Thread

1. havaloc · 1790442549 · focus · HN ↗

   I get why the banks are not happy, but I can tell them that I am not going to use Chase Wallet, Bank of America Wallet, Citi Wallet...just pay the fee and be thankful for the reduced payment friction, which they invariably make money from. PS: Nobody is going to use Paze (yet another half baked wallet), other than to collect the free $10 to sign up for it.

   Somewhat related, even Walmart relented and now supports Apple Pay/Contactless. Every big merchant has now relented (Kroger, Home Depot, Walmart).

   1. radialstub · 1790448131 · focus · HN ↗

      This is the government's problem. I tend to be on the side of less government, but it is so obvious that payment facilitation should be a service provided by the government. The government is just allowing corporations to collect rents, because they are lazy and incompetent.

      1. AnthonyMouse · 1790455278 · focus · HN ↗

         This is fundamentally looking at it the wrong way.

         Why do we need my bank to send money to your bank via Visa or the Federal Reserve or any such thing, instead of having my bank send money directly to your bank? All they need to do is both support the same openly specified protocol for transferring money.

         1. owebmaster · 1790464516 · focus · HN ↗

            That's what Brazilian pix does and the reason visa/Mastercard and the US government want to kill it

            1. hdgvhicv · 1790472573 · focus · HN ↗

               Most counties have such a system, many are more advanced than visa etc (seemless customer-customer payments too for example.

               From NETs in singapore to girocard in Germany, Alipay to UPI.

               1. ValentineC · 1790520150 · focus · HN ↗

                  > From NETs in singapore to girocard in Germany, Alipay to UPI.

                  Singaporean here. NETS is a shitshow of a dinosaur trying to stay relevant. They started as more of a debit card system like EFTPOS [1], but now lean more into merchant acceptance for both credit cards and QR codes. (Singapore is huge about credit card rewards, so few people want to use a debit card with PIN entry and no rewards these days.)

                  I think the problem with them, and many companies that focus solely on a tiny market like Singapore, is that their organisations tend to be full of comfortable dinosaurs that don't stay up to date with financial software engineering practices (I've lost money from government site transactions that were a hassle to get back), and there's a captive market because of their duopoly.

                  The biggest reasons they still exist are because they're a joint venture between the big 3 local banks, and our government likes their initiatives to have some competition to emulate a free market.

                  Pix, from its Wikipedia page, sounds like a bank account aliasing system, just like PayNow in Singapore.

                  [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;EFTPOS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;EFTPOS

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.