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Comment by khurs | Hacker News Reader

The future is direct payments without middlemen.

So consolidation of these legacy players is not unexpected - their revenue whilst sizeable is going to continually decrease every year as people use cards less (Many countries have/are rolling out their domestic app2app or bank2retailer payment system).

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This makes stripe more valuable. No company on the web wants to manage dozens of local payment methods with slightly different rules and possible local bank account requirements.

Stripe is a much stronger company when they're able to aggregate a large number of small payment networks rather than just relying on Visa/MC.

No worries, lobbyist are working day and night to prevent anything like what Brasil has with PIX ever making it.

What if you are a merchant that needs to sell to O(10) countries? Integrating with each country's domestic payment rail is not feasible.

O(10) = O(1) so you would be fine.

True, but I think their intent was more like N=10.

Stripe is already building itself out to be essentially a global bank, your income stays within there and you can pay vendors directly out of your Stripe balance to theirs.

Stripe still does not support all APMs in all markets - therefore its not a viable solution for all merchants. In addition, its underwriting is notoriously hostile to certain "high-risk" industries

Payment Orchestrators help solve this problem.

source: I work at https://primer.io

FYI - I tried visiting your site. In Chrome (tested in Incognito as well), I get a massive white space at the top, with a vertical scroll. If I scroll far enough, I see the site.

Worked fine in Firefox.

very strange - Ill pass it on to the team managing the landing page.

I tried reproducing and was unable to, both in chrome and safari.

Thanks for the heads up!

I have no problems at all with the website on ffx iphone, but I think they forgot the pricing page ;)

As a consumer what is the incentive to not use a card? In North America, at least, there are points programs that heavily incentivize my usage of credit cards plus other benefits like travel insurance. I also trust in the consumer protections that the major credit cards offer. On the flip side, merchants incur a fee but I doubt that even in a world with all direct payments that they would pass any savings along to the consumer.

I'm seeing more and more 3% credit card surcharges lately. While frustrating, at least they're transparent so I'd expect them to cancel that upcharge.

> I doubt that even in a world with all direct payments that they would pass any savings along to the consumer.

Shouldn't you think that about every way companies save money? And yet they do compete on price.

Many places near me have different cash/card pricing from a % to a flat fee on the transaction. I've used debit cards to pay car repair bills to skip the 3% fee (sizeable on a $2500 repair).

Your incentives are paid by the retailer/vendor, if fees are covered by them. If you're paying that fee, which includes profit for the payment/card processes, you may be losing money using a credit card even with perks like points and cash back.

I used to think the percentage fee is a lot (much less than 3% in UK) until I found out all the buyer protection that I’m getting. Literally one single bad merchant is enough for you to lose more

If another payment service offered the same or better protections by default with a lower or zero fee would you jump ship? Or would your bank at least offer that option?

> The future is direct payments without middlemen.

direct payment can be good, but thats only part of the service.

First, this is not a "card vendors are good" they are a large buisness entity, with their own motivations. Visa/mastercard are outsized and should have proper competition.

THe point of card vendors in the modern era is to provide credit and protection for both consumers and buisnesses.

Credit is provided to allow instant settling of transaction, but it kinda morphs into escrow as well.

But, in the US your level of direct payment options are frankly shite.

In india, direct transfer is free and mostly instant, same in the UK/EU.

THe UK/EU its a bit more unweildy, as you have to know the name, sort and account number of the person you want to pay. however payment is "instant"

The problem is you don't really get fraud or protection. You can pay someone, and if you make a mistake you can phone your bank up and try and get them to reverse it. but there is no guarentee.

In the US, Zelle payments are accepted by most major banks and are free and instant. I'm not sure how it could be better than that.

It would be nice if more smaller banks used it as well, but the US has 5k different banks.

But thats the point right, Zelle is an opt in. Bank transfers are universal and instant.

In the UK you can send someone a Monzo link allowing them to pay directly and instantly into your account.

> But, in the US your level of direct payment options are frankly shite.

This is completely untrue.

> In india, direct transfer is free and mostly instant, same in the UK/EU.

Zelle is an instant payment-by-email network created by the US banks and is accepted basically everywhere.

And there are still other options like FedNow.

Zelle seems more complex in terms of access, slower, and less universal (inside the covered zone) than IBAN based instant bank transfers. Users need to enroll using their phone number and / or an email, when IBAN instant transfer is available by default. They say that transfers "often" happen in minutes, when instant transfer via IBAN happen in a few seconds, always. The FAQ also covers issues enrolling, which means that users are not guaranteed to be enrolled. It’s an out of band process with it seems email or phone number as the ID. It seems the recipient has to enroll beforehand which is another complication (IBAN being the bank number you have the guarantee that your recipient exists and can receive the funds instantly) Zelle feels more like a system added on top, IBAN instant transfer is an extension of the existing bank transfer system, used and found at the same place UI-wise.

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