

We're doing for payments what MP3s did for CDs - wgx
http://willgrant.org/were-doing-for-payments-what-mp3-did-for-cds/

======
gabemart
I hope I'm not being overly pedantic, but:

>If you think of the internet as just a series of pipes; then it’s what you
push down those pipes that matters.

That should be a comma, not a semicolon. Semicolons are used for separating
related independent clauses.

I know it doesn't really matter, but when it's the first sentence it really
stands out.

~~~
kayloos
You might not be overly pedantic, but you are wrong.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon#Usage>

Nevertheless, I also do not take kindly to semicolon usage, because it's so
vague. But that does not mean I can claim that it's wrong, without being wrong
myself.

~~~
gabemart
I'm not sure how that link supports your assertion I'm wrong. Can you be a
little more specific?

~~~
kayloos
_Between independent clauses linked with a transitional phrase or a
conjunctive adverb: Everyone knows he is guilty of committing the crime; of
course, it will never be proven. ... This is the least common use, and is
mostly confined to academic texts._

In your example, "then" is the conjunctive adverb.

Edit: By the way, I love having grammar discussions on the internet. Let's
make a grammar discussion club, so we can really go at it, and maybe try and
keep the grammatic national socialism out of hackernews.

~~~
lutusp
> and maybe try and keep the grammatic national socialism out of hackernews.

Well played -- by way of elaboration, a deft avoidance of Godwin's Law.

~~~
kayloos
That is an amazing law.

------
ccarpenterg
Recently I've been playing with Stripe to put a payment form (url) into a QR
code. So the cashier prints the receipt, the user scans the QR code and pays
using the form on her iPhone/Android.

But why would merchants or users prefer this solution? why not just use the
credit card? Perhaps these kinds of ideas are what pg calls made-up startup
ideas.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Most of the world's consumers don't own a credit card.

Admittedly, this startup is based in the UK, where most consumers have several
credit cards.

[http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-cards-
aro...](http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-cards-around-the-
world-1276.php)

------
jasonlingx
Fraud prevention will never be free. Neither will payments.

~~~
netcan
Accepting cash is free. With cash fraud prevention is unnecessary.

~~~
Uchikoma
I beg you pardon, but a large segment of internet fraud is: You pay me for a
laptop, I send you a brick.

This does not depend on a payment method, the problem is the time delay
between sending money and sending the goods - especially goods delivery not
being instantaneous. So without an escrow service there will be this kind of
fraud, and someone will want his money back.

[edit] And people will not only send to friends if you are successful.

~~~
netcan
Thats probably a relatively small part, but influential as it scares people
away from paying for things online.

The larger segments are (1)I pay you for a laptop with a stolen credit card.
You send me the laptop. The credit card company takes the money back off you.
and (2) I pay you for a laptop with a stolen credit card. You send me the
laptop. I say you sent me a brick. The credit card company takes the money
back off you.

------
delinka
Someone please explain to me how this "holding people's cash lets you earn
interest" bit.

In traditional banking, you put money into savings and get a low return
interest rate, or you commit to leave your deposit for a longer term to get a
higher rate of return (Certificate of Deposit or "CD.") The reason this works
is that the bank can now leverage your deposit with the Federal Reserve to
borrow money to loan to others. So they take the interest the Fed charges, add
some percentage to compensate depositors, add more to make a profit, and
charge the consumer borrower a certain interest rate.

 _Some_ banks offer interest on their draft accounts (usually called
"checking" accounts) but not many. And lots still charge a monthly fee for the
privilege of keeping your money with then if your balance falls under a
certain percentage.

So are you people saying this company is in the loan business? Or that their
bank is providing them with an interest-bearing account for operating their
business within? In the latter case, the margin would be so thin as to me non-
existant.

~~~
josteink
_Some banks offer interest on their draft accounts (usually called "checking"
accounts) but not many_

Not debating the rest of your post, but in lots of European countries you will
find the exact opposite. That is, almost noone provides zero-interest
accounts. Because those who didn't give interests, even on checking-accounts,
quickly found themselves losing most of their customers. Basically markets and
competition in action as they should work.

So don't be too eager to extrapolate the (reasonably backwards,
technologically under-developed and un-modern) US banking industry to a global
de-facto statement. It usually doesn't hold ;)

I mean... You guys still use _cheques_. What's up with that?

~~~
NateDad
Only old people use checks, or when you need to send money through the mail
(which is almost never). It can be handy to be able to give someone an amount
of money that isn't limited by the amount of cash you have on hand, and
without requiring them to have anything more complicated than a bank account
to receive the money (and even that is optional if you use a check cashing
service).

Which is not to say that the US banking industry isn't backwards and bizarre.

------
aes256
Minor criticism, but I think the 'military-grade security' section on the
homepage could be doing more harm than good.

By all means tout the security benefits of the encryption you use, but I don't
think the other two points (vetted personal and different bank accounts for
internal/customer use) are really necessary from a customer perspective.

I don't think I would have considered either of those as potential security
risks before reading them on your homepage. Reading them plants seeds of doubt
in my mind; Why do they vet personnel? Because they have access to my payment
details? What if the vetting isn't good enough? Why do they point out they
have separate bank accounts; are they planning on going under?

