I'm curious whether this will materially reduce costs for local authorities or whether the benefits are primarily in expanding payment options.
Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
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Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#12Surprisingly small contract. It's interesting to see that a full government contract for a payment provider is a fraction of a US mid-size company's cloud bill. I am constantly surprised by things like this. Here's another: there are more foreigners in Taiwan (total pop. 25 m) than in China (total pop. 1.4 b).
Brazil's central bank operates their instant payment network Pix [1] [2] [3] for ~$10M/year [4]. Its not that these are small contracts, but that large, inefficient, unnecessary contracts have become the norm (I argue). Similar example from India's UPI payment system [5]. The US has FedNow to move instant payments for pennies, but banking and payment system participants in the US ecosystem are avoiding it to continue…
don't centralized payment systems like this reduce the overall resilience of the ecosystem and prevent future innovation? You hint on those lines with the possible future transformation of deposits into credit.
Why doesn't the US private ecosystem manage to lower costs similarly? (Zelle comes to mind). It is interesting that this has happened in more highly regulated countries where the free market likely could not have come up with a cheaper solution on their own due to the same overbearing system that effectively forces adoption of this centralized solution.
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#13I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was.
Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brazil's central bank operates their instant payment network Pix [1] [2] [3] for ~$10M/year [4]. Its not that these are small contracts, but that large, inefficient, unnecessary contracts have become the norm (I argue). Similar example from India's UPI payment system [5]. The US has FedNow to move instant payments for pennies, but banking and payment system participants in the US ecosystem are avoiding it to continue…
don't centralized payment systems like this reduce the overall resilience of the ecosystem and prevent future innovation? You hint on those lines with the possible future transformation of deposits into credit. Why doesn't the US private ecosystem manage to lower costs similarly? (Zelle comes to mind). It is interesting that this has happened in more highly regulated countries where the free market likely could not h…
All payment systems are centralized. Zelle is owned by the largest US commercial banks ("Early Warning Services"), Congress directed the Federal Reserve to build and offer FedNow as a utility so smaller banks would not be excluded from offering instant payments. It costs $~30/month (last I checked the rate sheet) to plug into it. The instant payments are the utility, your opportunity to innovate is using this as a component of your user experience.
Propose some innovation here, I am interested, as someone adjacent to payments in financial services. Besides instant payments, the most we've seen is closed wallets (Venmo, Cash App) no longer needed with broad instant payment access from most demand deposit accounts and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) (and I argue BNPL is simply dressing revolving credit card debt up as innovation).
> Why doesn't the US private ecosystem manage to lower costs similarly? (Zelle comes to mind). It is interesting that this has happened in more highly regulated countries where the free market likely could not have come up with a cheaper solution on their own due to the same overbearing system that effectively forces adoption of this centralized solution.
Because it is a grift ("regulatory capture") [1] [2]. The "overbearing system" is the result of regulation to bring the consumer excess of cheap payments to an entire country's financial user population. Why does Jamie Dimon not like stablecoin yield [3]? Because JPMC makes almost $100B/year in interest income taking customer deposits and lending against them, which stablecoins would compete against by operating as a form of narrow bank, parking the underlying deposits in risk free US Treasuries [4].
As a US financial services consumer, it is hard for you to avoid the rake of the machine built to skim off of you as you hold onto fiat or move it, but the rest of the world can avoid being captured by it (as this piece demonstrates). Also, Europe can't regulate Stripe as easily as they can Adyen. You don't have to be the biggest or the greatest, it just has to work "good enough".
[1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-109-billion-bank-hust...
[2] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-cantillon-effect-and-...
[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/29/dimon-jpmorgan-cryp...
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#15So maybe it'll stop taking three requests, 1-2 months, and a certified letter every year to receive your tax refund?
HMRCs digital services in general are pretty good, but refunds not so much.
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#16I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.
Which part that makes them look bigger than they are? Which services are larger than stripe?
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#17So maybe it'll stop taking three requests, 1-2 months, and a certified letter every year to receive your tax refund? HMRCs digital services in general are pretty good, but refunds not so much.
Forcing people through all that means they collect more interest and I assume some people don’t bother.
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#18I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.
Stripe has a useful tool and markets it well. With that said, I'm glad there are other options.
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#19I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.
A big reason Stripe got big was because they got their YC cohorts to use it. Payments before that was complicated and even though PayPal existed, most people didn’t know you could process credit cards like Stripe, you don’t need a PayPal account or wallet. It’s why they bought Braintree and that added even more confusion.
The lesson is, marketing to developers works. And the best way to market to them to by making their job easier.
Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen
#20I wish Adyen was as good at marketing and hype as Stripe was. Stripe is really good at making themselves look like a way bigger deal than they are.
Stripes revenue is ~$20B seems pretty big to me...