Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments

by pranay01 • 11 months ago

263 260 11 months ago

soared• 11 months ago

Super interesting read! I work in payments for context and see tons of different payment methods every day. People tend to find a payment method they like, and really only ever use that one method. It’s very hard to get someone to switch - even if an alternative is better. It’s just so ingrained to swipe that same card, click the same autofill button, etc.

Digital wallets did somehow over come this, and those would be a super challenging but potentially valid approach #4. If Zenobia is in Apple Pay, google pay, link, etc it’s natural and easy for customers, saves money for merchants, and disrupts visa/etc without disrupting anything else (ie making people us QR codes).

Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it.

Or do like pix and give everyone $1500, but only if they use Zenobia :)

lelanthran2• 11 months ago

Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it.

I don't think so. A Jony Ive will not be in a position to solve the actual problem - what use is a non-universal payment mechanism to consumers and to retailers?

I read the linked page and don't see answers to the main adoption problem: how is the purchaser supposed to pay?

1. Purchaser has to download the app? Okay, but purchaser already has a few equivalents on their phone (Pix, etc) - added friction!

2. How does the App get money to make payment? Purchaser has to fund a new account? Okay, but that is more friction!

3. How does merchant accept the payment? Do they need a new payment terminal? Must their payment terminal be updated with new software? Even more friction!

I've worked in the EMV space, even quite recently, and merchants do not want to update and will only do so when forced to. Any new payment system (QR codes, etc) needs around 5 years (maybe more) before it is universally accepted.

The best way, where I am, to rollout a new payment terminal is to pitch it to the banks, who then offer it to the merchants who have accounts with them.

Adding new functionality to EMV terminals is a lot easier these days, since most of the new terminals are Android, and the vendors have app stores for third parties to write software for these terminals (Pax has Maxstore, etc).

Now, maybe I missed it, but I did not see this application on Maxstore, or some of the other stores. I could have missed it, because these stores have literally thousands of payment applications.

The long and short of it is, you came up with a non-universal payment method, and predictably it did not take off.

quesomaster9000• 11 months ago

I'd argue that the problem is that QR codes shouldn't be an 'app' problem, and yes there's a chicken-egg problem with PoS terminals verifying incoming bank payments but that's a separate issue.

If you want to do account-to-account payments you can show the customer the account/routing number, amount & invoice ID - but obviously that's high friction and the customer needs to login to their account and send a payment with lots of manual data entry.

Making yet another app, adding a financial intermediary, requiring you to link your bank account - these aren't solving the friction points.

We already have bank apps, when I scan a QR code in an industry-wide format it should ask me or confirm which bank app to open and pre-fill all the payment information.

So from my perspective, the problem is that FedNow in the US, and Open Banking in the UK - they could have just dictated "Banks must support EPC QR, or EMV QR code scanning and deep-links", and QR code payments would happen very quickly - even with NFC/RFID you can do passive scanning to achieve the same thing.

* Choose Account * Confirm details * Press send

That's about as easy as you can get for push payments, with a real industry-wide standard for communicating payment intents via NFC/QR. But both FedNow and UK OpenBanking are structured in a way which requires friction, and onerous regulation, through their clunky APIs - meaning you can't actually solve that problem on your own.

rprend12• 11 months ago

1. App Clips meant no app download required- it’s already on your phone 2. No funding of an account required. There was no account required. You do a “connect your account with Plaid” once then the connection is stored in the secure enclave on your iphone. To confirm a transaction you just hit okay then the money is debited from your bank account 3. We were for online ecommerce for specifically this reason. Much easier to deploy a javascript package than a new POS. That said we were working with in person POS’s

But these concerns met was not enough

ttoinou2• 11 months ago

The best players to disrupt Visa Mastercard duopoly would rather be a consortium of payment processors such as Shopify / Stripe / Google Pay / Apple Pay and banks taking in sandwhich Visa and Mastercard (where the money is stored, where the money is spent)

closewith3• 11 months ago

Pix, UPI, etc have definitively shown that Governments are the best players to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

Xss3• 11 months ago

I'm hoping steam builds their own.

WorldPeas2• 11 months ago

Would not the best stakeholder to have on your side be companies like clover or toast, aside from ecommerce? I think the most concrete foothold one could have is brick-and-mortar POS acceptance, and now that places don't have to run their own registers this is probably easier than ever to push out to the masses.

rprend12• 11 months ago

Stripe has pay-by-bank they are pushing with Stripe Link, by making it users’ default payment method. They get terrible conversion, though if they could it would make them massively profitable. Shopify has ShopPay which means they take home a good portion of the fee on every transaction.

Apple Pay takes a higher cut on payments than Visa does (.15% vs .14%). They don’t bother with pay by bank, though, probably because of the underwriting.

All of these companies ARE competing on payments

Nursie• 11 months ago

Pix seems to be working really well in Brazil.

