[heartbeats]

It's unlikely that web3 will solve it; cryptocurrency already exists, and its many serious issues are not going to be solved by a fresh coat of paint or "moar adoption".

If you want an actual solution, look at FedNow. This would enable direct bank account payments, like in most of Europe, with a government-run intermediary in the place of MasterCard/VISA. This changes the censorship situation from "four out of four must accept" to "one out of thousands must accept".

[creshal]

The situation in Europe isn't quite as rosy. SEPA is a huge PITA, usability wise, and closer to US ACH transfers; and so most countries have their own special sauce online payment solution that serves as central point of failure for that country's customer base. Belgians use Bancontact, Austrians use EPS, Germans use giropay, Dutch use iDEAL, … or, more often, don't, and just use Paypal or credit cards anyway, since it's so much of a hassle.

And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.

[heartbeats]

SEPA isn't great, but there exist functioning country-wide systems as you mention.

> And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.

No. Payment providers like Stripe have to comply with the rules placed upon them by the card networks. If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list. This removes 95% of the censorship issues.

[creshal]

> SEPA isn't great, but there exist functioning country-wide systems as you mention.

Great, except each country is tiny and cross-border commerce common, so you end up having to implement all of them…

Or, much more likely, you give up and just go with Paypal + Credit Cards again, especially since more and more banks in Europe are rolling out Mastercard Debit as their regular banking card (on top of Apple Pay and whatever Google is pretending to be supporting today), making credit/debit card payments more popular than ever.

> If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list.

I'm not aware of any payment provider that gives me all European networks, but not credit cards.

Not that it would be helpful, since most people use credit cards anyway.

> This removes 95% of the censorship issues.

Together with 95% of your customer base, realistically.

[heartbeats]

> Great, except each country is tiny and cross-border commerce common, so you end up having to implement all of them…

Yes, and this can be done by software firms. You don't need to roll your own solution, but taking the payment networks' fees out of the equation drastically reduces costs.

> I'm not aware of any payment provider that gives me all European networks, but not credit cards.

That's true, since most sellers can access credit cards. But for EU-only sellers of "sensitive products", of course there is a market. (It's an open question if people on the MATCH list can use those payment providers as long as they don't accept cards.)

> Together with 95% of your customer base, realistically.

Most people where I live are comfortable using mobile payments and use it on a regular basis. I see mainstream retailers offering to take it (alongside cards) very often.

[rvz]

> If you want an actual solution, look at FedNow.

Fed No.

The US is not the world and the rest of the world is certainly not on FedNow, and never will be.

At least with stablecoins like USDC on Ethereum, Stellar, Solana, etc it is available today 'right now', worldwide, 24/7 and with instant, same day transfers with low fees.

[heartbeats]

And yet nobody uses them. I wonder if there's some reason for that?

[rvz]

> And yet nobody uses them.

I wonder why USDC is currently being used on these blockchains today from all over the world, 24/7 in the billions of dollars daily and has been integrated into business like MoneyGram, Stripe, VISA and Coinbase Commerce and even the United Nations using it for donations and humaritarian aid, who are not 'Nobody'.

"Nobody" is using FedNow 'right now', and there is a obvious reason why nobody outside of the US cannot use and will never use FedNow.