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. SkiFire13 · 1790494336 · focus · HN ↗

            See &quot;What do Visa and Mastercard do?&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49614280">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49614280

            It&#x27;s not something irreplaceable but it&#x27;s not trivial either.

            1. AnthonyMouse · 1790530019 · focus · HN ↗

               The &quot;network&quot; part of what they do could straightforwardly be done in a decentralized way using ordinary DNS (for the parties to discover the servers of the others) and TLS. When your card issuer is Example Bank then your &quot;card number&quot; would be 123@example.com and the merchant or their bank knows to contact the servers at example.com to initiate a transaction for that card.

               It seems like the primary thing they actually do is currency conversion, which a) isn&#x27;t strictly required (e.g. plenty of small US merchants might hardly notice if they only accepted payment in US dollars), and b) could just as easily be transparently provided as an optional service by either of the card issuing bank or the merchant bank for cardholders or merchants who expect a non-trivial number of foreign currency transactions.

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