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I'm not sure that reasoning would apply to something like payment processing. It absolutely makes sense when you are manufacturing a physical good. No point in

I'm not sure that reasoning would apply to something like payment processing. It absolutely makes sense when you are manufacturing a physical good. No point in designing a thing that you might not be able to sell for very long, particularly when you're dealing with something like automobiles. Plus honestly, which car buyer wants less miles per gallon? Payment processing though is rather different. You can do it today and make some money, and tomorrow you can stop. It's obviously not quite so agile, but the point roughly holds. Unless Visa and Mastercard require years of payments from OF to pay for their costs of starting to do business with OF... there's no real point to not doing this now. They can stop later if needed without a real problem.

bko 5y ago
They'll preemptivly do it because the revenue is not a lot and the headache and worrying is not worth it. It's not black and white where something isn't allowed. There's likely more hoops you have to jump through. When it does get enforced its easier to just say we don't allow any transactions in that an even broader category than is currently being targeted. And there isn't a button that says "exclude all payments in category [X]" that they can click and the next day they're cut off. It takes time, especially in a giant organization where there might be different regulations based on the content, jurisdiction, etc. So it absolutely makes for them to cut it off preemptively.
- foerbert 5y ago
  I still don't see it. These laws aren't going to sneak up on them. It's not like they're going to have 12 hours notice to categorize and terminate all accounts in some category. Again it's not something that has much upfront cost nor do later products depend on the current decision. OF was pulling in about $400M/year. If law changes were a serious risk here, how are they making any money at all? At least two years are probably dependable here. If the payment processor can't be profitable processing $800M over two years for a single account, I don't see how that business would work at all.

bko 5y ago

They'll preemptivly do it because the revenue is not a lot and the headache and worrying is not worth it. It's not black and white where something isn't allowed. There's likely more hoops you have to jump through. When it does get enforced its easier to just say we don't allow any transactions in that an even broader category than is currently being targeted. And there isn't a button that says "exclude all payments in category [X]" that they can click and the next day they're cut off. It takes time, especially in a giant organization where there might be different regulations based on the content, jurisdiction, etc. So it absolutely makes for them to cut it off preemptively.

foerbert 5y ago
I still don't see it. These laws aren't going to sneak up on them. It's not like they're going to have 12 hours notice to categorize and terminate all accounts in some category. Again it's not something that has much upfront cost nor do later products depend on the current decision. OF was pulling in about $400M/year. If law changes were a serious risk here, how are they making any money at all? At least two years are probably dependable here. If the payment processor can't be profitable processing $800M over two years for a single account, I don't see how that business would work at all.