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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> The thing that killed the momentum then is the same thing that still kills it - card transaction fees.

Well, the US could follow Europe here if it wanted - in 2015 we've been capping CC fees at 0.3% and debit card fees at 0.2% and at the same time capped per-transaction fees at 5 cents [1], and whoops, suddenly the acceptance of cards in Germany exploded. I can pay the 50ct fee for loos on train stations or 1€ for a soda on a vending machine with cards.

The solution to micropayments are not shitcoins, the solution is to squeeze the rent seekers.

[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015...

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As MinorTom pointed out, the final fee in the end still comes at a hefty percentage of the transfer.

> The solution to micropayments are not shitcoins, the solution is to squeeze the rent seekers.

First, "shitcoins" and blockchain-based tech for p2p payments are orthogonal points. You can have cheap transfers without requiring specific tokens.

Second, have you ever considered that the best way to squeeze the rent seekers is precisely be developing a technology that disrupts their business and forces them to lower their margins?

For Americans, they love their loyalty points.

Somehow that has to get paid, and it’s via higher interchange rates.

Youve sorta made the case FOR crypto, though, havent you? No need to squeeze anyone, just side step the old money.

Which crypto? Where?

Crypto is a multi billion dollar market, why hasn't a single solution for micropayments managed to achieve commercial uptake? Everyone would benefit if such a solution existed and was cheaper than Visa/MC.

Crypto having low transaction costs at anything resembling commercial scale TPS seems to be a myth. There's always some giant gaping caveat that goes unmentioned, like "lightning network Bitcoin" or "eth 2.0 with PoS will solve this".

I havent looked, I have no horse in this race. Just parent poster made a strong case to avoid the current banking systems since requiring legislation to keep them in check is a hilarious pipe dream. If crypto can do that, well, there's your use case.

Paypal still charges a 7-fold of that in Europe. Is the european regulation not binding? Or is Paypal somehow evading compliance as they are an 'online' creditcard provider?

PayPal is not a credit card provider, they are a weird hybrid of a bank and a payment gateway and as such not covered by the regulations on interchange fees.

In addition to mschuster91's point, you should know that the cap only applies to four party scheme card transaction interchange, not to scheme fees nor to your acquirer's fees. In reality you will pay somewhere between 0.9% and 2% for your transactions, whereas local schemes can be as cheap as 0.2% or even pennies.

Compared to the US's 1.15%~2.7% +10ct interchange (not including other fees!) it's still quite cheap.

Add on top the "cashback" and "reward" schemes that many American CCs offer. These are paid for by the vendor.

They charge a flat 1.75% of total processing amounts per day. They don't charge a rent on top.

https://www.zettle.com/gb/pricing

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