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by cactus2093 1870 days ago
Payments in the US are more of a minor nuisance than a serious problem. And the rise of companies like stripe, Shopify, plaid, and PayPal before them seem to be doing a fine job filling the gaps. I’m sure eventually we’ll get better low level payment rails, but I don’t think it would actually affect the day to day life of the average American much if at all which is why it hasn’t happened yet.

If anything is going to kill the US it will be something like the collapse of fair elections or the huge ballooning healthcare and education costs, not the payment rails.
1 comments
hahaxdxd123 1870 days ago
I feel like this is just a more general trend of US legislators deadlocked so hard that it provides rent seekers the opportunity to step in and entrench themselves. I would argue that healthcare - which you mentioned - is another prime example of this.

If you think about it, the payments system is a 2+% sales tax! Levied by private corporations! I don't even have an alternative since by contract with Visa/MC stores can't provide a lower price for paying cash.

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ac29 1870 days ago
> I don't even have an alternative since by contract with Visa/MC stores can't provide a lower price for paying cash.

This hasnt been true for over a decade. Cash discounts are allowed by the Durbin amendment.

See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1693o-2 (b)(2)(A)

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hahaxdxd123 1870 days ago
Ahh thanks for the correction. This seems like it's still pretty consumer unfriendly though - you still have to advertise the card price in store and then you can take a discount at the register, as opposed to advertising a cash price and then adding a card charge.

There are a lot of small businesses around me that are cash only under $10/15 dollars. Given human psychology around advertised prices (i.e. most people don't think about opportunity cost), I'm not surprised cash discounts aren't common.

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