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Gov.uk has replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen

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

#21

Post by arjie »

testfrequency wrote: post #10
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).

Why bring up Taiwan and China? This feels incredibly cherry picked? If you know Taiwan’s history, and you understand China - there’s no surprise to be..

Well, obviously it’s cherry-picked. It’s an example of something that challenges my intuition. Most things align with my intuition because I’m in my late 30s and have seen enough of the world to have a fairly good idea of the rough numbers. Here’s another one: the London Underground is older than the telephone.

There’s a light board game called Timeline where you have stuff like this and there are so many surprises. Temporal stuff is hard to reason about and the game catches that. But with large numbers one loses intuition easily: NYC’s subway vs. all domestic and international US air travel is closer in total passengers than one would think. The median American did not fly last year.

Stuff like this. It’s just Gladwell-fodder but numerically fun.

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

#22

Post by jorvi »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9
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).

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…

Feels odd that you exclude mentioning the EU, which has had instant transfers for more than a decade. More than two decades, if you include things like iDeal from The Netherlands.

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

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

jorvi wrote: post #22
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…

Feels odd that you exclude mentioning the EU, which has had instant transfers for more than a decade. More than two decades, if you include things like iDeal from The Netherlands.

Wasn't intentional, I mention SEPA and Wero in other comments, not intended to be an enumeration of all instant payment systems currently active globally. My apologies!

https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea...

https://www.emerald.com/cemj/article/33/4/575/1248919/The-ri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_payment

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

#24

Post by MagicMoonlight »

thomashabets2 wrote: post #15

So 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.

My self assessment refund came through within days of submitting my assessment.

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

#25

Post by testfrequency »

arjie wrote: post #21
testfrequency wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bring up Taiwan and China? This feels incredibly cherry picked? If you know Taiwan’s history, and you understand China - there’s no surprise to be..

Well, obviously it’s cherry-picked. It’s an example of something that challenges my intuition. Most things align with my intuition because I’m in my late 30s and have seen enough of the world to have a fairly good idea of the rough numbers. Here’s another one: the London Underground is older than the telephone. There’s a light board game called Timeline where you have stuff like this and there are so many surprises.…

I misinterpreted your intent here, and that’s on me. Thank you for explaining, you clearly picked the sample as a comparison of fact, not as narrative. Apologies

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

#26

Post by indymike »

theturtletalks wrote: post #19
siren2026 wrote: post #13

I 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 th…

Another reason is their competitors didn't get it the value prop because everyone had been competing on rates, and little thought given to developer experience... early on a lot of Stripe's competition's apis used fixed field text as the format for transactions.

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

#27

Post by jorvi »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23
jorvi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels odd that you exclude mentioning the EU, which has had instant transfers for more than a decade. More than two decades, if you include things like iDeal from The Netherlands.

Wasn't intentional, I mention SEPA and Wero in other comments, not intended to be an enumeration of all instant payment systems currently active globally. My apologies! https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea... https://www.emerald.com/cemj/article/33/4/575/1248919/The-ri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_payment

> not intended to be an enumeration of all 54 instant payment systems currently active.

Even then, not mentioning those who pretty much started / invented instant transfers still seems odd :) but no need to apologize haha, maybe I was a bit too abrasive.

I get why you prioritized to mention those though. The Chinese and Indians have leapfrogged us. No more fussy legacy (digital) cards, just scan a QR and go. Even illicit food stalls and street wanderers have accounts, when they wouldn't be able to get a 'real' bank account.

And the Chinese and Indians don't have to pay tribute to the Mastercard-Visa overlords either. Although Wero and the digital Euro might eventually change that for Europe too.

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

#28

Post by actapp80 »

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…

> 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).

UPI for instance only works with a physical SIM. Your phone number on the account must match the physical SIM on the device. This indirectly relies on India's insistence on KYC (for accounts naturally) on issuance of physical SIMs. "Innovation" here would be a player who can support VOIP based phone numbers (maybe by complying with phone number KYC in some other way).

UPI also makes it quite confusing to deposit money to a particular account you own. You could share a specific identifier (string or qr) based on your account but the other party generally assumes they can send you money using your phone number, and sometimes follows through with that.

(I don't have a finance background.) There any multiple instances of a one-size fits all user experience decision which strikes me as a result of the centralization and removal of competition (in efforts to drive up adoption).

I don't disagree with most of your reply (thanks for the thoughtful citations too). But i wonder why the free market cannot lower cost/settlement time similarly.

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

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

actapp80 wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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). UPI for instance only works with a ph…

> UPI for instance only works with a physical SIM. Your phone number on the account must match the physical SIM on the device. This indirectly relies on India's insistence on KYC (for accounts naturally) on issuance of physical SIMs. "Innovation" here would be a player who can support VOIP based phone numbers (maybe by complying with phone number KYC in some other way).

The Indian government has mandated this for strong identity assurances. Your only hope at "innovation" (ie violating financial services regulators and laws) here is cash or something like Monero.

> UPI also makes it quite confusing to deposit money to a particular account you own. You could share a specific identifier (string or qr) based on your account but the other party generally assumes they can send you money using your phone number, and sometimes follows through with that.

I haven't used UPI recently, but I imagine this is a UX issue around aliases (phone numbers, email, and other human identifiers that associate to an underlying account).

TLDR People problems cannot be fixed with tech (in this context, regulatory requirements or alias UX, submit a public comment to the regulator if you can).

> I don't disagree with most of your reply (thanks for the thoughtful citations too). But i wonder why the free market cannot lower cost/settlement time similarly.

Because without regulation, it turns into Monopoly (the board game). Sometimes, competition can be encouraged, but in some cases (broad, shared infrastructure) it cannot and regulation must fill this gap to ensure the target outcome. This is why we regulate electric utilities similarly. Happy to help, I am very interested and curious on this topic.

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