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treadmill·

Wild idea: What if secure digital payment was a public service.

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No thank you. This is how you get something like UPI in India.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36980279

FedNow:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/othe...

Unfortunately not many banks support it yet.

I think "secure" is the key part that's missing here. There's no incentive for a consumer to use a payment method such as this when paying with a bank. The reason is that credit cards come with consumer protection that this just doesn't offer.

I don't think customer protection is necessary unless you are dealing with unusually small or shady companies. I live in Germany and do not own a credit card, they are uncommon here. Mostly we pay per bank transfer or debit card. Even with the possibility of fraud, this is probably significantly cheaper in expectation than paying a 2% credit card fee each time just to have the possibility of chargeback.

Have you ever considered that what’s keeping most companies proactively honest and consumer-friendly are consumer protection laws and regulations?

Have you ever considered that those don't require credit card chargebacks?

Of course not, but you made a different point in the comment I was replying to:

> I don't think customer protection is necessary [...]

Chargebacks are only one possible consumer recourse mechanism specific to payment cards. There's other means to keep merchants honest.

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