Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen • Hacker News Board

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#101

Post by martinald » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

matt-p wrote: post #81

arjie wrote: post #6

Surprisingly 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).

Interchange average in the UK was about 0.2% last time I looked (which was a few years ago), it't not much anyway. Also the government doesn't really do card transactions. I imagine this is for fairly rare things like renewing your passport, booking a driving test or buying a title copy. Oh and visa fees maybe? Small beer anyway, it's not like people are paying taxes via card.

Why do you think that? People definitely pay taxes by card.

But regardless this contract is _not_ for HMRC payments, its for gov.uk pay which is basically a centralised service that other services can use.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#102

Post by m101 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #47

m101 wrote: post #29

The solution to all these expenses is to just have the user pay the transaction costs. Then everyone will start using bank transfers.

That would seem like a logical solution. So wouldn't it be convenient for the expensive payment methods if legalities prevented merchants from charging higher fees to customers using them?

That’s exactly the system the card companies try to impose on vendors (mostly successfully).

In the UK it’s the system the law imposes on everyone.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#103

Post by thunderfork » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

rswail wrote: post #100

lxgr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Third option: You have the money and like paying less than people paying with non-rewards cards.

Fourth option: You use tap-to-pay and pay the balance in full every month for the convenience at zero cost.

Do American debit cards not have tap?

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#104

Post by marciob » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

kyrra wrote: post #48

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

The BCB in Brazil does very little to operate Pix. It's effectively a P2P system, where the BCB forces all the banks to interop with one-another (and all the banks directly call eachother). They can operate it that cheaply because they do close to nothing technically (they host the main discovery endopints). The only place the BCB actually ingests data is via their reporting mechanisms. UPI is a bit more centralized,…

In both Brazil and the US, making something like Pix mainstream requires regulation. Brazil did its part, but it’s unclear whether the US will do the same anytime soon, I don't think so, unfortunately. Technically, it would benefit the American population (the process of making pix payments is so smoothless), but payment companies may have little incentive to support it, and could lobby against it.

In Brazil, the Central Bank overpowered the coordination problem. In the US, it may be the opposite: the government seems to have less power over the payment lobby, or at least less willingness to confront it directly.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#105

Post by Silhouette » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

m101 wrote: post #102

Silhouette wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would seem like a logical solution. So wouldn't it be convenient for the expensive payment methods if legalities prevented merchants from charging higher fees to customers using them?

That’s exactly the system the card companies try to impose on vendors (mostly successfully). In the UK it’s the system the law imposes on everyone.

Indeed. It's a triumph of consumer protection laws failing to protect consumers. Merchants here have to set their prices a bit higher to compensate for the fees and you still have to pay those higher prices as a customer even if you're using a more efficient payment method. I will never understand why the law wasn't set the other way - requiring explicit disclosure of payment fees to end customers and prohibiting payment services from incorporating these kinds of anticompetitive terms in merchant agreements - so that everyone could make an informed choice and market pressures would push the transaction overheads down.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#106

Post by marciob » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 11:15 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

actapp80 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

I loved your explanation and POV on this.

> Propose some innovation here, I am interested, as someone adjacent to payments in financial services.

Well, as a brazilian who is used to pix and has also faced the bad payment ux in american, I think a possible solution should be adding the missing Pix-like layer above the existing US rails.

One of the best part that makes Pix an incredible experience, It’s that the app almost doesn’t matter. I can use one bank, you can use another, a merchant can use a different provider, and it still works through the same basic language: QR code, Pix key, payment request, confirmation screen. I can even transport my "pix key" to another app/bank provider.

So maybe the US opportunity is a agnostic interoperability layer on top of FedNow/RTP/Zelle/bank APIs: universal aliases, QR payments, routing, fraud checks, receipts, and reconciliation. Making instant account-to-account payments feel universal before the government forces a universal standard.

I don't think consumers broadly should be the main goal first, the best initial path should be small-business, marketplaces, rent, etc.

If someone could own that neutral UX/addressing layer, that seems much closer to the useful part of Pix than just another closed wallet.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#107

Post by edoceo » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 11:20 PM UTC

TreeInBuxton wrote: post #84

matt-p wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interchange average in the UK was about 0.2% last time I looked (which was a few years ago), it't not much anyway. Also the government doesn't really do card transactions. I imagine this is for fairly rare things like renewing your passport, booking a driving test or buying a title copy. Oh and visa fees maybe? Small beer anyway, it's not like people are paying taxes via card.

Depends on the tax - I pay my vehicle tax through the gov.uk website!

With CC or bank transfer?

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#108

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 11:35 PM UTC

marciob wrote: post #104

kyrra wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BCB in Brazil does very little to operate Pix. It's effectively a P2P system, where the BCB forces all the banks to interop with one-another (and all the banks directly call eachother). They can operate it that cheaply because they do close to nothing technically (they host the main discovery endopints). The only place the BCB actually ingests data is via their reporting mechanisms. UPI is a bit more centralized,…

In both Brazil and the US, making something like Pix mainstream requires regulation. Brazil did its part, but it’s unclear whether the US will do the same anytime soon, I don't think so, unfortunately. Technically, it would benefit the American population (the process of making pix payments is so smoothless), but payment companies may have little incentive to support it, and could lobby against it. In Brazil, the Cen…

[deleted]

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#109

Post by naniwaduni » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 11:37 PM UTC

Calvin02 wrote: post #35

randunel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No point in marketing when you outright reject customers: Thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback. I have taken a look at the information you have provided and unfortunately, at this time, Adyen is only able to support businesses currently transacting more than €5M per year or businesses which are currently supported by a Plugin built by Adyen. The reason for this is so that we are able to provide the righ…

At some point you realize that your smallest customers generate the least value but require the most support. Shedding low value users to others makes you stronger and them weaker.

You can't just actually shed all your low value users and then poach the high value users, because then you're only competing for customers who are already large and have already long since integrated one of your competitors. This is often a somewhat harder problem than taking a lot of low and even slightly negative value accounts and hoping some of them become high value.

Re: Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

#110

Post by benced » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 11:46 PM UTC

gib444 wrote: post #56

Got to love the people taking a swipe at the company. They found their market, can't you just be happy for them? They're hardly the only company in the world to only deal with bigger clients. This site regularly dunks on European tech as being subpar, but when an American company gets ditched for a European one, barely anyone can find nice words to say. You really reveal yourselves in times like this, I've got to adm…

It's pareto better, all else equal (which, fair, it may not be in this case) for a company to serve businesses from $1 and up than to only serve $5M and up.