In total these companies have profit in double digit billions! That's all coming from inefficiency and lack of real competition? is it totally necessary? does anyone think it possible to rival them in a decade with enough funding?
Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
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Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#2[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#3If you think building a Stripe or Visa replacement is easy, go ahead and try.
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#4Put your efforts where your mouth is and go build your own "real competition" if you think its that easy.
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#5If you think building a Stripe or Visa replacement is easy, go ahead and try.
Q: does anyone think it possible to rival them in a decade with enough funding?
> If you think building a Stripe or Visa replacement is easy, go ahead and try.
The use of easy here dismisses the Q's premise of a well funded decade.
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#6[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#7You've lumped together companies that do very different things. I would just google "payment card network" and you can spend days going down rabbit holes to understand how complex the system is. And yes it is all totally necessary:
https://www.spreedly.com/blog/card-processing-network
"Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and AmEx also form the PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) alongside Japan’s JCB International. The PCI SSC acts as an authority in the payments industry, regulating and enforcing the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) to protect cardholder information. The rules set by this consortium are not guidelines, but the ground-rules participants must abide by in order to participate in card-payments."
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#8You need 2 things: users with your app/terminal, and a way to interoperate with the international banking system. If you can do that, it's technically feasible to create a vertically integrated replacement of the whole stack. It's going to be a huge investment though.
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#9Stripe, Block, and PayPal each solved a massive pain point.
PayPal provided a way to pay people and vendors without giving away your credit card number.
Square made it easy to accept payment in person on a phone, without an extensive upfront underwriting experience and without expensive fixed monthly fees.
Stripe did the same as Square, but for accepting online payments.
Fraud and Risk come in many forms, and these providers, even with their UX innovations, sit on top of those same rails to reduce fraud. Without those rails, buyers can’t trust sellers and sellers can’t trust buyers.
In my opinion, you need to find a way to solve that problem before you can eliminate the fees being captured by these providers.
Re: Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
#10I can tell you it isn't difficult to build something like they have. The issue is more likely to get banks onboard to issue cards/payment instruments for your unknown payment network which has no terminals, the barrier to entry is very high.