3 ms·

Can someone explain how this might me made resistant to payment blockades erected by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and the like?

EGreg 6y ago
What are those?
- endgame 6y ago
  Things like "Operation Choke Point", I assume. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/05/24/operation-choke-point/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... Beyond that, if a major payment provider doesn't like you, you're basically sunk. Horror stories about businesses withering while their PayPal accounts are frozen are almost as old as the WWW itself.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Not to mention some business models are just outright not possible because of the payment gateway mafia. If you're in the adult business, you pay extortionate fees irrespective of your fraud rate. If you're in legal businesses that are illegal in some areas, you might not be able to transact at all -- even in the legal areas.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      If your business does not adhere to all US laws and regulation, despite the fact that you do not do business in the US, you are probably out of luck. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.5303143 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.53031...
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  It’s when all major payment processors collude to prevent money from reaching certain businesses. Since they’re essentially a small set of players constituting a duopoly (Visa and MasterCard) or oligopoly once you pull in the other players, there’s not much you can do about it. Their power constitutes a threat to freedom of speech, since they’re also commonly targeted by activists to “deplatform” those they disagree with. The big example is when the credit card companies blocked Wikileaks in 2010: https://www.rawstory.com/2010/12/mastercard-visa-licenses-revoked-iceland-wikileaks/ https://www.rawstory.com/2010/12/mastercard-visa-licenses-re... A more recent example from 2020: https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-america-visa-blacklisted-my-business-and-my-family-for-building-gab/ https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-am...
matdehaast 6y ago
Great question. For low value payments those payment rails are incredibly expensive. That’s why it operates on the Interledger network. Interledger is a payments clearing protocol modeled on IP where settlement is arranged through peering relationships. It is incredible good at low value payments. Our next work in the space is beginning to open it up to Retail style payments through Open Payments[1]. Initially we are targeting mini payments (<$5). As these are poorly served currently with traditional options due to high fees. However our final goal is much bigger. The real problem we see in digital payments is not MasterCard, Visa and PayPal but Apple, Google and Facebook. We had OpenId but we ended up only getting login with Apple, Facebook and Google. The same is going for payments. We believe Open Payments is a viable alternative to provide an open payments system that is not big tech. [1] openpayments.dev
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Can someone explain how this might me made resistant to payment blockades erected by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and the like? I'm kind of surprised nobody has automated using cryptocurrency for this. It's possible to buy e.g. Bitcoin with a credit card from a hundred places (right?), so somebody creates a website that takes the user's credit card info, passes it through to any Bitcoin seller and then receives the Bitcoin and transfers the value to the target. From the user's perspective they just paid the target with a credit card. The party actually charging the credit card is the Bitcoin seller, who isn't affiliated with the proxy transaction at all and could be transparently swapped out for anyone who sells cryptocurrency and accepts credit cards without the seller even being aware of the indirection. You could presumably do the same thing with any asset whatsoever. The user gets a charge on their card for gold bullion or baseball cards, which get shipped to the payment exchange and then liquidated again with the proceeds going to the target. But that's probably just unnecessary overhead compared to using cryptocurrency. If there are laws against this in some countries, the site itself would only be glue code running on a webserver, so couldn't it just be located in any place where doing this is legal?
- 6510 6y ago
  I've pondered variations of this many times. If you ignore complexity some truly fascinating formulas can be had. You can for example create tons of value out of thin air by having traders express an interest in items if they are sold below x. A baseball card could have an infinite number of partial owners and automatically change "hands". Some just want to trade them and are not interested in physically holding onto them (if not worried) while others just want to stick the postal stamps in books and show off. If you are for whatever reason unable to send it to the new 51% owner on his request you automatically refund the entire item at market value.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > somebody creates a website that takes the user's credit card info, passes it through to any Bitcoin seller and then receives the Bitcoin and transfers the value to the target Two things go wrong: - credit transactions are reversible and bitcoin isn't, so the middle party gets stiffed by fraud - you have to have a merchant account to take credit payments, and the networks will blacklist you if you do things like this

