Making Your Own Merchant Service Provider

https://voidfox.com/blog/payment_processor_fun_2025_making_your_own_msp/

by progval • 11 months ago

268 142 11 months ago

voidfox.com

throwanem• 11 months ago

So Valve buys Itch cheap in a year or two?

elevenoh4• 11 months ago

there's an avalanche of money waiting for more competition to Stripe

i've seen too many businesses destroyed by sudden "your account is closed" with no human contact

Keyframe• 11 months ago

If it's as difficult as they say it is, how did Stripe do it?

danielmarkbruce2• 11 months ago

They worked at it for a long time before launch, started with a very narrow product and only had customers they actually knew (reduces fraud a lot), worked like crazy, operated in a market where the competition was abysmal.

danielmarkbruce2• 11 months ago

There's an avalanche of money waiting for more competition to Nvidia too....

The problem is, many folks have absolutely no comprehension of how difficult it is to build a payment processor that can serve lots of customers they don't personally know. The fraud is just insane. The regulation is insane. The card network rules are insane.

FinnKuhn2• 11 months ago

While I'm not the biggest fan of crypto overall this is definitely one instance where you could actually use it in a way that makes sense by offering people to pay with it instead. Only issue is converting it afterwards into fiat currency.

kaishiro• 11 months ago

That's not actually the only issue, unfortunately. Steam did in fact accept Bitcoin for a while, but it was dropped in 2017, with Newell stating:

“We had problems when we started accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment option. 50% of those transactions were fraudulent, which is a mind-boggling number. These were customers we didn’t want to have.” [1]

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steam-co-founder-reveals-why-...

cosmic_cheese• 11 months ago

Seems like a catch-22. Crypto can’t be used like legitimate currency because it’s not used like legitimate currency, and fraud can’t be addressed because there’s no regulation and no mechanisms by which to make victims whole.

There are parts of me that can see some appeal in cryptocurrency but I can’t see any way around this, at least not without impacting what made it appealing in the first place.

Feeble• 11 months ago

That's quite interesting, I wonder how they were fraudulent as bitcoin transactions dont have chargebacks etc. In the article they also mention that the price for the game would fluctuate which seems to indicate they actually priced the games in Bitcoin. Normally price would be Euro, USD etc and price conversion to Bitcoin would be done at check out. I guess these were the early days though =)

udev40963• 11 months ago

That's a lie. How can you even make a fraudulent bitcoin transaction?

AlienRobot• 11 months ago

I think this is the biggest problem with crypto that it will never be able to solve. Every year there are millions of dollars lost in crypto due to scams (the "send me crypto and I'll give you money" kind). The instant you have a digital good people can actually buy with crypto and sell for real money, it becomes a money laundering machine.

Like you could get money from ransomware, buy a ton of games on steam, then sell the account to a third party.

hippich• 11 months ago

While volatility indeed can be a problem (depending on how the whole thing is setup), I fail to come up with scenario of 50% fraudulent transactions... Does anyone have links to more details on what kind of fraud they meant?

Almondsetat• 11 months ago

If you like fake money, we have that already: Steam wallet cards

bob10292• 11 months ago

In short, just making your own payment processor is hilariously difficult and far beyond the means of Valve let alone Itch. Depending on what the speaker means by "Payment Processor", they may be suggesting making your own bank, or somehow convincing a bank to let Itch shove payments through them; who will eventually do the exact same thing as what happened here. There's no winning play there.

PCI-DSS compliance wasn't even mentioned and it is easily able to overwhelm organizations like Valve and Itch on its own. The hardest part of payment processing is the network. Connecting the acquirers to the issuers in such a way that everyone is happy with the arrangement. Just like the hardest part of the power grid is the transmission infrastructure. The endpoints are far more trivial to replace. If you want to use the existing network, you have to play by all of the rules. The only real way out of this system is to use a completely different kind of currency.

ta126534213• 11 months ago

For shops like Valve only if they need SAQ-D in case they want to store the credit card numbers on their own, I'd say? SAQ-A til SAQ-C is doable for any e-commerce company.

notpushkin3• 11 months ago

Yeah, but assuming they want to build everything from scratch it would get way harder very quickly.

bob10292• 11 months ago

It's likely they would need on-site visits from a QSA if they wanted to go all the way into this. Valve would fall into the Level 1 compliance category. Self-reporting won't work for that kind of transaction volume.

