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!
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 :)
lelanthran 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.
ttoinou 2 hours 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)
Xss3 55 minutes ago [-]
I'm hoping steam builds their own.
closewith 1 hours ago [-]
Pix, UPI, etc have definitively shown that Governments are the best players to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.
ttoinou 1 hours ago [-]
There might be survivorship bias here. One could also argue that Governments are the best players to get and maintain a monopoly or duopoly (:
closewith 1 hours ago [-]
Well, that's definitely true, and it's also how the MasterCard and Visa monopoly remains dominant. Just look at the extreme backlash of Trump's administration against the Brazilian Central Bank's plans to sell the Pix protocol abroad.
Nursie 17 minutes 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 6 hours 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 6 hours 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).
toast0 3 hours 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.
netcrash 3 hours ago [-]
The modified scrolling on the website is the worst!
blain 3 hours ago [-]
I usually agree with the sentiment but for some reason this implementation is so smooth on my old laptop I like it.
zachrip 2 hours ago [-]
trackpad?
messe 3 hours ago [-]
Why do designers do this?
nielsbot 3 hours ago [-]
custom scrolling: not even once
albertdessaint 1 hours 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/
ninalanyon 1 hours 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.
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.
vasco 6 hours 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.
conductr 4 hours 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.
memco 5 hours 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.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
Handling cash costs money too. Sometimes more than handling cards. But a proportion of customers who like cash are very strongly convinced they are "subsidising" card payments, and might be attracted by pricing like that, so maybe it still ends up being a net gain.
ameliaquining 5 hours ago [-]
In a lot of cases there are regulatory or contractual barriers to doing that.
conductr 4 hours ago [-]
The card issuers used to prohibit it, not been the case in a while though. They used to prohibit having a minimum transaction amount or charging transaction fees to your customer too. It never stopped small merchants though
lotsofpulp 3 hours ago [-]
In the US, not since 2011 since the Dodd Frank act required payment card networks to allow merchants to offer cash and debit card discounts.
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?
vasco 5 hours ago [-]
Almost but not exactly, any rational merchant would estimate how much they pay monthly in credit card fees and find a way to add that back to their revenue. For most practical cases, the business is started already after the existence of credit cards, so when modeling revenue in your business plan this should already be baked in and the prices you come up with already cover it.
So it doesn't mean they increase the price of every product by 3%. One guy might charge more just for coffee, another do some other thing. But any extra cost you put on a seller of anything, the rational seller will make that back in sales somehow.
AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago [-]
In particular, that is what happens when costs are imposed industry wide, as with credit card fees.
If the cost is only being paid by one vendor then that vendor can't raise prices or else customers would patronize one that had lower costs and passed on the savings. But if every vendor has to pay 3% then prices are going up 3%, because then the competition has no cost advantage they can pass on and people only stay in business if they're making enough to justify not doing something else. (3% is more than the entire net margin in many industries.)
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
A rational merchant would know that they are also incurring costs for handling cash, and depending on the size of the business that cost can in fact be higher than the cost of handling cards.
In fact, the low end of cash handling costs for a business will almost always be higher than the card fees alone, but of course there are other costs in managing card payments too, so it's not quite that clear cut.
mightypirate 4 hours ago [-]
the seller just charges whatever it get can get away with. 3% only has an impact when margins are closer to that percentage
conductr 4 hours ago [-]
Savvy/corporate sellers are typically concerned with margins so fees do play a role
eszed 4 hours ago [-]
Cash handling isn't free! You have to pay someone's time to count + reconcile + deposit it, or If you're dealing at any volume, you'll pay an armored car service to collect it. There's inevitably "shrinkage", or else business processes (more time and more overhead) to avoid it.
Cash is king for hiding transactions and avoiding taxes. If that's the situation then I won't say you don't deserve a cut, but for rules-following merchants taking cash isn't any cheaper than paying the credit card fees.
jader201 4 hours ago [-]
> but for rules-following merchants taking cash isn't any cheaper than paying the credit card fees.
That’s not true at all, particularly for large purchases.