I'm adjacent to it in that we provide some of the infrastructure around identity etc in Brazil, and it seems to be really popular. I think there's a similar system in India.

In the UK you can do payments via Open Banking. I'm not sure how popular it is, but I've used it a few times to send money to Wise to then send over to Australia.

ceedaxp• 11 months ago

US consumers are too conservative in the way they expect payments to work—checks are still in circulation and “swipe & sign” has barely been put to rest (has it?). Any system like this would require adoption by a few diverse and large-scale retail institutions to make it worthwhile for consumers to use. Or else it would be a mere alternative to “PayPal me”…

thayne• 11 months ago

It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it.

I think for a new payment system to catch on it needs to either have a significant benefit for both payers and merchants, or be pushed by government policy (for example, require all merchants that meet some criteria to accept the new form of payment).

toast02• 11 months ago

It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it.

I agree that both parties need a reason to adopt a new payment method... But the reason can't be only that there's a lot of merchants/customers that have it ... If there's benefits for enough participants, reach can drive adoption for those who don't care about the benefits, but you've got to have some material benefits to get people started.

It's got to have a good experience, too.

But from this rant, it seems like they were trying to be a middle man for instant bank payments... I don't see the value of that as a purchaser when I can use a debit card. For the merchant, running a debit card takes a small fee, but anything that needs someone to scan a QR code takes a lot of time.

_1tem10• 11 months ago

One way to solve this problem is to have a certain commodity require the new payment method. If AWS for example created a new currency/payment method and made it the sole accepted way to pay for servers it could very quickly catch on as others adopt. Look how “Sign in with Google” became the default.

I’m pretty sure the main reason Apple/Google/Microsoft haven’t done this already is because they would be directly competing with the US government. The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.

FabHK2• 11 months ago

And other countries don't have chickens and eggs? They didn't use to pay for things in the past in those other jurisdictions that have adopted modern payment systems?

anonzzzies• 11 months ago

US people feel absolutely fossils payment wise. Of course the US has the best marketing / pr but the state of payments is just depressing compared to even 'regulation blocked' eu.

ameliaquining6• 11 months ago

Two of the linked GitHub repositories don't have licenses.

bruce511• 11 months ago

When you start at the wrong premise, you typically end up in the wrong place.

The premise is that credit cards (visa / Mastercard) is broken. When actually it works really well.

For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands.

Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards.

Merchants might pay 3%, (and ultimately yes, that's in the price of goods) but checkout "just works". They're in the "get paid" business, not the "teach customer new system" business. They'll accept new payment options (which the POS) just provides. But they don't drive the market.

Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken.

sneak3• 11 months ago

Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards.

Just like tariffs, right?

Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy.

Tor38• 11 months ago

It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive.

ceejayoz10• 11 months ago

That’s an acceptable fee for the consumer protections I receive.

sampullman3• 11 months ago

If it's ultimately in the price of goods, then it doesn't cost the consumer nothing, no matter how you spin it. It's just cleverly hidden.

I think it's close to impossible to "fix" Visa without government intervention (e.g. limit fees to a fraction of a percent), but I'm still grateful to anyone who tries.

paranoidrobot• 11 months ago

I think it's close to impossible to "fix" Visa without government intervention (e.g. limit fees to a fraction of a percent), but I'm still grateful to anyone who tries.

This is what Australia is looking at currently: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-15/rba-credit-debit-merc...

itake3• 11 months ago

The price is the same if you use cash or card. Really, after reward points, card tends to be even cheaper.

Visa/Mastercard/BNPL/Klarna etc. all have negotiated discounts for consumers, paid for by the merchant.

I'm skeptical that merchants would lower prices (stepping away from $x.98, etc) instead of pocketing the higher margins themselves.

Tor38• 11 months ago

The incentive for merchants to accept cards for payment is that it'll increase number of sales. And it does. In principle this should even out over all sales.. but cards do make it easier for consumers do purchase stuff, and I'm absolutely sure that I personally spend money way easier with a card than without (not that I spend more than I make, mind). The total number of sales go up.

I haven't used cash in my home country for the last two decades, at least. I mean, CC works even on parking meters when paying half a dollar (equivalent) for a few minutes of parking, and I can use a card in flea markets and even some garage sales.

Oh, I forgot: A lot of shops, restaurants, and other establishments have stopped accepting cash, even if it's illegal to do so (legal tender etc). That's because handling cash costs them MORE than handling credit/debit cards. In other words: It appears that using cards LOWER the costs for the merchant, not the other way around.

EditAdd: I presume a lot of the cost saving is that paying by card is 100% electronic, just tap the card (add the pin code if it's expensive enough), and the transaction goes directly into the shop's account. With cash it's way more cumbersome. Way, way more.

(Mind, there's no such thing as signing by hand anymore. If there were paperworks involved it would be different. But there aren't any, not in Europe and not in Japan anymore either)

vasco3• 11 months ago

Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards.

