Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

Post by roughly » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 8:15 PM UTC

oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

Stripe, 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 p…

Post by fortran77 » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

Aachen wrote: post #61

paxys wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a currency that fluctuates in value +/- 20% every week is exactly what people want in a payments system. Plus the exchange fees for Bitcoin is way higher than what regular payments processors charge.

I hate Bitcoin as much as the next person but it's not really fair to criticise a technology that's potentially cool on the grounds that it doesn't have enough adoption. If it had the stability of entire countries behind it, it wouldn't fluctuate this much and even if it did, if everything's in that currency then you don't notice it in daily life either. The problem I have with it, is that the technology is inefficie…

Post by ta_1138 » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #39

oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

Stripe, 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 p…

The challenger to these will solve for a different problem. Not every transaction needs complex fraud detection or being able for the customer do to chargebacks. For a 3% discount, would customers agree to use something that worked just like cash, where the transfer was instant and couldn't be undone? Then you don't have to worry about fraud, chargebacks, etc.

Post by ta_1138 » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 8:20 PM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #89

kleinsch wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You leave your credit card on the table at a coffee shop. A thief takes it and goes to the grocery store. You’re going to do a chargeback.

Yea I’m not proposing to replace low security credit cards with low security debit card this is a silly strawman. EDIT: I see the general problem of origination fraud. But that can be mitigated by imposing limits and requiring extra levels of authentication for bigger payments.

Post by fuzzer371 » Sat, Aug 17, 2024, 8:23 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #39

oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #9

Stripe, 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 p…

The challenger to these will solve for a different problem. Not every transaction needs complex fraud detection or being able for the customer do to chargebacks. For a 3% discount, would customers agree to use something that worked just like cash, where the transfer was instant and couldn't be undone? Then you don't have to worry about fraud, chargebacks, etc.