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Comment by ceedaxp | Hacker News Reader

US consumers are too conservative in the way they expect payments to work—checks are still in circulation and “swipe & sign” has barely been put to rest (has it?). Any system like this would require adoption by a few diverse and large-scale retail institutions to make it worthwhile for consumers to use. Or else it would be a mere alternative to “PayPal me”…

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It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it.

I think for a new payment system to catch on it needs to either have a significant benefit for both payers and merchants, or be pushed by government policy (for example, require all merchants that meet some criteria to accept the new form of payment).

> It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it.

I agree that both parties need a reason to adopt a new payment method... But the reason can't be only that there's a lot of merchants/customers that have it ... If there's benefits for enough participants, reach can drive adoption for those who don't care about the benefits, but you've got to have some material benefits to get people started.

It's got to have a good experience, too.

But from this rant, it seems like they were trying to be a middle man for instant bank payments... I don't see the value of that as a purchaser when I can use a debit card. For the merchant, running a debit card takes a small fee, but anything that needs someone to scan a QR code takes a lot of time.

One way to solve this problem is to have a certain commodity require the new payment method. If AWS for example created a new currency/payment method and made it the sole accepted way to pay for servers it could very quickly catch on as others adopt. Look how “Sign in with Google” became the default.

I’m pretty sure the main reason Apple/Google/Microsoft haven’t done this already is because they would be directly competing with the US government. The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.

> The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.

There’s no larger conspiracy here. It’s that payments is a commodity now, with shrinking margins and high competition. It’s not worth it for most players to even enter the space, let alone compete tooth and nail for a shrinking share of the pie.

No conspiracy? Is that why the US government also tries to prevent other countries like Brazil from internationalizing their payment systems like Pix?

Apple/Google/Amazon/Microsoft could save billions on credit card processing fees by cutting out Visa/Mastercard -- but instead are pressured to accept "special rates" and warned to stay out of the business.

Show me where they’re “warned to stay out of the business”

Surely you must be thinking of mob movies, not the payments space.

There's evidence that Visa and Mastercard tried to prevent Apple from building their own network, including DOJ antitrust complaints in 2024 and a more recent suit in July 2025. The fact that antitrust allegations failed to make it in court despite it being such an obvious antitrust case against the duopoly very much suggests that there is something more going on behind the scenes. This seems like such an easy antitrust case to win, especially when it was used successfully in the Visa vs. Plaid case (another case where a potential competitor was prevented from building an alternative to Visa/Mastercard) - Plaid dropped their plans to build a network after their acquisition was cancelled.

There's no way that I can take such strange goings-ons at face value - Apple only gains by disintermediating Visa and they clearly tried at some point, but something stopped them. What stopped them? Too hard for Apple? They already built the infrastructure for it with Apple Pay and Apple Cash. What stopped them from going all the way? I'm convinced something more powerful stopped them.

See here: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/apple-visa-maste...

There is plenty evidence of shadowy forces shutting down payment systems, just look at Marc Andreessen's public statements about crypto founders he invested in getting debanked.

https://medium.com/@nic__carter/marc-andreessen-and-the-cfpb...

Apple does not only gain by disintermediating Visa. Apple takes a cut on every purchase through Apple Pay (.15%), which is more than Visa's cut (.14%). Apple probably hasn't made a payment network because it would have to either create a settlement network (which is hard even for Apple, and Visa/Mastercard as settlement networks get less of a cut than Apple does without bothering), or Apple would have to buy a bank and become an issuer. Why don't they buy a bank? Maybe Visa / Mastercard scared them away from it. Maybe they don't want to deal with underwriting and return risks and all of that. It does deviate quite far from their core business.

Thanks for the clarification I stand corrected. Still pretty shady what’s done to crypto founders though, but they’re in a shady business already. Blocking Brazils Pix from going global is more egregious.

And other countries don't have chickens and eggs? They didn't use to pay for things in the past in those other jurisdictions that have adopted modern payment systems?

US people feel absolutely fossils payment wise. Of course the US has the best marketing / pr but the state of payments is just depressing compared to even 'regulation blocked' eu.

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