The measures that you have taken re: those two points should be taken as given
for any established payments processing business.

------
damian2000
From the support page (<https://dropletpay.com/support/>) ...

"What happens if I want to take my money back out?

To take your money out of Droplet to your personal bank account you need to
have Direct Debit enabled. This is a feature that’s coming soon, so during
Beta you’ll need to contact us and we’ll send you the funds by bank transfer
within five working days."

In other words the only way right now to take your money out is via a wire
transfer? ... along with the possibly hefty bank charges associated with it.

~~~
wgx
No, there are no charges to the user to get their money back out - the service
is totally fee-free to users.

~~~
damian2000
It sounds like a good service then, so good that there must be a catch. ;-)

~~~
RobAley
bank transfers in the UK (to/from other UK bank accounts) are usually either
very cheap or free, even for businesses. And as it appears to be only a
temporary measure then its probably minimal cost to keep the odd customer
happy.

------
koide
It would be a nice thing if you had an external team of security experts
validate your protocol.

We've seen too many start ups hacking away MVPs before even thinking about
security. It all crumbles down when somebody takes an interest.

Just mentioning TLS/SSL on the FAQ does not make your system secure. And it's
better to know now if what you've done is the best you can do, not when you
have hundreds of thousands of users.

~~~
sravfeyn
I completely agree with this. The site is not even returning a proper 404 for
ill-formatted urls such as <https://dropletpay.com/jsds>. Instead it's giving
a plain 500 error!

~~~
celticninja
plane = aeroplane plain = ordinary

~~~
sravfeyn
Thanks!!

------
spo81rty
Check out Dwolla. You can use their service to send money for free under $10
for free or $0.25 for more than $10. They have been around for 3 years now and
have quite a bit of traction with what they are doing.

<https://www.dwolla.com/>

------
easytiger
This is really starting to get to me.

The platform of this as iOS app based only is beyond retarded. You should be
selling the service platform you create. Limiting an interaction to just an
App is as stupid as those messaging systems that don't have a web front end
component.

~~~
damian2000
I think it makes sense for them since they are still in Beta with less than
1000 users if I read correctly. But yeah, a web app would be useful.

------
NateDad
No android app at launch is dumb. You're losing half your potential
audience.... and honestly, that's the half that's more likely to _use_
alternative payment schemes. Even Paypal is too new for a lot of my iPhone
wielding aunts and uncles.

------
zby
They state:

Droplet is the first app of its kind that lets you send payments completely
outside of the traditional banking and credit card systems. It’s a bit like
cash – but digital and mobile. You don’t need to connect your phone to your
bank account to use Droplet. Instead you just top up your account via your
phone, a bit like you’d draw money out of a cash point.
<https://dropletpay.com/about/>

What does that mean? Is that a new implementation of chaumian e-cash?

~~~
netcan
I think it's pretty self explanatory.

Instead of an account with a credit card company, you have an account with
droplet.

~~~
delinka
"Instead you just top up your account via your phone..."

What's self-explanatory about that? Are they billing my carrier so the charge
shows up on my bill? Are they drawing directly from my bank account? Do they
charge my credit card?

------
namdnay
I wish all these startups didn't go so overboard on the hyperbole. "Military-
grade security": What does that even mean? Which military protocols exactly
are you following? What level of military vetting do your personnel have?
Which certifications have you received?

~~~
EliRivers
It means that vast numbers of people around the world will have unsupervised
access to it and if you wait a few weeks someone will post it all to
Wikileaks.

------
Cherian_Abraham
Issue with disrupting existing payment modalities is that you need scale,
which is really hard to do when you are a startup and there is not much
differentiating you from the rest.

Ubiquity trumps novelty. Every single time.

~~~
rythie
Which is of course a catch-22, though people like Facebook and Foursquare
solved this by launching in small geographic areas first to get ubiquitus in
those areas.

Oh look, Droplet is targetting Birmingham UK, first - looks like they know
this.

------
lwhi
The switch from CDs to MP3s greatly reduced the profitability of the music
market.

If this company is intending to do the same for payments, perhaps we should
all expect to be paid nothing?

~~~
jmilloy
No, only companies in the payments business should expect to be making less,
not the people being paid.

~~~
lwhi
I understand, but I think the comparison isn't really as useful as it wants to
be when it's linked to a commercial venture.

------
sravfeyn
Putting aside the feasibility of such an idea at a global scale, the clarity
with which the idea is described in such a minimalistic scheme is awesome.

------
ilanco
If Droplet doesn't charge fees, how are they going to make money? Ads?

~~~
spo81rty
Probably interest from holding your money you deposit with them.

~~~
tobinfricke
That was also the original revenue scheme of Paypal, but it doesn't appear to
have been successful--now they rely on transaction fees. Why would it work
here?

------
mtgx
There is Bitcoin already, and the companies dealing with transactions already
have to charge 1% to sustain themselves. How does this company make money
then? And this is only for iPhones?

~~~
RobAley
I guess the difference is you don't earn interest by holding other peoples
bitcoins, you do by holding their cash. Apparently there is an android app
coming.

------
jeffehobbs
(In Birmingham only)

------
not_robthatcher
I had this idea when I worked at Fusebox in NYC in 1999.

