Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#271

Post by rprend » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:19 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #43

rprend wrote: post #30

Speaking as someone who tried (and failed) to build a competitor, merchants don’t actually care about the fees. We built a mobile payment system using bank transfer rails (ACH debits and FedNow credits) for ecom platforms. QR payments, just like AliPay, but for the US. We studied past failures at this same idea, and targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury), because the fees are a bigger problem, and…

Not being the #1 priority is very different than not caring at all. It may feel that way when trying to sell the alternative, but the merchant would still disagree at the end of the day. The alternative to new competition (which would probably also raise its rates as soon as it became popular enough) is regulation on the fees, as seen in Europe. This makes some sense as the problem is less with the capabilities of th…

The merchant would disagree, but the merchant is lying to themselves, haha. The tough lesson i had to learn was people’s stated preferences often don’t match their revealed preferences. I really wanted it to be true so i gave them a ton of benefit of the doubt, but still lukewarm response.

Regulation on interchange worked in Europe. The other option is government mandated support for bank transfer rails. That’s how UPI in India and Pix in Brazil took off- they were mandatory.

The US has FedNow, but it’s push only (not user facing, too high friction for checkout). RfPs are there but still low adoption.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#272

Post by rprend » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

righthand wrote: post #210

rprend wrote: post #30

Speaking as someone who tried (and failed) to build a competitor, merchants don’t actually care about the fees. We built a mobile payment system using bank transfer rails (ACH debits and FedNow credits) for ecom platforms. QR payments, just like AliPay, but for the US. We studied past failures at this same idea, and targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury), because the fees are a bigger problem, and…

Do you think a FOSS version of this would be possible? Or is the infra too complex or require working with regulator bodies? I have been thinking how to empower individuals to collect payments without relying on Visa, Mastercard or Venmo necessarily and putting a pretty wrapper around ACH sounds nice.

I’ll talk to my cofounder about open sourcing.

In payments, though, the code isn’t the hard part. The hard part is the licensing/regulation and most of all the risk analysis. You need a partnership with someone with an MTL to move money; you need anti money laundering policies and sanctions screenings and to do KYB checks. These days that’s not that hard because there’s vendors for all that, but it’ll cost you low five figures and you need to go through an enterprise sales deals that take a month or two.

Even with all of that, you’ll probably still lose tens of thousands to Russian fraudsters who present as a perfectly legitimate American business.

Payments is a tough business

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#273

Post by rprend » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:26 PM UTC

BizarroLand wrote: post #51

rprend wrote: post #30

Speaking as someone who tried (and failed) to build a competitor, merchants don’t actually care about the fees. We built a mobile payment system using bank transfer rails (ACH debits and FedNow credits) for ecom platforms. QR payments, just like AliPay, but for the US. We studied past failures at this same idea, and targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury), because the fees are a bigger problem, and…

I think the other issue is that "crypto" is not "money". There is no card I can carry that I can take to an ATM and convert crypto to money knowing before I left my house that day exactly how much I would get down to the penny. Crypto has value the way Gold or pawnable items do, and until that barrier has been crossed the people will never embrace crypto as an alternative to cash and credit. Realistically the only wa…

Stablecoins do seem to address all these concerns. USD backed, and I believe Visa/Mastercard are adding stablecoin support so that there will soon be stablecoin debit cards.

Our thesis on crypto was that American consumers will never pivot to a foreign currency to do retail purchases. That’s just too much friction. It’s possible we get proven wrong, though

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#274

Post by rprend » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #77

rprend wrote: post #30

Speaking as someone who tried (and failed) to build a competitor, merchants don’t actually care about the fees. We built a mobile payment system using bank transfer rails (ACH debits and FedNow credits) for ecom platforms. QR payments, just like AliPay, but for the US. We studied past failures at this same idea, and targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury), because the fees are a bigger problem, and…

AliPay, WeChat Pay, and PayPay succeed because they don’t target this market at all — they target cashed based transactions and provide cash-equivalents. The whole reason why people use them in Asia is because people could use cash but it’s inconvenient to collect and store. These are far and above lower value transactions where fees are important but not as important as simply existing. I think QR payments can exist…

Ya we looked in to the wallet fund model and while it solves fraud concerns, it introduces new frictions (funding the wallet) that makes growth tough.