CamouflagedKiwi• 11 months ago

PCI-DSS can be tough but it is also very specifically scoped and so if done well you can keep it very limited. From the way the article describes Itch (1 person + some part time help - which isn't totally ideal for PCI either), it absolutely could overwhelm them, but Valve are certainly a big enough organisation to handle it just fine - assuming, of course, they they wanted to.

stego-tech4• 11 months ago

The solution to this issue is regulation, pure and simple. It doesn’t even have to be a complicated bill, either:

“Financial institutions and financial services providers are barred from blocking, interfering with, restricting, or refusing any consensual transaction that complies with laws regarding content, materials, goods, or services.”

Admittedly in the USA this tees up a 1A case over whether companies have freedom of speech (they shouldn’t), but in other jurisdictions it could be the game changer needed to unshackle commerce from the control of a handful of boardroom puritans and risk-adverse compliance departments. If porn has a high rate of chargebacks, then stop allowing them without a higher burden of proof on the person requesting them, for instance. There’s ample room to enforce accountability on consumers and processors without upending the proverbial produce cart.

9dev• 11 months ago

Instead of tailoring this to financial service providers, create conditions for essential service operators that must ensure service delivery neutrality. That way, the legislation applies to all kinds of infrastructural services, and you don’t even open up the can of worms that is freedom of speech, since the affected companies don’t get to have a say in who they want to do business with.

stego-tech4• 11 months ago

For the US specifically (I can’t speak to other countries), that could be an excellent use case for the USPS: digital money orders. Pay with cash or debit card at the post office, claim it back to a bank account. Other postal services could reciprocate/honor those orders in that specific currency (or offer conversion at a publicized daily rate). Since it’s cash only (no credit), it significantly reduces chargebacks - and because it’s through national postal services, it still allows checking/tracking by governments to keep tabs on illicit transactions.

Thing is, that would absolutely be blocked by current payment providers and their lobbyists. I fully agree with you, though.

EDIT: Hah, I’m late to this party. Physical international money orders have already been discontinued by the USPS as of last year and are dwindling globally thanks to FinTech. The lack of a digital equivalent is definitely frustrating, as their flat fees and discretion were rather appealing.

dlcarrier• 11 months ago

Unfortunately the US has a history of doing the opposite, and using regulation of payment processors to prevent them from allowing some business to operate, when the Constitution doesn't allow the federal government to directly limit those businesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enf...

landl0rd• 11 months ago

There are two main reasons companies will block types of payments: material downside, like high chargeback risk, and reputational damage. It completely makes sense that certain things should be relegated to working with pmt processors who have structures designed to manage and be compensated for that risk. We shouldn’t socialize those costs onto the processors or, via higher fees, everyone who accepts credit cards. Instead, we should expect the companies who engage in those activities to shoulder their own burdens rather than pushing that risk off to others.

greatgib2• 11 months ago

Just to be noted, we are in this situation especially because there are a lot of terrible regulation in banking that force them to police every single use of your money or take very big risks.

stego-tech4• 11 months ago

And to note your note, we have those regulations specifically because of repeated bad actors finding ways to exploit consumers, businesses, or markets due to a lack of regulation.

Regulation is not a bad thing, but it has the potential to be a bad thing. Done right, it's meant to protect people from being exploited, fleeced, or harmed; done wrong, it does the exact opposite.

Most banking regulations, at least in my exposure to them (mainly through PCI-DSS and FDIC), are sensible regulations trying to combat known exploits or problems. Yes, it's inconvenient at times for legitimate use cases, but the solution there is making those legitimate cases easier or safer without weakening regulations stopping, slowing, or tracing bad ones.

c0balt• 11 months ago

That was an interesting read. The core issue unfortunately appears to boil down to being a deeply complex of net of trust and risk distribution.