If I go to an electronics and check out with $5000 in electronics, there’s no way that handling cash incurs the same expense to the store as the 3% fee ($150).
Maybe for nickel and dime purchases, but that’s rarely the case.
Even a $50 dinner doesn’t cost the restaurant $1.50 (plus the $0.30 transaction fee) just to handle cash.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago [-]
You're not factoring in "I won't go somewhere that doesn't take a credit card".
A store that sells $5k electronics is gonna lose a lot of sales if they attempt to save that $150 by only taking cash.
AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago [-]
Which is why you take both but make the credit card customer eat the fees. Then many customers will save you (i.e. themselves) the money by paying cash and the ones that insist on using a credit card are free to pay what it actually costs.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
Average cash handling cost is typically estimated in the range of 4%-15%. You're right that there might be individual differences in what it would cost to handle a single transaction, but a store isn't in a position to pick and choose - they handle an aggregate. If your electronics store only handles large transactions, maybe their percentage would be lower, but that's extremely rare. And even so, handling large cash amounts comes with its own costs around security.
JumpCrisscross 56 minutes ago [-]
> Average cash handling cost is typically estimated in the range of 4%-15%
I think the assumption is they declare only a portion of their cash receipts.
vidarh 53 minutes ago [-]
I think that is commonly the reason why some businesses do offer discounts, but note the person above replied to "but for rules-following merchants taking cash isn't any cheaper than paying the credit card fees" which seems to have specifically anticipated exactly that.
blitzar 4 hours ago [-]
Business banking != consumer banking. The bank will charge ~$0.10-$0.50 for that $50 deposit + the wages of the person who goes to the bank to pay it in (minimum $7.25 per hour).
XorNot 4 hours ago [-]
This is a huge pile of uncosted assumptions.
If you take cash it means you have to hold it on site. To be insured you have to demonstrate secure handling for the insurer, which would include security systems and limiting the amount in the safe and register. Which means routine trips to the bank, which also incurs costs.
Like...that could all be true, but the rate merchants tried to ditch ever handling physical money rather suggests the fees were worth it (not to mention all the risk mitigation doesn't cover the increased danger to ones personal safety - walking $5000 to the bank is no fun at all).
vidarh 3 hours 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.
Hunpeter 3 hours ago [-]
As someone with little financial knowledge, I'm curious why that is the case and how those estimates are calculated. I've seen stores offering a discount on cash payments, citing card-related fees as the reason.
vidarh 55 minutes ago [-]
Fraud done by shop owners is one reason why they might still offer a discount, but also a lot of the time I simply think stores don't actually realise how much it is costing them.
E.g. they might not include staff time and incidental costs around cash transactions that aren't obvious because they're not linked to the individual transactions, such as reconciliation, time spent transporting the cash, costs of depositing the cash, insurance to cover storage of cash.
Also consider that it takes very little theft to tilt the balance, and even a tiny amount of theft by cashiers not putting through all cash transactions can make a big difference.
pbhjpbhj 2 hours ago [-]
Discount on cash IME is because they're not putting transactions through the till (POS) so they can commit [tax] fraud.
Ran a micro business in UK for 15 years, cash cost as much to deposit as card did - employee time (counting, reconciling, making deposit) and bank charges for cash deposits. It also slowed down transaction time (which was almost all IRL).
stellar678 2 hours ago [-]
I kinda wondered about this forever as well. Then one day I was chilling in my local worker-owned cooperative bakery when the Brinks truck came by to do the bakery's cash pickup. Armed driver. Guard waiting next to the truck holding a long gun. Two guys (presumably armed) going into the business to get the cash and take it out to the truck. That's all pretty expensive!
Smaller family-owned businesses will just take cash to the bank - but it's super common for somebody to eventually surveil them long enough to rob them one day as they're transporting the cash to the bank.