Sellers increase the price by the fee amount, savvy consumers with rewards cards can get back around 80% of that price increase, and regular non-credit-card-with-rewards holding consumers just subsidize the whole thing by paying the extra. It's a tax on people without rewards cards.

memco• 11 months ago

Not sure how prevalent this is now, but a few years back I was seeing a lot of "cash price" advertised for stuff that was lower by whatever the merchant didn't have to pay in fees so sometimes cash may not be subsidizing the credit industry.

didibus• 11 months ago

Are you saying that even when I pay for something in cash or using debit, because of the possibility I'd use my credit-card the merchant had +3% their price?

frontfor2• 11 months ago

Still, most consumers don’t care or notice it (we are not most consumers), so this doesn’t refute the original argument.

conductr4• 11 months ago

It’s worse on business cards. I negotiated a bank contract for our corporate card program earlier this year and we get 3.5% cash back from purchases. It incentivizes us to pay every vendor invoice by card too as ACH / check actually cost us money.

vidarh7• 11 months ago

Handling cash costs more on average at least for smaller businesses than typical card fees.

It's typical to estimate the cost of handling cash anywhere from 4% to as high as 15% depending on takings and size of transactions.

rendaw• 11 months ago

And some businesses (that consumers want) just don't exist because they can't be made to fit the card pricing structure. Ex: journalism (subscriptions only)

chrismcb• 11 months ago

It costs the consumers. Sometimes indirectly and sometimes directly. I would think that this is the primary motivation to come up with a new scheme.

astrange• 11 months ago

Credit cards are a huge benefit to customers because of purchase protection, chargebacks, and being able to spend money before you earn it that month. The merchants pay the fees because it gets them sales they wouldn't otherwise get.

frontfor2• 11 months ago

It might be one motivation, doesn’t mean it’s a good one as per the original comment if consumers don’t care.

albiinics• 11 months ago

This is like says the tarrifs are paid by the other countries, not the US citizens.

In reality, there is no competition in the payment systems. Free markets mean competition.

blitzar3• 11 months ago

All business costs are either paid for by the VCs or the customer. Even the VCs end up getting paid by the customers in the end.

toast02• 11 months ago

There might not be robust competition between payment systems, but when I go to a store, I've got options to pay:

Cash, credit (discover is dieing, but amex/mc/visa compete a bit), debit (several networks and all US cards have to be on at least two), I've seen PayPal as an option ocassionally, some merchants take Zelle, FedNow could if a good UX comes around (I don't think many merchants want to give out their routing and account numbers, and it's tedious to input them into my banking app anyway). Some vendors take checks and deposit them later, some take checks and process them immediately, etc.

People respond to incentives though. If merchants charge the same regardless of payment method, I'm going to use a rewards card that costs them more. When they add a line item credit charge, I'll consider cash or debit.

nottorp2• 11 months ago

For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands.

Only if Visa/MC agree with the item being sold though.

Be careful to not get hobbies that some religious pressure group hates. Today sex, maybe tomorrow rock climbing or fixing your own motorcycle.

camillomiller3• 11 months ago

OP wasn’t defending VISA policies, they were just realistically describing how taking on CC circuits with this premise is a risky approach that tries to fix a problem potential customers don’t have. What you are saying is in a completely different domain. Personally I think you’re right, but the only way to solve that is regulating the payment giants as a public utility, not picking a fight against a business model that is a lot of things, but not broken.

nojs• 11 months ago

For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands.

Haha, if only that were true. I’d say roughly 20% of my purchases are rejected because of a badly tuned fraud algorithm somewhere.

ForHackernews• 11 months ago

Counterpoint: Loads of merchants refuse to accept American Express because the fees are higher. Some merchants have gone to court for the right to offer lower "cash prices" – something Visa/Mastercard oppose because they want those fees hidden.

Clearly, at least some merchants are price-sensitive and would be interested in a lower-fee alternative to Visa/MC.

amanaplanacanal3• 11 months ago

It sounds like all merchants in the US have been able to offer lower cash prices for over 10 years now. I rarely see it though.

pbhjpbhj3• 11 months ago

So a 1980s computer is faster at calculating than a person, so why reduce the cost? Or a car is cheaper to maintain than a horse, why reduce the cost?

Let's flip the script. In reality the averaged transaction _cost_ is probably O(0.1%) or lower. Why are we paying more?

Ekaros• 11 months ago

Decision makers and regulators have been bribed in many places.

EU has actually solved this with interchange fees for consumers being 0.3% which to me sound reasonably close to that 0.1%.

viraptor• 11 months ago

Sounds like one place where it's broken is the morality policing. If tech can succeed due to usage in porn, maybe Zenobia can too? Then move to services like onlyfans, then try all the other creators who also have problems with fees (like the revolt when patreon tried to raise them)?

scotty794• 11 months ago

Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards.