Cashapp pay is leading in this department, and since they own the POS terminal Square they’ve actually been able to implement QR payments in some SMBs. They get terrible adoption, though

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#275

Post by dakial1 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #215

mzitelli wrote: post #17

Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…

I'm not a big fan of crypto but I've always wondered why the US wouldn't want to create a highly secure private coin that's pegged to the dollar. I mean you put a very small transaction fee on it (can be far less than Visa's 2%) and you're suddenly generating revenue from tons of global transactions, benefiting from the status of the dollar being the global currency. You even get to "tax" illegal transactions, and as…

Because highly secure coin wouldn't allow the government to track money.

I firmly believe that the Federal Agencies do not fight bitcoin exactly because it is so easily tracked.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#276

Post by curiousguy » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #103

mzitelli wrote: post #17

Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks. Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US. Actions like that may show the current direction of the US governme…

Can anyone please steel man the opposition argument for Pix?

Minor annoyance, but just a few limitations and restrictions, after all you need a smartphone and internet connection.

So.. when paying in a store, you need to open your banking app in your smartphone, and if you’re in an area with bad cellular connection (inside a few buildings or in a countryside), you need to connect to the store wifi. Only then you can scan the store QR code and make the payment.

So a single payment can easily take a few minutes, as opposed to a contactless card payment which takes a few seconds.

My main issue with pix is the even more reliance on a smartphone for our day to day life.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#277

Post by throwaway328 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #45

throwaway328 wrote: post #38

Reading Barrett Brown's "My Glorious Defeats" at the moment, being reminded of that time Anonymous went after Visa, Mastercard, and others, in retaliation for them blocking payments to Wikileaks. An action the payment companies took extrajudicially at the behest of the US government because the US gov was't happy with Wikileaks. Wikileaks' crime was that they'd been very successful at getting true information to the…

Very many of us are quite critical of all authoritarianism, and don't feel like we've been represented by any presidential administration for our entire lives. Centrist liberalism isn't flashy or popular, though, and it doesn't spawn many angry rallying cries or outrage that goes viral, so you'd think that we don't exist. The current flavor of authoritarianism is quite bad, though, and does distastefully wear its hyp…

If "centrist liberal" means being critical of all authoritarianism, from Obama to Trump, where would the democrats lie in this political balance?

I ask sincerely here. That would be a centre which would be ten miles left of where the centre seems to be, from where I'm sitting. Curious to know how you view the political spectrum to arrive at this framework.

For example, Macron might be a good example. How would you classify his politics, based on the above framing?

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#278

Post by mzitelli » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

dakiol wrote: post #203

pqs wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain we have Bizum. You can send money to any phone number. It's instand and, as I understand, it works on top of SEPA.

Never understood why it’s tied to a phone number. I don’t like to leak mine just for silly payments.

Pix resolved this by allowing email, phone number, tax ID or random generated key as an identifier.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#279

Post by throwaway328 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 1:46 PM UTC

hn_acc1 wrote: post #115

throwaway328 wrote: post #38

Reading Barrett Brown's "My Glorious Defeats" at the moment, being reminded of that time Anonymous went after Visa, Mastercard, and others, in retaliation for them blocking payments to Wikileaks. An action the payment companies took extrajudicially at the behest of the US government because the US gov was't happy with Wikileaks. Wikileaks' crime was that they'd been very successful at getting true information to the…

Blocking payments to wikileaks is on a totally different level than deporting citizens to random countries because they said something mean about you.

I agree, the deporting of citizens is much worse in real terms.

They're both fundamentally anti-democratic, is what I meant. In both cases, the political / business class controlling the state is utilising private and public institutions to further their aims, with little to no care for law, morality, or even common decency.

Re: Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)

#280

Post by yawaramin » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

notpushkin wrote: post #164

thimabi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got in this thread with the expectation of seeing a comment like yours, so thank you for that. I think what worries the U.S. more is the likelihood of Pix spreading around the world. It’s such a great public program that I believe many countries will eventually adopt it, or adopt some version of it. In fact, AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia. Consumers like it because it is widely availa…

> AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia. Also Vietnam (Napas247), Singapore (PayNow), Philippines (QR Ph), Japan (lots different systems), China (WeChat/Alipay, I think?), Russia (SBP), Belarus (ERIP, in a sense), and the whole of EU (SEPA transfers). One problem is, most of them don’t really work for you if you’re a foreigner. Moreta (YC S24) is doing something in SEA, and I’ve seen another s…

India has UPI (Universal Payment Interface) for instant free transfers. They are working with Singapore to integrate their payment systems so that people will be able to send remittances instantly across the countries.