Comment by pjg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjg | Hacker News Reader

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There is another reason. This is very specific to the way USA does things. It has to do with the role of the government vs. market. Other countries also had an antiquated payments infrastructure e.g. Cheques in Britian, Scandinavian countries etc. The government there simply mandated the dozen or so banks to come up with an instant/real-time payment system and it was rolled out in a few years

US has more than 10,000 banks and credit unions. That combined with the fact that US the most "market driven" of the industrialized countries it has take a backseat approach of letting the "market" solve it

There have been attempts by the "market" e.g. wallets and lately "push to card" by VISA/MC and RTP by the The Clearing House but it has realized that the Federal Government needs to come up with a standard settlement network with specifications and a protocol that "market" i.e. private companies can build upon.

Given the timeline i.e. 2023-2024, it may be a little late since apps and companies building on top of P2C (Push to Card) and RTP (Real-time Payments ) are likely to corner substantial portion of faster 24x365 payments before FedNow is ready.

And don't forget even if it's ready on time it'll take another 2-4 years for all the Financial Institutions to connect to it

The same day and instant payment systems in Sweden were initiated and are owned jointly by major banks, and were not government-initiated. Specifically the Swish mobile payments started with a very small number of banks and it has been a race for other banks to join to stay competitive.

The main digital ID system was also made and is owned by the banks. The government just set legal standards for digital ID to fulfill to be legally valid, there were a few competitors (including one by a phone company), and the bank system won because everyone already had strong digital ID for internet banking.

The EU-wide international systems, however, have been pushed from above from the EU

I wonder if there are a lot of studies of the market "fighting back" progress. Everything about the free market is predicated on informed customer decisions, and if you, as a company, can gaslight consumers effectively through propaganda (let alone lobbying...), then you've basically broken the invisible hand.

Have there been studies about this? I'm pretty sure Adam Smith predates mass advertising, branding, modern marketing.

It’s even less nefarious than that.

To put it simply, humans are creatures of habit. In a vacuum devoid of propaganda, we will still continue to repeat the habits we have developed.

Facebook or google don’t need to do any advertising to keep their audience on the platform. That pesky “g-o” you impulsively type into the address bar will do it for them!

The only saving grace for humanity is that people die, and not all of their habits get passed to the next generation.

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