Ultimately customer pays for everything. Credit card companies just prevent merchants from revealing the costs of using credit cards to customers. Which should be illegal.

Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken.

People don't know it's broken because regulator doesn't do their job and lets credit companies police merchants.

worthless-trash• 11 months ago

Secondly it costs the consumer nothing.

I can assure you in Australia, this is -clearly- not true, vendors pass the cost on to the consumer. I can probably choose a random store and prove this.

The cost goes to the merchant.

And who do you think would pay the merchants costs in this case ?

rprend12• 11 months ago

Yep you get it Bruce. Unfortunately I confused being a villain (everybody likes to bash visa) with being bad at their jobs and disrupt-able.

poopsmithe2• 11 months ago

[flagged]

OsrsNeedsf2P3• 11 months ago

After a laggy scroll led to me being flash-banged and closing the tab, I couldn't agree more.

poopsmithe2• 11 months ago

I'm calling it-- 5 years and this will be vaporware. We live in a world where you have to 1) compete with VISA, Mastercard and 2) compete with Bitcoin Lightning Network.

OutOfHere• 11 months ago

It helps to get clued into what happened with stablecoin legalization and interest this year. Without this awareness one risks looking very foolish.

OsrsNeedsf2P3• 11 months ago

I was an early adopter of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. If my memory serves correctly, I made one (real) payment with it. That was almost 10 years ago now, and I haven't even seen the chance to use it since.

littlecranky67• 11 months ago

Mostly because it is still innovated upon. Async payments (offline receival) and trampoline payments are in the pipeline, allowing true self-custodial wallets on the smartphone.

That aside, I only use lightning with my Bitcoin-friends to settle stuff for fun. I live in a city of 300k people, and there are 3 restaurants that accept Lightning payments. Right now it is in its infancy, but I see Lightning as the only solution to actually enable web micro-payments (which failed as a standard because no credit card can provide .10 to .20 cent payments due to high fees)

godelski2• 11 months ago

Considering they are closing shop, I don't think you need to wait 5 years. Did you even read the article? They say it in the opening of the second paragraph...

sokoloff• 11 months ago

I would bet more transactions are done in exchange for literal home-grown vegetables this month than over Bitcoin Lightning Network, yet no one claims a payment method needs to compete with bartered vegetables.

dewey• 11 months ago

You don't have to wait that long, they shut down. "We realized that we were back at square one, and with our product so far ahead of our sales, decided to pivot away from payments entirely."

https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments

protocolture• 11 months ago

This sounds like a post mortem disguised as marketing material.

OsrsNeedsf2P3• 11 months ago

This is what product market fit looks like; everyone is trashing various pieces of Zenobia, but it's still getting upvoted because we all want the solution.

Copenjin• 11 months ago

A solution to what? Serious question, I don't have any issue with the current model. Or are you referring to recent events?

kennywinker4• 11 months ago

The problem of paying 1-3% of every purchase to credit card companies, causing everything to cost 1-3% more.

scotty794• 11 months ago

To duopoly exploiting customers? Europe knocked down transfer fees to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit card. All fees for the merchant sum up to something around 1%. So anything on top of that, that Visa customers pay in US is pure exploitation. And US government isn't doing anything so people see alternate solutions for this problem.

federiconafria• 11 months ago

Apparently not everyone: https://www.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/comments/1hxiusj/europe...

haritha-j• 11 months ago

Living in the UK, I didn't realise rewards were such a big deal in the US. I'm shocked at the resistance though, to me,, its a no brainer to just be charged less in the first place rather than have to keep track of some silly reward system to get back the extra money that they charged me. It's the same reason I prefer Aldi to all the other supermarkets, that make me keep track of some silly reward scheme, plus use my data to sell me more stuff to boot.

OkayPhysicist• 11 months ago

Credit card rewards programs are "eh", but for me I'd be worried about being forced into a low-trust system like Europe has. In the states, I don't have to worry, at all, about someone using my credit card for nefarious purposes. Getting any such fraudulent activity purged from my card is as easy as flagging it in my banking app.

This leads to a number of positive outcomes, such as not worrying at all about sketchy or online purchases, and "American style" payment at restaurants (where we just toss our card on the receipt, and eventually it gets picked up, processed, and returned without further interruption).

rprend12• 11 months ago

it's a super dangerous tarpit, because it has what id call theoretical product market fit: when you describe it to people, they're super excited by it. Everybody says that they want it and they encourage you along the way. But when it comes down to it, nobody wants the solution

nima999• 11 months ago

I totally disagree with “We proposed merchants "split the difference" in fee savings with their customer, giving customers ~1% in at-checkout "cashback". But this is just a worse version of credit card rewards.”