The issue being a "human"/societal problem, instead of technology, makes me wonder if this could be slowly changed over a few generations. The amount of momentum required would be quite high tough.

debo_• 11 months ago

I've built a payfac before, and while I think this author is overstating the difficulty of doing so in 2025, I agree that it wouldn't help Valve to do so. We weren't the ones that decided it was too risky to deal with specific merchant categories; our processor did that for us. It wasn't even a discussion. (Nevermind such policies like "all of Puerto Rico is too risky to deal with.")

meagher3• 11 months ago

In 2018, Patreon almost got kicked off of Stripe because Mastercard objected to NSFW content (probably because of PACs and/or “moralizing busybodies”). Patreon booted most of the NSFW creators and OnlyFans scooped them up. OnlyFans is now significantly bigger than Patreon.

FinnKuhn2• 11 months ago

Just to add to this. OnlyFans also uses Stripe as their payment processor.

mansa102• 11 months ago

What is the explanation for this? Does it all come down to politics, connections and random chance like iOS app store review differences?

jameskilton• 11 months ago

To be clear, Stripe is one of multiple payment processors OnlyFans uses. I don't know what the other ones are but they do have a processor that is more favorable for NSFW content, and all related payments go through that/those processors. Safer payments go through Stripe, at least last I checked.

meindnoch• 11 months ago

And how come the card companies aren't objecting to OnlyFans?

prasadjoglekar• 11 months ago

They grew too fast too quickly. Now the gravy train is too yummy to object to from within.

throwawaylaptop2• 11 months ago

The crazies online say it's because OnlyFans owner is Jewish.

NoahZuniga2• 11 months ago

If you're making your own PayFac, you're suddenly responsible for getting and securely storing that information and handing it up to your sponsoring Acquirer. You're also responsible for verifying it, ...

My understanding is that steam already has to do this? Like when I buy a game on steam it goes to steam, who then redistributes the funds to themselves, developer and tax man. Since they are holding the money, are they not defacto already a Payment Facilitator?

Crackula• 11 months ago

afaik games are not considered money. and steam points are not considered money either. only withdrawable credits (casinos/online payment apps) are considered as money

Shank2• 11 months ago

Steam pays developers their cut from sales, which is probably what they’re referring to.

ta126534213• 11 months ago

Most of the companies store tokens for CC numbers etc., apart from not beeing allowed to store the number itself, it doesnt bring any good to you since every hacker will be pleased to stop by; If someone is stealing the tokens, they can't use it for much.

sschueller2• 11 months ago

The only correct solution is something like the Brasilian pix. No fee paid for by taxes and the central bank just like the management of cash.

A digital alternative to cash offered by the central banks which are the ones responsible to enable financial transactions. Since so many are moving to cashless it is important for the central bank to retain control of the currency alternative to cash.

We can not allow this explosion of middle men all taking a cut of something they should not be part off especially since they now have such power that they decide what you can and cannot buy instead of the laws of the land.

Voultapher• 11 months ago

Yep. The EU has also enacted various regulations to enable cheap bank to bank transfers and online payments but pix seems even better - haven't use it though. 3% transaction fees are ridiculous and only possible because Visa/MC have successfully - until now - lobbied against any good alternative in the US.

Privatizing water supply is an awful deal for citizen - ask the UK - since the incentives are anti-consumer and public infrastructure is more often than not a monopoly by definition. I'd count transferring money online as public infrastructure and it should get the same treatment.

sschueller2• 11 months ago

Switzerland has a huge conflict of interest with the banks and a similar P2P service (TWINT) that isn't free for merchants. This service is owned by the same banks that are supposed to by law implement instant IBAN to IBAN but of course those same banks have added fess to this.

guru4consulting• 11 months ago

you are barking at the wrong tree. Banks are the real culprits here. Visa/MC are perhaps the front face.

graemep3• 11 months ago

The UK has free and fast bank transfers for consumers but that is not quite reliably fast enough to be a payment mechanism for most purchases, nor can it be easily tied to transactions.

