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Comment by nebezb | Hacker News Reader

> Moving the money is the easy part and is not the main set of problems that the card payment schemes have solved.

Nailed it. Anyone can move money.

As a consumer, I always opt to pay for credit card where available. The safeties provided to me facilitated by everyone in the network – from issuer to acquirer and everyone in between – is exactly why. I don't want to consider waiting 12 months in line at small claims to get back $200 sent over Interac for services that were never provided by a shoddy business owner.

The cost of those consumer safeties and convenience is incurred by the merchant. This is the cost of business.

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> The cost of those consumer safeties and convenience is incurred by the merchant. This is the cost of business.

That cost is a minimum of 100% passed on to the consumer.

When you buy something from Amazon, who protects your purchases, Amazon or the credit card company?

This "insurance" could be offloaded to a neutral third party that isn't controlled by the credit cards. Often, you purchase additional protection insurance on your big ticket items. This could easily be extended to cover whatever credit cards would have been relied upon in the past.

> This "insurance" could be offloaded to a neutral third party that isn't controlled by the credit cards.

I had not considered this. My first thought is how technically and operationally complex it would be for an insurer to underwrite these transactions "on-the-fly" from merchants they don't know, but it is probably a great idea.

Look up “chargeback guarantee”. A lot of fraud vendors do this. Costs 2x or more though than the average transaction

> Costs 2x or more though than the average transaction

That's because they compete with credit card companies today. Make them more popular and I bet their costs would come down.

You’re describing insurance on the merchants side. The post I was referring to described insurance on the consumer side.

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