As a shopper, if I know that a SMB is saving 1% or even 2% on merchant fees, I would gladly choose that option, even if I miss out on rewards for that purchase.

nottorp2• 11 months ago

The thing is, Visa and MC are doing just fine(tm) on countries where their cut is limited by law to less than 1%. Everything else is just pure profit, no matter who runs it.

rprend12• 11 months ago

There are no countries which limit Visa and Mastercard’s cut. Visa’s cut is the same ~.14% in the US, Europe, and everywhere else.

blitzar3• 11 months ago

cheaper payments ... Zenobia Pay charges 1%.

5x higher than they would be allowed to charge in the EU.

accept pay-by-bank

I am reminded of tech bros inventing the bus in 2025

scotty794• 11 months ago

They make sense on US market but I had a chuckle when they mentioned European brands giving them cold shoulder. This problem is solved in Europe through legislative action.

rprend12• 11 months ago

Where do you get 5X? European interchange is regulated to .3-.4%, the network fees are the same as the US (.1-.2%) and then the payment service provider takes their fee. Online card processing in the EU costs around 1%.

jatins• 11 months ago

the home page says "ZENOBIA PAY IS NO LONGER ACTIVE"

so this is a farewell post disguised as open source announcement?

kennywinker4• 11 months ago

It’s both? Giving up and opening the code up. Most companies should do this. Why throw away all that work and effort if it could be useful to someone else.

netcrash• 11 months ago

The modified scrolling on the website is the worst!

nielsbot• 11 months ago

custom scrolling: not even once

messe• 11 months ago

Why do designers do this?

blain• 11 months ago

I usually agree with the sentiment but for some reason this implementation is so smooth on my old laptop I like it.

zachrip• 11 months ago

trackpad?

voidUpdate• 11 months ago

Unless I'm on a touchscreen device, I never want my scrolling to have inertia. So just leave it on the default behaviour. I don't understand why you would put in the effort to make the scrolling feel worse

bklw• 11 months ago

The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.

kennywinker4• 11 months ago

Maybe. But the 39 billion in profits visa made last year suggests they make a fair bit more than that stuff costs.

JumpCrisscross2• 11 months ago

fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance

Visa and Mastercard’s pre-tax income margins for the quarter ending on 30 June were 62% and 57% respectively [1][2]. That is $10bn a quarter in absent competition.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/V/financials/ $6.33 on 10.2bn

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MA/financials/ 4.67 on 8.13bn

godelski2• 11 months ago

What the fuck is with the comments here? Guys, it is a postmortem. So you all are complaining about the scrolling and accusing it of being advertising or an announcement?

Frankly, I find this admirable and want to encourage these kinds of things. Guys gave it a shot, failed, and are putting their work out there. They are communicating why they think they failed and what they think would help someone pick up the mantel. What did you all want? Them to just die in quiet and all that code disappear? Hell, their READMEs have more documentation than most of the open source projects out there.

What happened to that hacker mentality? That belief in an open source world, even if as just a pipe dream. To me it looks like they still care about their dream but realized they can't make it happen. They aren't asking for investment and their website says they are inactive, so what makes this advertising? FFS do we have to assume everything is done in bad faith? You don't advertise by giving your competition a leg up. If this gets them investment, who cares, the result is the same. Code and information is out there, you can't take that back. Honestly, I don't care even if the code was garbage (I don't know if it is or isn't), I'll respect anyone that releases their code instead of letting it die with the business. It's just a better outcome, so why are you all complaining?

thunfischtoast• 11 months ago

Interesting read. I'd suggest next time choosing a name that does not sound close to Xenophobia :) anyway, good luck on your further journey

alsetmusic• 11 months ago

This was my first thought as well. It reads like a dog-whistle at first glance.

Charon77• 11 months ago

But they're no longer active as mentioned on site

https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments

ninalanyon• 11 months ago

In Norway there is already a low fee processor called BankAxept. It has made it practical for shops to sell even the cheapest item and accept payment by card without losing money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept

laurencerowe• 11 months ago

This seems to have happened in the UK now too, though all bank debit cards have been Visa Debit since 2009 or so. I think fees are now solely percentage based and close enough to bank cash handling fees that there's no longer any downside to accepting card payments for small transactions.

albertdessaint• 11 months ago

Interesting read, I searched if another startup got this market right, it seems truelayer did using open banking for online payment ($700m valuation) https://truelayer.com/

_1tem10• 11 months ago

Many countries in Europe have pay-by-bank solutions that work really well.

hexo• 11 months ago

That scrolling. No way.

kalev• 11 months ago

Are these live private keys?

https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf...

fhars• 11 months ago

These probably were live keys before they shuttered the project, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898330

rprend12• 11 months ago

oops

olliem36• 11 months ago

Cofounder of Lopay here - we have the same mission: offer free payments to businesses, but we're working with existing networks to do this.

QR code payments are particularly hard in countries like US and UK as you're trying to change consumer behaviour. I tried doing this in 2014 and again in 2019 - both failed to gain traction (aside from during COVID).

