If it adds more value than the cost when compared to other alternatives, why shouldn't they charge something for it? It's not like stripe has anything close to a monopoly in the payments space.
Yeah but isn't that just the way of the world? Processes can become simpler but at a certain point the complexity of the process is inherent and it would benefit you to employ an expert (individual or entity). You can build a house yourself, with your own hands, but why? I'm not an expert on the whole domain of payment processing but it seems to me there is a lot of non trivial problems inherent with taking payments. I guess if you are hedging on a different system of holding and transferring money there may be a way to get rid of the middleman. What do you propose?
I propose the governments require the infrastructure for zero-cost, instant transfers be made available to anyone, with open APIs. I don't care who runs the infrastructure.
If you want subscriptions/recurring payments, stored payment methods and all the "fancy" stuff contemporary payment processors offer, you pay for it. If you just want to move money from A to B, it should be easy and it should be free.
The only way for that to happen is for it to be socially provided service.
> I propose the governments require the infrastructure for zero-cost, instant transfers be made available to anyone, with open APIs. I don't care who runs the infrastructure.
Will this infrastructure handle chargebacks? Fraud? Stolen credit cards? Forex?
If yes, it can't be zero-cost.
If no, it won't be usable until the middle-men build all of these systems on top of it.
Check out the EU (and UK). Open the app on your phone. Tap in a bank ID (routing number) and an account number and an amount. In less than 1 second, the money is transferred to the specified account.
Neither you (the sender) nor the recipient pay anything for this service.
You may have noticed that banks/financial services companies make bucketloads of cash. Why should the cost of running the system always be pushed back to consumers? The EU/UK example points to a different direction entirely.
That may be true, but it's the problem that a lot of us actually have. First and foremost, I want to get money from my customer to me, reliably and in full compliance with any applicable laws and regulations.
On that score, using a direct payment scheme, such as Direct Debit here in the UK, beats charging cards using a service like Stripe on every important point. Lower fees. Much lower involuntary churn due to charge failures. Outside the scope of SCA and all the complexity that introduces. Even for international payments using similar direct payment schemes in other places that have them, if we compare GoCardless for those with Stripe for charging cards, the currency conversion is much cheaper via GoCardless as well because they now work with Transferwise.
It's 2020. Unreliable, overcomplicated, fundamentally insecure, expensive methods to collect some money from a customer and give it to a merchant should have gone extinct a long time ago.
What I described is the core service at the heart of all payment processors. If this service is provided to customers (and merchants) at no cost, then the entire structure of payment processing changes dramatically.
There's also no obvious reason why Stripe and all other payment processors and credit card issuers and banks and financial services should not be carrying the cost of all the things you've mentioned, rather than them being part of the costs passed on to customers and merchants.