The problem with things like UK water is privatisation and bad regulation. UK rail privatisation has not been too bad (the numbers do not support the claims made about it making things worse) - successful enough that the EU seems heading towards emulating it.

ksec• 11 months ago

Ran by Private companies are't always bad for public infrastructure as long as the proper requirements and frameworks are put in place.

The problem, at the end of the day still comes down to quality of Government.

immibis7• 11 months ago

BTW in the EU they successfully just declared, by fiat, that card networks could set their fees to 0.2% or lower, or they could fuck off. And suddenly the fees were, magically, 0.2%, and the card networks still choose to operate in the EU which proves they're still making money. There are no credit card rewards, but so what - that was just your money getting returned to you anyway.

mhh__• 11 months ago

Employees of the bank of England used to be allowed an account there, as recently as 20 years ago perhaps.

philistine2• 11 months ago

I think it’s even possible without having the central bank manage the whole thing. In Canada we have Interac e-tranfer which is managed by a consortium of Canadian institutions.

It is far from perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good.

XorNot• 11 months ago

Which is one of the better approaches: government sets the priority and tells industry as a collective "figure it out, or we'll do it for you".

It's ultimately the approach that got USB-C standardized for mobile device charging, but didn't mean subject matter experts at the firms building things were cut out of the process.

jszymborski• 11 months ago

I hate the idea of paying for something online with e-transfer, though. It's like mailing cash. If you get stiffed, there isn't much you can do.

You can still process through the Interac network, but again you get get the same purchase insurance and also there is nothing stopping a group of people from pressuring interact not to process payments from a certain website as was the case with Itch.

kennywinker• 11 months ago

$1/etransfer sucks. Bigger institutions get lower rates they can offer to customers - but that just serves to fend off challengers to our banking oligopoly.

Shank2• 11 months ago

I think you really need to make a card that isn’t a Visa or MasterCard or a QR payments system that’s wired to common banks. I don’t think anyone has suggested creating a payment processor without this, because the issue is with Visa/MasterCard, not with the middleman.

I think Valve could actually find a bank to work with to run a QR payments scheme for the gaming industry (SteamPay perhaps?) that’s “topped up” via ACH. Just ignore the whole card part, since it’s online you don’t even need it. Require biometrics and you can make the fraud burden easier.

Of course this would cost a lot of money, but it’s at least in the realm of possible versus a PayFac etc.

tmcz26• 11 months ago

About a month ago this topic came up and I commented this about “just” creating a new Visa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44611807

immibis7• 11 months ago

That's true, but how did Visa and Mastercard come about in the first place, anyway? And could that ever be replicated again? Did they start with a small scope before expanding to be globally accepted?

There are services where you enter your username and password for your bank, and they log into your online banking for you, and make a giro transfer outwards, and they can confirm the transfer was sent because they sent it. Bank security departments don't like this, but they can't always do anything about it.

LoganDark2• 11 months ago

wired to common banks

I highly doubt banks would choose some completely new payment processor (or card, etc.) over Visa or Mastercard: Visa and Mastercard can just put in their terms of service that you're not allowed to use that payment processor and that'll kill them real quick. Highly unlikely any existing bank would give up Visa or Mastercard just for that.

elric2• 11 months ago

American hate for wire transfers will never sound anything other than irrational to me. Why don't you have an equivalent of Europe's Instant Payments?

The author mentions the storefront pocketing the money, that seems implausible? If an unscrupulous storefront can pocket money that would be wired, it could also pocket money that would be paid by CC.

And then there's the weird thing about payment volumes...that's been a solved problem for half a century?

palmfacehn4• 11 months ago

it could also pocket money that would be paid by CC.

No.

The card processor will return the customer's funds for various reasons. In many cases, "no reason" is sufficient for a chargeback, especially if you are dealing in intangibles, such as software licenses or digital media. In addition to returning the customer's funds, the merchant is typically penalized a "chargeback fee". This means as a merchant, if your chargeback fee is $25 and the product is $5, one chargeback can set you back 6 sales.

