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Payment friction. Anything +/- 0 by a little bit will be zero because there's huge friction costs in transferring money: + UI complexity, sign up + Transactio
by jariel 7y ago
Payment friction.
Anything +/- 0 by a little bit will be zero because there's huge friction costs in transferring money:
+ UI complexity, sign up
+ Transaction costs (VISA, fraud protection)
+ Financial accounting
+ Hosting the relevant financial data
+ Legal issues
- ghaff 7y agoAnd, arguably, mental transaction costs. Getting people to pay anything at all is a big hurdle to get over whether it's a penny, a dollar, or ten dollars. Clay Shirky wrote way back when that this was the main problem with micropayments and I'm mostly inclined to agree. (It's true that $1 digital music and video rentals for a few dollars were/are something of a thing. But people seem to generally prefer all you can eat subscriptions.) If people were really on board with micropayments, I suspect they could be made to work technically/financially.
- jariel 7y agoYes, definitely. 'Paying money' is not like the old days when you'd flip literally a few cents out of your pocket for some candy. Money transfer in tech comes with huge headaches across the board. Privacy, compliance, international taxation, VAT, risk, etc. etc..
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI like the way Apple Pay works, makes it feel very frictionless as a payer.
- simonh 7y agoThe OP means friction in the form of costs. Payments go through several hands, the payers bank, the payments networks, the payees bank and each of them incurs costs on the transaction.
- tzs 7y ago> + UI complexity, sign up + Transaction costs (VISA, fraud protection) + Financial accounting + Hosting the relevant financial data + Legal issues In particular, under legal issues: taxes. Sell something online to a person in city/state/country X, and you might be required by X to collect sales tax or VAT on the sale.