In the UK it's possible to accept card payments for 0% via Lopay, but only if you spend your earnings on our card (essentially, passing the fees onto the merchant/supplier you're paying). We're launching the same proposition in the US soon too.

If you don't use our card, our headline rate is 0.79%.

We're a lean team of just 36, supporting over 40k weekly transacting businesses with £1B+ in card processing. If anyone reading this is interested in this space, we're hiring and on the look out for driven people to join us!

panja• 11 months ago

Just curious, why is there an extra per transaction charge for tap to pay? Is there more that goes into that?

wat100005• 11 months ago

QR codes feel like such a step backwards compared to NFC. The UX with current mobile OSes is not good. And if you require an app, or even worse an active data connection, well, I much prefer a quick double-click of my phone’s side button and then putting it near the payment terminal. And I’m really skeptical about security. NFC is vulnerable to relay attacks and QR codes can be secured by using one-time codes or rolling time-based codes, but showing a bright high contrast “scan this to take my money” image in public feels very wrong.

lan3214• 11 months ago

I couldn't get a wallet app to work with GrapheneOS, so for me, QR codes are better, but they feel like they have different use cases. I like QR codes in mail invoices (very common in CH), I'd like NFC in a shop if I could use it.

kevincox2• 11 months ago

Yeah, as someone who just took a trip in China where QR payments are the most popular form it was clearly inferior from a UX standpoint from NFC. The most notable was a data connection. Cell service was pretty good overall but there were a few cases where we were struggling to get the payment through. Some merchants also have the ability to scan your code (which seems to be generated offline) but that leads to this confusing UX where you never know if you will scan (and should have the scanner mode ready) or be scanned (and have the QR code open).

And there was always the fear that your phone dies and you can't take the subway or purchase everything. It doesn't happen often but on some long days you really don't really want to be tracking the battery of your phone super closely.

NFC payments can work offline (although this is pretty rare) and can be authorized from a small plastic card that has no battery, no internet connection and is pretty robust including being completely waterproof. Plus 100% of the time I tap my card or phone on the merchant's terminal. No alternate UX option. Plus if you are using your phone for payments (which is a very convenient option) you don't need to open any app beforehand (WeChat is like 3 taps to get to scanner or code) and I found quick NFC reading to be more reliable than scanning a QR code where the lighting conditions and state of the QR code are not always perfect (it was almost always possible to get it to work within a handful of seconds, but often took a bit of fiddling around. NFC is reliably just tap and it works).

I still keep a few large bills in my wallet in case the card networks are down, flag my transactions or whatever else. But having this immutable payment card that is incredibly reliable and easy to use is way better than the phone-based QR systems I have seen.

What I would love to see if we bring phones into the system is a way of approving the transaction (including the amount) on your device. So for example 1. Tap phone 2. Review amount on screen and approve 3. Tap to commit payment. This is more steps but is far safer. That being said the number of times this has been an issue for me is 0, so it is probably better to just rely on the banking system to correct any mistakes rather than add extra steps to the payment flow.

reorder9695• 11 months ago

I also actually _like_ having a physical card that I can use with NFC so that I'm not fecked if my phone dies/breaks or anything. Physical cards to me are a feature.

2Gkashmiri• 11 months ago

You haven't experienced UPI. Its a breeze. Everything works with everything else.

maxglute• 11 months ago

QR code is more alternative to cash. Anyone can setup QR payment vs getting NFC POS terminal. IMO when you can reasonably expect day to day to be completely cashless down to smallest of merchant, it's more convenient compromise vs NFC + cash.

tonyhart7• 11 months ago

too bad for you, ever considering expanding in Asia???

in Asia, using QR Code to pay anything in very common in here

retrocog• 11 months ago

Excellent! I'm very interested and have relevant experience.

_1tem10• 11 months ago

While almost every other major economy in the world has developed their own government-mandated low-fee payment network, the United States is a corporate oligarchy. Hurrah for the free market.

FabHK2• 11 months ago

Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete not to mention that basically only the US has these high credit card interchange fees of 2-3%.

EU & UK cap it at 0.3% (0.2% for debit cards), and the rest of the world are closer to EU than US fees, if I understand correctly.

The power of the free market.

dzikimarian• 11 months ago

Yes - entire cost of processing trx including all intermediaries in EU is around 1%. Less if you are huge. Unlikely they were able to beat it.

voldacar• 11 months ago

Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete to blame these fees on "the power of the free market" when the visa / mastercard duopoly exists due to regulations making the entry barrier to creating a new card network essentially infinite

TehCorwiz• 11 months ago

I think that was parent’s point. That the US does not have as free a market.

IshKebab• 11 months ago

I don't think it's due to regulations. It's just a natural monopoly due to network effects. Any new entrant has to convince hundreds of payment processors and retailers to accept their cards before anyone even has them. Regulations are a trivial barrier compared to that.

abirch• 11 months ago

Anyone is free to use discover and it works for most merchants in the USA.