For these reasons, as well as other minimum rates, certain price levels are untenable. Consequently, many products are either not sold at all or sold at a much higher price.

The conditions make it more sensible for the merchant to sell high priced items to less troublesome customers. The percentage of the card processor's fees are relatively less. The probability of a chargeback is lower. As you have less customers, you can more easily provide support and contact them directly.

elric2• 11 months ago

In the case of fraud (like the article's example of a thieving storefront), banks can simply reverse the transfer. This is not an all-or-nothing deal where CCs are always safe because of theoretical chargebacks, and bank transfers are not.

Also: no-reason chargebacks are absolute BS. I worked on a PSP for a largeish adult entertainment business, and I remain convinced that most porn chargebacks are a case of "post nut clarity".

jofla_net• 11 months ago

Just learning this now, terrifying as a merchant.

Was wondering what anyone's experience with chargebacks are in general. I could imagine that, in the worst case, if combined with 'card testing' as a merchant you could immediately get slammed with thousands in unavoidable charge back fees? Maybe i'm hyperventilating but thats huge, really. I hope theres some stop gap.

toast03• 11 months ago

US banking has wire transfers, but they cost $15-$40 and can only be reversed with the cooperation of the receiving bank. We use them to transfer large sums of money and for transfers that need to be settled immediately; most often for house purchases where both apply.

We do have ACH (single nightly batch), same day ACH (four? batches throughout the day), and the new FedNow (immediate). But all of those involve providing account numbers and we don't like to provide those (both payers and receivers prefer not to give the other participant their ach numbers). Also, there's not a consistent way to link a payment/debit with an invoice, because memo fields don't necessarily show up with the payment.

Also, credit card purchases can be reversed without the cooperation of the merchant. Most issuers are generous with chargebacks (at least historically). You could take a merchant to court if you did a wire transfer, but that's expensive and time consuming.

lmz2• 11 months ago

Account-number only pulls (eg ACH Debits) are insane. Where I'm from people, charities etc routinely publish their bank account numbers if they expect to receive money from strangers.

overfeed• 11 months ago

we don't like to provide those (both payers and receivers prefer not to give the other participant their ach numbers

This is because in the US, anyone can pull money out of your account with only the ACH numbers; which is an insane design[1]. In most other countries, the worst you can do is deposit money. The equivalent of ACH pulls requires significantly more paperwork and proof of consent by account owner.

1. Much like SSNs, which can be debilitating if not kept secret. US payments run in "true names" magic, and simultaneously expect you to register with your one true name at random places with questionable security practices, and it's your fault if there's a breach.

Esophagus4• 11 months ago

I’m going to assume this is a good faith comment, but I encourage you to understand that Europe and the US are different places, with significantly different ecosystems.

I also encourage you to read about Chesterton’s Fence. Make sure you understand why something exists before you think about how to replace it, then maybe you won’t see Americans’ use of credit cards as “irrational,” but instead, reasonable under the circumstances that exist.

That said… the US did roll out FedNow (similar to SEPA) but because the US banking ecosystem is more fragmented, adoption takes a while.

Wire transfers here are expensive and don’t provide consumer benefits (cash back, credit options, consumer protections like fraud and chargeback, or merchant coupons). In your example, if an unscrupulous store pockets the credit card payment, the credit card / issuer will often reimburse your purchase. (This is a law in the US.)

maccard2• 11 months ago

In your example, if an unscrupulous store pockets the credit card payment, the credit card / issuer will often reimburse your purchase.

This is true in the EU too. It’d also why you don’t tend to pay for goods and services via transfer unless it’s a very high value item and you have a contract to go alongside it.

thfuran• 11 months ago

American hate for wire transfers will never sound anything other than irrational to me.

