In India there is UPI (Unified Payment Interface), which works with all bank accounts, it's facilitated by the Government and it comes with
i. QR Code (Used with strangers and at Merchants)
ii. UPI ID
iii.And links to phone number.
Anyone can pay to anyone instantly free of Charge. Only limit is it's limited to ~ $1000 payment. The QR code can also be dynamically created by POS terminals containing the total bill amount as well, so upon scanning the amount is auto populated in the payment app, you just have to enter the security pin.
And since it's a Govt. Project, its not limited to just one app, there are lots and lots of apps working on the same system. There is even a VISA/Mastercard credit alternative : RuPay that works within the system.
0x5FC3 33 minutes ago [-]
Its limited to about $1000 a day.
The QR is a URI with the ID, amount and maybe other stuff. It's a client-side implementation.
ralferoo 1 hours ago [-]
Wechat pay in China is interesting. It costs nothing to add money to your balance from your bank, or to pay someone from your balance. It only costs the end merchant who wants to withdraw it from their balance back into their bank. If they can keep it in Wechat pay and spend it on other things (which is very easy as it and Alipay are the primary payment methods for everything), then there's no charge.
I guess Tencent are making their profit from the interest they earn on the money that was transferred into them that just stays in people's Wechat wallets in effectively a parallel currency.
mitthrowaway2 26 minutes ago [-]
Well, that definitely creates a powerful pull from customers to make vendors accept Wechatpay for transactions.
mihaelm 59 minutes ago [-]
And no doubt they’ll find a way to spend it in the app considering you can manage almost all aspects of your life within it.
Revolut works similarly. You don’t pay any fees on transfers to other Revolut accounts, but you do for other bank accounts.
johneth 26 minutes ago [-]
> Revolut works similarly. You don’t pay any fees on transfers to other Revolut accounts, but you do for other bank accounts.
Does it? I'd be surprised if it does in the UK at least, as all banks do free transfers to every other bank in the UK via Faster Payments. I thought it was the same in the EU?
konschubert 1 hours ago [-]
In the EU, we now have instant, free SEPA bank transfers.
I know that the banks are trying to build a payment solution on top of this technology but it's not really getting traction.
I am wondering if there is a way to bootstrap something bottom-up by offering something to merchants that has a clear value prop.
carlosjobim 4 minutes ago [-]
You're putting the cart in front of the mule. The important thing is not what merchants want, but what customers want.
mrweasel 20 minutes ago [-]
Probably not worth it, given that the EU caps the credit card fees at 0.3%, 0.2% for debit cards.
HoldOnAMinute 43 minutes ago [-]
There is always opportunity in FinTech.
How did Venmo and Cash app get any traction? After all, we already had PayPal. There was already a way to transfer money to your friends.
How did Robinhood get any traction? We already had Etrade and other online brokers.
yobbo 10 minutes ago [-]
Usually by giving away free money to reach critical mass.
touwer 1 hours ago [-]
It's time for Europe to process the own money. Strange that the dominance of Visa/Mastercard/Maestro was left for so long. Of course there is a lobby from them to attack the digital Euro
ezfe 2 hours ago [-]
4% seems high. Quick googling in the US (which has high rates) shows 1.5-3.5%, avg of 2%
MengerSponge 2 hours ago [-]
There are a few cards that offer 2% cash back with no annual fee. No chance their fee is 1.5-2%
wccrawford 44 minutes ago [-]
Cards don't make money from their fees. They make money from people who fail to pay and then pay the ridiculous interest.
apparent 30 minutes ago [-]
Do people who pay ridiculous interest qualify for 2% cards? Honest question; I don't carry a balance so have no idea what is advertised at other types of consumers.
SoftTalker 16 minutes ago [-]
Why not? I'd gladly pay you 2% of $1,000 if you pay me 21%
apparent 12 minutes ago [-]
I was just under the impression that the cards with the best benefits were somewhat harder to get. I do understand that credit card companies make money on interest and late fees, so they should find consumers to be attractive so long as they ultimately pay the bill/interest.
I guess the question is whether they can distinguish between people who are going to carry a balance but ultimately pay and people who are a true default/bankruptcy risk.
bumby 29 minutes ago [-]
Interchange fees seem to be a sizable portion of revenue. Discover has listed them as 29% of revenue, BoA at ~$10B annually…
Groxx 2 hours ago [-]
You might be surprised to hear that my small business sometimes sees fees at 11%.
We blocked that card processor, obviously. But the % is very much not constant across e.g. Visa, often every purchase in a day is slightly different, and we can't even tell people what the rate is for their purchase due to a couple layers in between (still figuring out if we can fix that). It's vile, and probably should be illegal to not pass through the cost visibly.
ezfe 1 hours ago [-]
Stripe is 2.9%+30¢ right, and that’s the advertised rate. So I assume any business seeing averages higher than that can be avoided by using a platform like Stripe.
Finnucane 54 minutes ago [-]
One factor that the author glosses over a bit is that highest swipe fees are for credit cards with benefits. The interbank system he describes is a debit system, no credit is being extended. Even in the US, debit swipe fees tend to be less.
1 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 20:58:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Anyone can pay to anyone instantly free of Charge. Only limit is it's limited to ~ $1000 payment. The QR code can also be dynamically created by POS terminals containing the total bill amount as well, so upon scanning the amount is auto populated in the payment app, you just have to enter the security pin.
And since it's a Govt. Project, its not limited to just one app, there are lots and lots of apps working on the same system. There is even a VISA/Mastercard credit alternative : RuPay that works within the system.
The QR is a URI with the ID, amount and maybe other stuff. It's a client-side implementation.
I guess Tencent are making their profit from the interest they earn on the money that was transferred into them that just stays in people's Wechat wallets in effectively a parallel currency.
Revolut works similarly. You don’t pay any fees on transfers to other Revolut accounts, but you do for other bank accounts.
Does it? I'd be surprised if it does in the UK at least, as all banks do free transfers to every other bank in the UK via Faster Payments. I thought it was the same in the EU?
I know that the banks are trying to build a payment solution on top of this technology but it's not really getting traction.
I am wondering if there is a way to bootstrap something bottom-up by offering something to merchants that has a clear value prop.
How did Venmo and Cash app get any traction? After all, we already had PayPal. There was already a way to transfer money to your friends.
How did Robinhood get any traction? We already had Etrade and other online brokers.
I guess the question is whether they can distinguish between people who are going to carry a balance but ultimately pay and people who are a true default/bankruptcy risk.
We blocked that card processor, obviously. But the % is very much not constant across e.g. Visa, often every purchase in a day is slightly different, and we can't even tell people what the rate is for their purchase due to a couple layers in between (still figuring out if we can fix that). It's vile, and probably should be illegal to not pass through the cost visibly.