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Comment by klez | Hacker News Reader

From TFA

> The draft legislation, “Keep Big Tech Out Of Finance Act,” describes a large technology firm as a company mainly offering an online platform service with at least $25 billion in annual revenue.

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Don't banks themselves offer an "online platform service" - i.e. online banking, trading, etc?

arguably not 'mainly' though

Etrade? Ameritrade? Robinhood?

Etrade and Amertirade are registered financial institutions.

Robinhood is reselling financial services from another registered financial institution.

Can Apple be seen as a tech company by that definition?

This legislation is clearly aimed at Apple. Today Apple Pay and a Goldman Sachs credit service. Tomorrow a credit card offering if their own to compete with other Eurocard/Visa/MasterCard services.

There’s a lot of money on the line.

> This legislation is clearly aimed at Apple.

Really? Because I was under the impression that they're more worried about companies minting "currency".

I guess it’s a bit hard to accurately target the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

It seems to be clearly aimed at Facebook.

Facebook is only establishing an alternative currency, which major banks will be participating in if it gets off the ground.

Libra is not a threat as long as Facebook plays well with regulators and various nations’ tax offices. In addition, Libra will be run by a spin-off company, not directly by Facebook.

Apple is potentially going to cut EMV out of the loop.

Like Paypal?

PayPal’s revenue is ~$15B, but your point is sound.

Or any large member of the ACH network.

It's weird though, because something like ACH desperately needs to be replaced. It's slow, and compared to whatever they have in the EU, it's slow and embarrassing. Not saying it needs to be blockchain (I'd prefer it isn't), but taking lessons from it would be beneficial. In the past ~30 years, the American business ecosystem cares less and less about standards and more about pushing their own standards/formats and not giving a fuck about interoperability.

Same day ACH is available if you have a bank that supports it. My small credit union has same day (and free) ACH if I get it in by noon.

The new EU SEPA system launched in 2017 has 10-second settlement and it's available 24/7.

You're not going to compete with Venmo, PayPal and Libra with "same day if I get it in by noon"

Zelle has instant settlement for banks that use it, including two of the three banks I use.

ACH goes through the FED before it is processed by the receiving bank. Is SEPA sent to the ECB before clearing?

I’ve worked in Fintech for 6+ years. Banks are dinosaurs and the US banks are terrible at adopting new processes/tech.

In the US we are in a standard war with ACH, Zelle, and other payment schemes fighting for market share.

Paypal's revenue is more around 15B currently. So, not yet.

There isn't a definition provided for platform utility in this bills text, but the first mention I saw of the "platform utilities" term was from Warren, which was referring to select category of companies with this definition:

  Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or 
  more and that offer to the public an online marketplace, an 
  exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties would be 
  designated as "platform utilities."

It looks like PayPal is at around 13B in yearly revenue so they would 100% not be included for revenue bar alone, but not completely sure how I would read if they fit into the category based on the rest of the definition.

A limit of $25 billion in global revenue? This reads like legislation drafted by large banks to secure their moat against newcomers with enough heft to actually make a dent in their market share. I don’t think this will facilitate competition or protect the consumer in any meaningful way.

$25B is the point that Warren has been targeting for a few months now, not just for banking-related services. She says that at $25B, the company is sufficiently large that they control a significant portion of whatever industry they are as well as the economy and people's lives. The goal is to target companies with too much influence and reign them in with regulations and/or breakup. Again, this number is being used for any industry, not just banking and tech (though tech does seem to be the focus at the moment).

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