I'm assuming "wire transfer" means something different to you than what it means in America. In the US, a wire transfer is when you call up your bank, give them a routing number and account number, tell them to wire however much money to it, agree to pay like $20 or something for the transfer, and then they tell you the transfer will happen tomorrow morning because it's 3:30 PM and the last batch gets handled at 3:00. They're not so much hated as pretty much entirely irrelevant to everyone. I've made one wire transfer in my life, and that was for buying a house.

maccard2• 11 months ago

We have “faster payments” in EU/UK. You enter a bank account number and sort code, confirm it, and it transfers instantly in 99% of situations. 0 fees, it’s faster than card payments and available to anyone with a bank account. If you want to go down the clearing route you can do CHAPS which is the same as a US wire.

notpushkin3• 11 months ago

Wow. I was assuming Americans pay that much for wire transfers (vs ACH) because they are fast?

immibis7• 11 months ago

A more specific, but not commonly used, term is "giro transfer" (coming from an Italian word). That's a payment where the sender pushes money, as opposed to the receiver pulling it, as they do with a cheque or a card swipe. In the past you'd send a letter (which is why it was inconvenient), but nowadays you log into my online banking page, enter a destination account number, amount of money to send, and a note, and click "send", and the money is transferred somewhere between immediately and three working days depending on which system you're using. This capability is very obvious to non-Americans and I'm sure even to Americans, is an extremely obvious thing that any banking system should have...

The key difference here is that you communicate with your bank, giving them a direct instruction to send money to the recipient at their bank. With cheque or card, the recipient communicates with the recipient's bank, to forward an authorization written by you, which is sooner or later verified against your bank. Which is convenient for you, but involves more steps.

immibis7• 11 months ago

Basically this, but through a web form, the fee is €0.50 (recently lowered to €0.00) and the transfer is sometimes instant, other times still takes 2 business days, but you can show the recipient the proof that you sent the transfer and get the goods immediately.

appease77272• 11 months ago

Because it would cost money to upgrade our financial infrastructure and processes.

Americans aren't opposed to it. Like so many problems with America, our institutions are simply opposed to anything other than maximal profit extraction at any and all costs.

Americans are, however opposed to the kind of national ID system you'd want for this kind of national banking scheme. For some reaon, they think it's more private or secure to use a 9-digit number assigned at birth.

LoganDark2• 11 months ago

Zelle is starting to be a thing and those transfers are pretty instant in my experience. No fees, no delays, no chargebacks, it's amazing. I use it to cover living expenses for a couple friends that don't have jobs or disability benefits.

pests2• 11 months ago

Stopped using Zelle after a friend sent a small amount (~$60ish) and it just disappeared into the ether. His bank couldn’t find it, my bank never got it, Zelle kept telling us to speak to our banks.

Still haven’t gotten it a year or two later.

specialist• 11 months ago

We also have usury, private credit rating services, transaction reordering, payday loans, charging the unbanked to cash their paychecks, required minimum balances, dark patterns, zombie subscriptions, and probably a dozen more grifts.

Our economy is now financialization of everything, rent seeking, wealth transfer instead of wealth creation, ad nauseum.

I'm nostalgic for when we could create wealth by making and doing, and punished people for stealing. (Perhaps it was never true, I've always been delusional.)

palmfacehn4• 11 months ago

Cryptocurrencies are many different things to different people. Putting aside the speculative mania, the payment processor problem is one of the main problems private cryptocurrencies solve.

Stablecoins are not without issues, but they've largely solved the problem of price volatility. Objections around issuance and backing might be raised, but this is more interesting for trading and less relevant for merchant transactions.

Yes, there are no chargebacks with cryptocurrencies. This is an advantage for the merchant. Before anyone goes off the deep end here, let's recall the context of the discussion: one time payments to reputable merchants for trivial amounts. Game purchases do not require life changing amounts of currency to change hands. Steam and Itch are well known brands.

So what is left to object to? My impression is that there is excessive cultural and political baggage.

From the article:

Capitalism sucks. The economic ecosystem sucks. People unrelated to transactions in any way except "They have the tech to facilitate them" deciding that entire industries don't get to make money and feed their staff because "It's risky to handle these payments" suck. That these entities can also be attacked by PACs and shamed into being the morality police sucks.

...

But I still hate crypto.