American Express leverages the fact that most consumers don’t care what the merchant is charged

codedokode2• 11 months ago

The problem is not that credit card companies charge large fees. The problem is that they do not allow to pass the fee on the customers. Because of this I don't like European regulation - instead of capping the fees they should just make clauses that not allow merchants to set a card acceptance fees, illegal.

The clause that doesn't allow passing fees on the customer is the only thing that makes market non-free.

I think it would be only fair if people paying with a card were charged more. They get the cash back from the bank anyway.

Also I know that there are super-discounted stores in my country that do not accept cards for this reason.

dsr_• 11 months ago

They absolutely allow you to pass the fee on to the customers... as long as you phrase it as a cash discount from the posted price, instead of a credit card fee on top of the posted price.

irusensei2• 11 months ago

If it were really a free market we would have more alternatives.

FuriouslyAdrift• 11 months ago

Rewards drive up transaction fees. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/who-pays-ge...

"merchants are fee-insensitive, while consumers are rewards-sensitive. In other words, consumers pick credit cards (and, indirectly, networks) based on the goodies they receive, and stores will grudgingly tolerate high fees in order to accept credit cards."

asdf333• 11 months ago

ngl i read it as zenophobia pay

codedokode2• 11 months ago

What I need is not lower fee cards, but anonymous pre-paid debit cards that do not allow linking purchases to a person and profiling people. Until that appears, I will use cash only.

irusensei2• 11 months ago

Thats very hard to pull off due to draconian guidelines imposed by unelected shadow governments.

WorldPeas2• 11 months ago

does privacy-dot-com not do this? (this is a genuine question)

tossit444• 11 months ago

The cards they give are mostly anonymous, but you still need to give privacy.com your ID, credit card, etc.

Stevvo• 11 months ago

You know anti money laundering laws make that impossible, right?

aus10d• 11 months ago

The post is really interesting. Sorry it didn't work out for you guys. Thanks for open sourcing the code. The world REALLY needs better/faster alternatives to the big payment processors

_1tem10• 11 months ago

Something weird happens whenever someone tries to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard mob. Even in this post, the founders alluded to being "not well connected enough". Also look at how Plaid's acquisition by Visa was cancelled by the DOJ on antitrust claims but then Plaid dropped its plans to build a pay-by-bank network. Makes no sense when compared to the lawsuits filed and dismissed in 2024 and recently July 2025 claiming that Apple tried to build a payment network but were stopped by Visa/Mastercard.

rprend12• 11 months ago

I appreciate you looking out for my well being, but really there was nothing shady here. We weren’t forced out by a Visa mob or something like that. I actually wish that were the case, because that would mean that we were growing! We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious.

But it’s not like there was some shadowy Visa conspiracy. We received pre seed investment from institutional investors and built a pay-by-bank network entirely fine without anybody stopping us

warkdarrior• 11 months ago

We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious.

So instead of competing on merit by improving the value offered to merchants, your concern is to become connected enough to have the merchants switch to you in spite of "dubious value"??

_1tem10• 11 months ago

Thanks for the clarification in your particular case. No offence, but you were then probably not big enough to matter. There is plenty evidence of shadowy forces shutting down payment systems, however, just look at Marc Andreessen's public statements about crypto founders he invested in getting debanked.

xeromal• 11 months ago

Zenophobia

rprend12• 11 months ago

nooooo zenobia is an ancient queen

FredPret• 11 months ago

Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure.

I can securely complete transactions and subscriptions with ~anyone on the planet in mere seconds.

But holy cow do they have large margins. 40-50%!

The profit growth charts on these two are a sight to behold.

http://valustox.com/MA

http://valustox.com/V

The situation is simply begging for disruption.

SteveNuts• 11 months ago

It's amazing how it wasn't that long ago that you'd walk into an establishment and ask if they accept cards instead of cash only.

Going into rural areas it's still not a 100% given that all places will accept cards.

jvergeldedios• 11 months ago

Even more interesting is the small establishments that skipped over credit cards straight into Venmo/Zelle.

SJC_Hacker6• 11 months ago

There was even a place in Silicon Valley would not accept anything but cash, but I haven't been there in 4 years so don't know if its still the case

crote2• 11 months ago

Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure.

A lot of that is smoke and mirrors. They give a very fast pinky promise of payment, but it usually takes several days to become irrevocable. Similarly, it has taken decades for them to implement any form of genuine security, and even today the main form of fraud protection is... simply having the merchant pay for it.

