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Apple Pay online is great for convenience and security, from a practical point of view, but on a more abstract point of view I think something is deeply flawed about the payment industry if the solution is to add yet another middle man.

I want a world where payment is convenient, security is excellent, and there's no mandatory mafia of middle man between my electronic money and the merchant. It's fine that people chose to use banks voluntary, banks provide many services people want. But it should not be mandatory to use banks, if you chose to do so, and most certainly it should not be necessary to implicate yet another 3rd party to the transaction (VISA/Mastercard). And now we are adding a 4th party!

Whether to use a 3rd, 4th, 5th party should be users' choice. Some people value security, others privacy, others convenience; some people want 2FA for every transaction, some people hate PINs and want just to swipe a card, etc. All this should be client side; user's side. Open payment protocol with multiple implementations. Merchant just uses the protocol. If some new payment revolution is coming, merchant should just update his software.

We have technical solutions to do all this, but most people do not understand that this is possible, what the existing system entails; and the people in charge of this don't want to lose the power.