Note that even though the author correctly observes the high regulatory overhead and political, non-market forces, they still manage to blame "Capitalism".

gavinray• 11 months ago

I tried to build a SaaS for niche fetish content creators to connect with fans

Got as far as several emails to vendors who all replied they wouldn't facilitate the payments, and saying "Good luck" trying to find one that would

Absolutely stupid system if you ask me.

ta126534213• 11 months ago

There are "dediacated P0rn billing" companies, reach out to them.

starkparker• 11 months ago

I remember working on POS for a non-porn industry also shut out by payment processors, and the increasingly obtuse hoops and loopholes they had to navigate were wild to hear about after working in more traditional SaaS and eCom. Reverse ATMs, cash-to-crypto, cash-to-barter, all different state-to-state and between nations. This shit is hard when you're arbitrarily frozen out of access. Really made me rethink how I pay for things, especially at in-person retail.

djfobbz• 11 months ago

Would you like to collaborate on this endeavor? I can contribute $36M in annual processing if that helps in bringing additional volume to get setup.

jjangkke• 11 months ago

Problem with accepting crypto is the on-ramp/off-ramp to fiat

Everybody, except for the few that are holding crypto and expect it to irrationally keep rising forever, are looking to convert it into ironically fiat money which they swear is the enemy.

This means other than bordering purely illegal or prohibited businesses that payment processors cannot handle (remember there are adult processors too), crypto will never become mainstream replacement for fiat.

Right now liquidity is there to absorb the ramping process but long term observers will note how fragile and quickly this can go away. Already, the number of new wallets being created on Bitcoin is plummeting. Search terms for bitcoin has tapered off. There is almost no real interest in it being a replacement for fiat or gold.

I wish gold could become more accepted but we all know the history of e-gold and many of us know its connection to Bitcoin and its curious proximity of origin.

It's just not a good look for companies selling mainstream products to suddenly accept a medium which is clearly being used for pump and dump and laundering of money for transnational crime and no amount of gaslighting or pushing crypto will change it, in fact it achieves the opposite of their goals.

We might at some point see a digital currency but this would be completely different from the crypto in existence today and all stablecoins that isn't issued by the government runs the risk of reporting what is different than what is there in the vaults as if governments haven't been caught doing this in the past. ex) Tether's reserves unaudited unverified mystery

meagher3• 11 months ago

Seems possible that on/off-ramps are leveled up in the next few years as Stripe and other large financial institutions all try to launch and dominate stablecoins.

Gurunanak• 11 months ago

Look at India, the UPI generates a billion+ transaction per day. Just amazing how to include mom and pop merchants into digital economy and not to suck up to Master/VISA networks.

lovelearning• 11 months ago

Misses the point of the article. UPI relies on the same moralizing acquirers (banks) and facilitators (like RazorPay) as the card networks.

czhu12• 11 months ago

Just a personal story:

I built and ran a site that allowed users to upload a stable diffusion model and generate images with them. I originally received money via stripe, and then promptly got kicked off after about 9 months. They threatened (via a clearly automated message), that the fines could be as high as 400k, ended up paying a 4k fine and getting off ASAP.

While we were on stripe though, the charge back rate was probably ~2-3%, which, I think is probably fine.

Moved over to Coinbase commerce and sales dropped from ~5k / month to 1k / month.

TZubiri• 11 months ago

Were your users generating CSAM images?

llsf• 11 months ago

Could you share this automated message (anonymized if need be) ? Very curious to hear what ground and verbiage was used to close your account.

bokohut• 11 months ago

I enjoy reading others' complaints about payments and only after the correct person gets frustrated enough, shunning the buyout greed, will a feasible domestic solution manifest.

Having written all the code and founded my own "Payment Processor" twice in the last few decades, this is an interesting space that demands subject matter expertise 24/7/365. Having lived through many global events of all kinds, that the general public never saw since being in payments at the inception of the internet, I learned things not possible today. I recall vividly those that laughed at me in the 90's when responding to inquiries about what I did for a living. After stating that I was building a payment server for the internet all balked stating no one would pay for anything online and then PayPal became our client followed by many other well known brands. Is anyone still paying online?

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Making Your Own Merchant Service Provider

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