It's pricey to handle cash!
aledue 3 hours ago [-]
Here in Italy the answer would be that you cannot evade taxes if payments are tracked. I imagine that applies elsewhere too.
ceejayoz 3 hours ago [-]
Cash can be misplaced. Stolen. Needs to be stored securely. Banks often charge fees for depositing large amounts. Security companies charge fees to transport said amounts. Counterfeit bills. Etc.
rendaw 2 hours 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)
frontfor 4 hours ago [-]
Still, most consumers don’t care or notice it (we are not most consumers), so this doesn’t refute the original argument.
vasco 4 hours ago [-]
If I take your money without you noticing it won't affect your immediate behavior, but later on you'll buy less stuff, specially if I keep doing it. If nothing else because you don't have it anymore.
albiinics 5 hours 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.
toast0 3 hours 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.
blitzar 4 hours 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.
sampullman 6 hours 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.
Tor3 5 hours 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)
camillomiller 3 hours ago [-]
One thing to consider: cards solve the issue of employees stealing, which is surprisingly common from what I’ve heard especially in businesses with high workers turnover, such as seasonal bars and restaurants.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago [-]
> A lot of shops, restaurants, and other establishments have stopped accepting cash, even if it's illegal to do so (legal tender etc).
"There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law that says otherwise."
Legal tender only applies to debts. When you go to buy a t-shirt at Target or a burger at McDonalds, you don't owe a debt, and they aren't a creditor.
Tor3 1 hours ago [-]
As I wrote elsewhere: You're seeing this from inside the USA. USA is not the world. What's translated as "Legal tender" when wanting to write in English is just the closest term. That doesn't mean that your local definition of legal tender then applies.
Cash, to be specific, must be accepted as payment (with certain limited) exceptions, in my country. And still some places will refuse it. They even accept paying fines now and then because of it.
SJC_Hacker 4 hours ago [-]
> egal tender only applies to debts.
I used to think that was true, but try paying parking fines, etc. with pennies. Legal tender has never been challenged in court to my knowledge
ceejayoz 3 hours ago [-]
Parking fines aren't debts, and thus, legal tender doesn't apply.
> The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that city-levied fines are not debts under the FDCPA... District courts, for what it's worth, uniformly agree that a fine does not stem from a consensual transaction, and thus is not a debt under the FDCPA.
pbhjpbhj 2 hours ago [-]
In the UK the definition of legal tender includes a limit on the use of small denominations.
dragonwriter 3 hours ago [-]
> Legal tender has never been challenged in court to my knowledge
It was challenged and upheld, both as against debts before the the legal tender acts were passed and those after, by the Supreme Court in Knox v. Lee (1871).
(And because government can exempt itself from virtually anything not forbidden by the Constitution. This is why cops can break down your door, but I can't.)
paranoidrobot 5 hours 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.
I'm interested to see if that works out, and curious what it means for international cards with lots of perks. I imagine, for example, it wouldn't change anything right away for a Chase Sapphire card issued in the US, but if more countries followed suit there would eventually be a tipping point and card benefits would be reduced.
I guess the issuers all have complex models that take these things into account. In any case, I think it's a good move.
itake 5 hours 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.
sampullman 2 hours ago [-]
You're right that once prices have gone up, they rarely come back down. But if the price is the same, when you pay cash you're effectively subsidizing credit card reward programs, and lining Visa/Mastercard/issuer pockets.
victorbjorklund 4 hours ago [-]
if all customers choose to us cash the merchant could lower price with 3%. If you are the only one paying cash then yes the price will stay the same.
3 hours ago [-]
nottorp 4 hours 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.
camillomiller 3 hours 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.
fsflover 2 hours ago [-]
A business mode that relies on duopoly is broken and must be regulated.
nojs 3 hours 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.
pbhjpbhj 2 hours 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 2 hours 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 2 hours 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)?
chrismcb 5 hours 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 4 hours 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.
frontfor 4 hours ago [-]
It might be one motivation, doesn’t mean it’s a good one as per the original comment if consumers don’t care.
ForHackernews 3 hours 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.
sneak 6 hours 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.
Tor3 4 hours 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.
heavensteeth 4 hours ago [-]
> even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash
this is not true as it is not what "legal tender" means. Legal tender is something that the government must accept as payment, not private enterprise.
