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Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

I really like the points made about the international payments cartel. Something needs to happen to challenge them, as they really are holding back a tonne of potentially viable businesses, a lot of which could seriously change our world for the better. I don't think companies like Stripe are the answer either, as they sort of pander to the cartel.

It's funny that the electronic payment industry is a direct result of innovation, but because of the stranglehold it now has on society, it's begun to limit the potential for new innovation.

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This is the reason people are hopeful of cryptocurrencies which essentially is digital cash.

You would need Wechat for America. I actually think Apple is well placed to do this, but it would go against their hardware-first culture.

If they released iMessage and ApplePay on Android, added a Wechat style P2P payment system, and started cannibalizing the AppStore/Playstore through a WeChat style API I think they could pull it off.

Venmo and Zelle already dominate this market vertical though, if Zelle could get their butt in gear for writing integrations with bank and credit union backends, they coukd easily take a similar place to mobile payments in China. Instant, free bank to bank transfers aare a powerful tool!

We don't need another centralized locked down system to replace the current one. Apples system would be even worse. If I don't own an Apple or Android device I just can't make payments anymore?

My only problem with WeChat is how difficult they make it for foreigners to use unless you have a Chinese bank account.

I had to resort to giving my Chinese friends cash, and then they can send me "red envelopes" to use.

Ideally, I would like to be able to buy top-up cards at convenient stores or even use my credit card to add money to my WeChat account.

Apple already doesn’t like things that are too political or erotic being bought and sold on their App Store. I wonder how well pornography or solicitations for programmers unions would do in there.

>Something needs to happen to challenge them, as they really are holding back a tonne of potentially viable businesse

How do they do this exactly?

If you want to accept credit card payments over the internet for your business, no matter which technical solution you choose, you have to tell someone up the chain what your business model is, and they will review if your business model poses a risk to them with regards to fraud and chargebacks. And every single one of these companies in the entire chain, processors, banks, card issuers, gateways, whatever, are incredibly risk-averse, so they would rather deny your business than allow you to have something that kinda maybe is on the illegal/unethical/questionable/weird side. Or if they plain just not like you for no reason or for fuck you reasons. And there's nothing you can do as a business against that, you are at the mercy of others.

How would a company focusing on those risky people succeed in the market? Conversely, how would a newcomer with competitive rates afford to serve these risky people?

I believe they could single-handedly solve the lack of micropayments on-line; for some reason, they don't seem into it.

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