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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

Is it too much to ask for regulations for payment transactions to step in, at least in EU? I know we're not too regulation-friendly here, and I haven't made up my mind yet, but I tend to think it's only consequential that digital payment transactions are considered a field where governments should exercise authority, on similar grounds that give (or doesn't give) government authority over establishing a currency in the first place.

Note this isn't a snark at paypal specifically. I'm just interested if anyone with an economic background has an opinion to share.

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The EU has a lot of law about digital payments. In September this year, a new provision will come into force in the entire EEA that requires digital payments to be made with two-factor authentication, for example. I don't know whether or how that affects PayPal though.

Ugh, I'm really going to need virtual phone numbers for all these "second factors" (i.e. linkable identifiers), I'm just not sure where to get them. Twilio requires a credit card, and most other businesses that offer this look super shady.

There's no requirement it be SMS. Card payments in Sweden are already able to comply with this just by having a phone app for authentication.

I won't install an app on my phone. It probably won't work without Evilcorp Play Framework, it probably won't work with root, and even if neither of those are an issue, I still don't trust my device enough (I won't install banking, password managing, or pgp apps on there, it's too much of a play thing for that). My trusted things are computer-based, not a mobile device that goes everywhere and that I want to be able to use without having to unlock the screen with a complicated password every time.

So it'll probably be SMS, and otherwise they can ship me a second factor -- as the Rabobank already does for as long as I know: they basically send you a payment terminal that creates 0 cent transactions on your card, if I understand it correctly. While a bit annoying, it is safe and not too inconvenient.

That's great news. I hope it will finally result in international support for more secure internet payment. I can do so domestically, but as soon as a transaction is international, credit cards is basically the only thing that's accepted.

Given the expansion of "Faster Payments" and "open banking" (banks must support APIs!), I wouldn't be surprised to see the EU try to mandate a bank-to-bank ""federated"" payment system. Norway already has Vipps everywhere, although that's more like Venmo than Paypal.

We have Interac[1] in Canada and it works quite well.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac

Interac "works" but has many pitfalls. Some examples:

- Inability to issue refunds

- Lack of 2 factor authentication

- Non-unique payment addresses (receiving emails are not bound to one account or even one person)

Those are fairly small pitfalls. You can send money back without a refund button. Authentication is done through your bank, if your bank has 2FA, then you have 2FA for Interact. Not sure what you are referring to about the payment address, but declaring the email the unique ID seems to be a decent solution for me.

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