> Businesses don’t have to accept cash.[0]
> There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.[1]
That depends on the country. There are many countries (including my own) where any business must accept certain parts of the cash payment system (around here a taxi doesn't have to accept the highest-value bank note, but the rest cannot be refused). And shops, of course. That's why newspapers bother to write articles about it.
SJC_Hacker 3 hours ago [-]
They have to accept cash, huh?
* Cash Payment Method Will No Longer Be Accepted
A Notice by the Patent and Trademark Office on 10/03/2017*
They only use cards because credit cards can allow them to get sales from people who wouldn't have been able to buy the product through debit itself, but they can buy it from credit.., so they are okay with eating 1-2% of costs in the fact that sale might happen and the companies will get 0.5-1% of it to you back as rewards (hopefully) and so there is incentive to buy using credit card for rewards but they might also give incentives of 1-2% if you buy through cash since they aren't eating that 1-2% cost.
And this whole network has now been built in such a way that now even debit costs the same charge just as network fees
Open sourcing this might be a step in good faith and I mean, we have UPI where I live and it has 0 fees and trust me its crazy good. I personally wish that either everybody in the world could use UPI or pixis from brazil.
Tor3 4 hours ago [-]
The argument doesn't hold - if cards were only about getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get - and the part about "getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get", is true enough - then there's no reason to refuse cash payments. That's additional sales, right? But the fact is that more and more shops refuse cash payments entirely. "Pay by card or go somewhere else".
Imustaskforhelp 4 hours ago [-]
I can't comment on this fact of more and more shops refusing for cash payments entirely as I personally have NEVER seen that?
Provide me an article or some proof to this fact for me to comment further as currently we are at an disagreement on this thing which I hope we can turn into meaningful discussion.
Tor3 3 hours ago [-]
Well.. just a quick search (as I won't be talking a walk and photograph all the "cards only" signs I now see in so many places):
_Handling_ cash is expensive. I never thought of that until my SO started working in a shop. To and from the bank, with stacks of coins and notes.. and there's presumably much more than that for larger firms.
In general I rely my statement on what merchants themselves are saying. Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. "It's too expensive. It reduces our bottom line." That kind of thing. When I look around I see "Cards only" a lot of places.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago [-]
> Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender.
Legal tender applies only to debt/creditor relationships.
Tor3 3 hours ago [-]
The USA is not all the world. The US rules don't apply in other countries. Rules differ. In many countries _businesses_ have to accept legal tender. Including in my own. That's why it's such a big deal when businesses actually still refuse cash.
Of course cash is expensive, you have to handle it, count it, transport it. Haven't you ever seen those heavily armoured cash delivery vehicles? I mean just think how inefficient cash obviously is in every aspect of how it works compared to modern tech.
SJC_Hacker 3 hours ago [-]
Time spent totaling it, transporting it to from bank
Having to buy a register / point of sale which can handle it
Hoping you employees don’t pocket a few bills here and there
Hoping you don’t get robbed
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
That’s an acceptable fee for the consumer protections I receive.
ameliaquining 6 hours ago [-]
Two of the linked GitHub repositories don't have licenses.
protocolture 5 hours ago [-]
This sounds like a post mortem disguised as marketing material.
bklw 3 hours ago [-]
The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.
JumpCrisscross 3 hours 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.
Maybe. But the 39 billion in profits visa made last year suggests they make a fair bit more than that stuff costs.
godelski 3 hours 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?
hexo 1 hours ago [-]
That scrolling. No way.
nima999 4 hours 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.
nottorp 4 hours 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.
jatins 3 hours ago [-]
the home page says "ZENOBIA PAY IS NO LONGER ACTIVE"
so this is a farewell post disguised as open source announcement?
kennywinker 3 hours 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.
thunfischtoast 2 hours 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
poopsmithe 5 hours 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.
dewey 1 hours 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."
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.
OsrsNeedsf2P 4 hours 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 3 hours 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)
godelski 2 hours 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...
OutOfHere 5 hours ago [-]
It helps to get clued into what happened with stablecoin legalization and interest this year. Without this awareness one risks looking very foolish.