The most impressive part is how they managed to stay this popular, despite being built on fundamentally flawed concepts.

rprend12• 11 months ago

Card network payments are NOT irrevocable after a few days. They are revocable for 60 days. This “pinky promise” is not a technical limitation, it is US law: Reg E for “electronic funds transfers” and Reg Z for credit payments. These are for consumer protection, and one of the reasons why payments is hard to compete in the US. Reg Z in particular is far stronger consumer protection than any other country

jrm4• 11 months ago

Wild how far down I had to scroll to even see "cryptocurrency" mentioned.

Normally, I'm not a fan of always relying on incentives, but you can't begin to tackle this problem without understanding, and being grossly open about the fact that it's almost certainly not a "tech capability/efficiency" problem, but a (naturally) greedy financial sector company problem.

amadeuspagel• 11 months ago

Istanbul has a card that you can use to pay for some things like public transit and have to use to pay for public bathrooms (because that's so cheap that if you paid with credit card, the fee would more expensive than the payment).

Maybe this is a way to break the credit card duopoly: offer something (like public bathrooms) that requires your card, and then try to expand it from there.

yobbo• 11 months ago

Many cities have rechargeable public transport cards.

Famous Japanese example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica

The plan:

  1) Build correct and cryptographically sound open protocol for NFC cash-cards
  2) Offer tech to public transport (as free open source)
  3) Boom. Millions of users of an open payments system

robertpohl• 11 months ago

What many people are missing is what is in the fees. Consumer protection and risk mitigation. If you are dealing with "cash" payments, like A2A or crypto, there are no consumer protection. Not even auth and capture flows. These are basic needs in a transactional commerce system, which the card companies provide.

derrickrburns• 11 months ago

The failure of the Zenobia Pay encodes much of the REAL value of Mastercard and Visa:

1. A global, enforceable rulebook + dispute court. They standardize how authorization, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, retrievals, representments, reason codes, and evidence work—and they arbitrate when parties fight. That governance is why a corner bodega and a transnational airline can both accept the same credential. (Read the rulebooks; they’re huge, living specs.) 2. Credible liability commitments that change customer behavior. Zero-liability and liability-shift regimes make consumers fearless and pressure merchants to adopt secure tech (EMV, 3-DS). Fearless buyers = higher conversion. That demand-side boost is the engine of card commerce. 3. Tokenized, portable identity for payments. Network tokens (EMVCo) and wallet provisioning (Apple Pay/Google Pay via DPANs) are the reason card data can live safely in phones, browsers, and vaults. This reduces breach externalities and keeps the credential working when plastic changes. That’s not ACH. 4. Compliance offload and ecosystem discipline. PCI exists so the brands don’t directly police every merchant’s infosec day-to-day—yet they still set the bar and yank privileges when needed. It’s governance as a service. 5. Programmable payout rails on the same credential. They’re not just purchase networks anymore. Push-to-card (Visa Direct/Mastercard Send) rides the acceptance footprint for disbursements, wage advances, gig payouts, and remittances—instantly, to billions of cards. That makes the card a universal endpoint for money-in and money-out. 6. Regulatory navigation and durability. Interchange caps and business-rule constraints (EU IFR; U.S. Durbin/Reg II) didn’t kill them; they adapted by shifting economics across scheme fees, value-added services, and routing. Survivability under hostile policy is part of the value. 7. They own the “choice architecture.” Historically, anti-steering rules protected fee levels; those were curtailed, but the lesson stands: control over how credentials are presented and preferred at checkout is leverage. (See the AmEx case for the legal theory on two-sided markets and steering.)

What they don’t do (important) • They don’t issue credit or carry most fraud losses—that’s issuers. Networks set rules and move bits; issuers/acquirers take primary financial exposure and then sling chargebacks through the network’s process. (Still: the rules are the value.) • They aren’t the only rails that can scale: account-to-account can win when the state or banks coordinate (Pix, UPI, iDEAL). Those systems prove rails alone can beat cards on price and UX—if you also deliver governance and adoption.

Where they’re vulnerable next (and already hedging) • A2A/instant schemes (Pix, UPI, iDEAL) are re-wiring consumer habits. If U.S. open banking + FedNow/RTP ever gets real UX and liability parity, cards will feel it. Meanwhile, Visa/MC are buying into open banking to stay the orchestration layer (Visa–Tink; Mastercard–Finicity). • Checkout is being intermediated by wallets and platforms. Apple/Google own the front door; card brands keep the credential alive via network tokens, but UX power is shifting up-stack. Tokenization keeps them relevant; control of the UI does not necessarily stay with them. • Policy pressure keeps grinding down interchange/steering constraints. They can adapt, but the rent skim is under scrutiny—again.

The blunt summary

Visa and Mastercard don’t win because they’re the fastest rail or the cheapest. They win because they govern trust at scale: a portable identity (token), a standardized contract (rules), and a credible promise about who pays when things go wrong (liability). That cocktail reliably boosts conversion for merchants and confidence for consumers. Until an alternative can match all four—rail + rules + identity + liability—cards remain the default operating system for commerce.

Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

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