EGreg 6y ago

What are those?

endgame 6y ago
Things like "Operation Choke Point", I assume. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/05/24/operation-choke-point/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... Beyond that, if a major payment provider doesn't like you, you're basically sunk. Horror stories about businesses withering while their PayPal accounts are frozen are almost as old as the WWW itself.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Not to mention some business models are just outright not possible because of the payment gateway mafia. If you're in the adult business, you pay extortionate fees irrespective of your fraud rate. If you're in legal businesses that are illegal in some areas, you might not be able to transact at all -- even in the legal areas.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    If your business does not adhere to all US laws and regulation, despite the fact that you do not do business in the US, you are probably out of luck. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.5303143 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.53031...
throwawaysea 6y ago
It’s when all major payment processors collude to prevent money from reaching certain businesses. Since they’re essentially a small set of players constituting a duopoly (Visa and MasterCard) or oligopoly once you pull in the other players, there’s not much you can do about it. Their power constitutes a threat to freedom of speech, since they’re also commonly targeted by activists to “deplatform” those they disagree with. The big example is when the credit card companies blocked Wikileaks in 2010: https://www.rawstory.com/2010/12/mastercard-visa-licenses-revoked-iceland-wikileaks/ https://www.rawstory.com/2010/12/mastercard-visa-licenses-re... A more recent example from 2020: https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-america-visa-blacklisted-my-business-and-my-family-for-building-gab/ https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-am...

matdehaast 6y ago

Great question. For low value payments those payment rails are incredibly expensive. That’s why it operates on the Interledger network. Interledger is a payments clearing protocol modeled on IP where settlement is arranged through peering relationships. It is incredible good at low value payments. Our next work in the space is beginning to open it up to Retail style payments through Open Payments[1]. Initially we are targeting mini payments (<$5). As these are poorly served currently with traditional options due to high fees. However our final goal is much bigger. The real problem we see in digital payments is not MasterCard, Visa and PayPal but Apple, Google and Facebook. We had OpenId but we ended up only getting login with Apple, Facebook and Google. The same is going for payments. We believe Open Payments is a viable alternative to provide an open payments system that is not big tech. [1] openpayments.dev

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> Can someone explain how this might me made resistant to payment blockades erected by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and the like? I'm kind of surprised nobody has automated using cryptocurrency for this. It's possible to buy e.g. Bitcoin with a credit card from a hundred places (right?), so somebody creates a website that takes the user's credit card info, passes it through to any Bitcoin seller and then receives the Bitcoin and transfers the value to the target. From the user's perspective they just paid the target with a credit card. The party actually charging the credit card is the Bitcoin seller, who isn't affiliated with the proxy transaction at all and could be transparently swapped out for anyone who sells cryptocurrency and accepts credit cards without the seller even being aware of the indirection. You could presumably do the same thing with any asset whatsoever. The user gets a charge on their card for gold bullion or baseball cards, which get shipped to the payment exchange and then liquidated again with the proceeds going to the target. But that's probably just unnecessary overhead compared to using cryptocurrency. If there are laws against this in some countries, the site itself would only be glue code running on a webserver, so couldn't it just be located in any place where doing this is legal?

6510 6y ago
I've pondered variations of this many times. If you ignore complexity some truly fascinating formulas can be had. You can for example create tons of value out of thin air by having traders express an interest in items if they are sold below x. A baseball card could have an infinite number of partial owners and automatically change "hands". Some just want to trade them and are not interested in physically holding onto them (if not worried) while others just want to stick the postal stamps in books and show off. If you are for whatever reason unable to send it to the new 51% owner on his request you automatically refund the entire item at market value.
pjc50 6y ago
> somebody creates a website that takes the user's credit card info, passes it through to any Bitcoin seller and then receives the Bitcoin and transfers the value to the target Two things go wrong: - credit transactions are reversible and bitcoin isn't, so the middle party gets stiffed by fraud - you have to have a merchant account to take credit payments, and the networks will blacklist you if you do things like this