5 hours ago [-]
blitzar 3 hours 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
poopsmithe 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
OsrsNeedsf2P 4 hours ago [-]
After a laggy scroll led to me being flash-banged and closing the tab, I couldn't agree more.
OutOfHere 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
squigz 4 hours ago [-]
How long have we been hearing that cryptocurrencies are going to save us from our existing payment systems?
OutOfHere 4 hours ago [-]
I do not think most people are even slightly familiar with what transpired this year with regard to stablecoins. The biggest players that move money are going forward with it. This means Amazon, Walmart, and numerous other big players. They don't like paying credit card companies, and why should they. It's going to be a game changer.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago [-]
If you want an Amazon stablecoin, fund an Amazon gift card with an ACH. (They already offer this, and they love it, as it bypasses the credit card companies. I often get offered a bonus for recharging this way.)
Because that's fundamentally what it's gonna wind up being.
OutOfHere 3 hours ago [-]
It's not about what I want. It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute, and what is already legal.
Yes, in a manner of speaking it could be like that, except that stablecoins can be self-custodied, safely be sent to others, and be exchanged for other stablecoins and forms of money, etc. I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people.
ceejayoz 3 hours ago [-]
> except that stablecoins can be self-custodied
I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people, like those who think Amazon is gonna make and promote a stablecoin they don't deeply control.
Even Tether freezes addresses. Amazon absolutely will.
> It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute…
I've never really understood this idea that banking should be free, as if it's ran on magical fairy dust and not computers that cost money, ran by people who need money themselves.
OutOfHere 3 hours ago [-]
No here one except you said it will be free, but the amounts paid to Visa and MasterCard are altogether atrocious. Anything more than a few cents per electronic transaction is unreasonable.
OsrsNeedsf2P 4 hours 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.
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.
Copenjin 4 hours ago [-]
A solution to what? Serious question, I don't have any issue with the current model. Or are you referring to recent events?
kennywinker 3 hours ago [-]
The problem of paying 1-3% of every purchase to credit card companies, causing everything to cost 1-3% more.
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!
https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf...
https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept
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.
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.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-el...
So it doesn't mean they increase the price of every product by 3%. One guy might charge more just for coffee, another do some other thing. But any extra cost you put on a seller of anything, the rational seller will make that back in sales somehow.
If the cost is only being paid by one vendor then that vendor can't raise prices or else customers would patronize one that had lower costs and passed on the savings. But if every vendor has to pay 3% then prices are going up 3%, because then the competition has no cost advantage they can pass on and people only stay in business if they're making enough to justify not doing something else. (3% is more than the entire net margin in many industries.)
In fact, the low end of cash handling costs for a business will almost always be higher than the card fees alone, but of course there are other costs in managing card payments too, so it's not quite that clear cut.
Cash is king for hiding transactions and avoiding taxes. If that's the situation then I won't say you don't deserve a cut, but for rules-following merchants taking cash isn't any cheaper than paying the credit card fees.
That’s not true at all, particularly for large purchases.
If I go to an electronics and check out with $5000 in electronics, there’s no way that handling cash incurs the same expense to the store as the 3% fee ($150).
Maybe for nickel and dime purchases, but that’s rarely the case.
Even a $50 dinner doesn’t cost the restaurant $1.50 (plus the $0.30 transaction fee) just to handle cash.
A store that sells $5k electronics is gonna lose a lot of sales if they attempt to save that $150 by only taking cash.
I think the assumption is they declare only a portion of their cash receipts.
If you take cash it means you have to hold it on site. To be insured you have to demonstrate secure handling for the insurer, which would include security systems and limiting the amount in the safe and register. Which means routine trips to the bank, which also incurs costs.
Like...that could all be true, but the rate merchants tried to ditch ever handling physical money rather suggests the fees were worth it (not to mention all the risk mitigation doesn't cover the increased danger to ones personal safety - walking $5000 to the bank is no fun at all).
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.
