. I think for a new payment system to catch on it needs to either have a significant benefit for both payers and merchants, or be pushed by governmen…
One way to solve this problem is to have a certain commodity require the new payment method. If AWS for example created a new currency/payment method and made it the sole accepted way to pay for servers it could very quickly catch on as others adopt. Look how “Sign in with Google” became the default.
I’m pretty sure the main reason Apple/Google/Microsoft haven’t done this already is because they would be directly competing with the US government. The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.