E.g. they might not include staff time and incidental costs around cash transactions that aren't obvious because they're not linked to the individual transactions, such as reconciliation, time spent transporting the cash, costs of depositing the cash, insurance to cover storage of cash.
Also consider that it takes very little theft to tilt the balance, and even a tiny amount of theft by cashiers not putting through all cash transactions can make a big difference.
Ran a micro business in UK for 15 years, cash cost as much to deposit as card did - employee time (counting, reconciling, making deposit) and bank charges for cash deposits. It also slowed down transaction time (which was almost all IRL).
Smaller family-owned businesses will just take cash to the bank - but it's super common for somebody to eventually surveil them long enough to rob them one day as they're transporting the cash to the bank.
It's pricey to handle cash!
In reality, there is no competition in the payment systems. Free markets mean competition.
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.
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.
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)
No. This is a misunderstanding of legal tender.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
"There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law that says otherwise."
Legal tender only applies to debts. When you go to buy a t-shirt at Target or a burger at McDonalds, you don't owe a debt, and they aren't a creditor.
I used to think that was true, but try paying parking fines, etc. with pennies. Legal tender has never been challenged in court to my knowledge
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/seventh-circuit/city-sanc...
> The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that city-levied fines are not debts under the FDCPA... District courts, for what it's worth, uniformly agree that a fine does not stem from a consensual transaction, and thus is not a debt under the FDCPA.
It was challenged and upheld, both as against debts before the the legal tender acts were passed and those after, by the Supreme Court in Knox v. Lee (1871).
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21...
(And because government can exempt itself from virtually anything not forbidden by the Constitution. This is why cops can break down your door, but I can't.)
This is what Australia is looking at currently: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-15/rba-credit-debit-merc...
I guess the issuers all have complex models that take these things into account. In any case, I think it's a good move.
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.
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.
Haha, if only that were true. I’d say roughly 20% of my purchases are rejected because of a badly tuned fraud algorithm somewhere.
Let's flip the script. In reality the averaged transaction _cost_ is probably O(0.1%) or lower. Why are we paying more?
EU has actually solved this with interchange fees for consumers being 0.3% which to me sound reasonably close to that 0.1%.
Clearly, at least some merchants are price-sensitive and would be interested in a lower-fee alternative to Visa/MC.
Just like tariffs, right?
Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy.
this is not true as it is not what "legal tender" means. Legal tender is something that the government must accept as payment, not private enterprise.
> Businesses don’t have to accept cash.[0]
> There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.[1]
[0]: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic...
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
* Cash Payment Method Will No Longer Be Accepted A Notice by the Patent and Trademark Office on 10/03/2017*
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21...
And this whole network has now been built in such a way that now even debit costs the same charge just as network fees
Open sourcing this might be a step in good faith and I mean, we have UPI where I live and it has 0 fees and trust me its crazy good. I personally wish that either everybody in the world could use UPI or pixis from brazil.
Provide me an article or some proof to this fact for me to comment further as currently we are at an disagreement on this thing which I hope we can turn into meaningful discussion.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street...
https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/news-2023/some-retail-sec...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gevkx8gyo
https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/no-cash-accepted...
https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/legal-news/do-you-have-the-right-t...
https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/payments-in-swe...
That's legal. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
Legal tender applies only to debt/creditor relationships.
> Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment in court for any monetary debt.
A country may separately require businesses to accept legal tender, if they feel like it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#Status_by_country would appear to indicate this distinction is very common in the developed world.
Having to buy a register / point of sale which can handle it
Hoping you employees don’t pocket a few bills here and there
Hoping you don’t get robbed
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
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?
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.
so this is a farewell post disguised as open source announcement?
https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments
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)
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
Because that's fundamentally what it's gonna wind up being.
Yes, in a manner of speaking it could be like that, except that stablecoins can be self-custodied, safely be sent to others, and be exchanged for other stablecoins and forms of money, etc. I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people.
I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people, like those who think Amazon is gonna make and promote a stablecoin they don't deeply control.
Even Tether freezes addresses. Amazon absolutely will.
> It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute…
That applies to a whole bunch of things they eventually gave up on. (Like https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-busi...)