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What percentage of people who walk into a business or go online to complete a transaction are able to send their payment via the lightning network compared to t

What percentage of people who walk into a business or go online to complete a transaction are able to send their payment via the lightning network compared to the percentage of people who walk in to do a transaction via Visa/Mastercard/Etc? The issue is Card payments and the networks they use. Doesn't matter if lightning settles transactions instantly if the customer wants to pay with Visa and Visa allows funds claw back for ~180 days. Normally a stores merchant account is kept open, so if a transaction is charged back a month later (and the bank and visa aggree with the chargeback) the money can be recovered from future sales. If the stores merchant account is closed because of "reasons" the payment provider can either use the funds the store has yet to cash out from the the payment provider as "insurance" against chargebacks until the deadline passes (at which case its safe to cash out) or start invoicing the store you just told to GTFO as a merchant to try and get the money back and then go recovery paths which is much more a nightmare for payment providers. I'm not saying I agree with the polices, just that I understand why they are in place, the payment providers are just covering their own asses at the end of the day.

TekMol 4y ago
At the moment, pretty much nobody is able to send payments via the lightning network. My question is about "what if". Would there be downsides? If the upsides outweigh the downsides, LN could slowly find its way into retail. Maybe by starting with some special use cases where speed, low fees, privacy or immutability are especially important.
- Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
  Customers like the ability to charge back if the product is faulty, not as advertised, or the retailer goes under. Heck its one of the advertised bonuses of using a credit card for purchases, You are spending the banks money so you are better protected against fraud/retailer bankruptcy. Customers with outstanding orders are often on the bottom of the list of creditors who get paid back when a company goes bust and even the companies themselves will often say in their final messages to customers to speak to their card company and issue a charge back for outstanding orders.
  - TekMol 4y ago
    They like it, but are they willing to pay for it? The vendor needs to factor in the costs induced by Stripe. That's 3% fee plus the danger of your account being frozen. How much is that? Maybe another 1%? So if the "price" to use Stripe is 4%, the vendor could offer their customers the same products for 2% less if they pay via lightning - and share the savings with their customers. Sounds like a good deal. I have bought something with my CC hundreds of times and never ever did a chargeback. On top of it, as a customer, I find credit cards annoying and scary. To get one, I have to get it physically delivered to my snail mail box. And everytime I pull that thing out, someone could photograph or memorize the numbers on it and cause me trouble.
    - Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
      I too found credit cards scary to begin with, but that was down to my own youthful idiocy. But these days not so much (As I would like to believe I am now more responsible with money than I was at 18). > I have to get it physically delivered to my snail mail box. Same here in the UK, however the cards are not delievered "activated", so you have to verify account details to enable to the card so prevents against thieft of the card in the mail (as even if it was stolen from the mail and activated, you will quickly contact the card issuer to say "Hey, where my card?" at which point the issuer will cancel the card and cancel any trasactions made on the card) > everytime I pull that thing out, someone could photograph or memorize the numbers on it and cause me trouble. Same could happen with Debit cards too, however the card number alone is useless without the EMV chip for in store transactions here in the UK (Mastercard are even phasing out the magnetic stripe completely[0] - My accounts are set to refuse magnetic stripe transactions unless I enable them via the banks app) and online transactions offer lower fee's if you validate the 3 digits on the back of the card and the address of the card holder, so most online stores will have for all 3 pieces of info (card number, the CVV, and the card holders address) before accepting the transaction. Making it harder to commit the fraud. My cards (which I recently had replaced as I misplaced my wallet, guess i'm not as responsible as I thought I was) all now have the card number on the back of the card (makes it hard to photograph the card number as the chip and number are onn opposite sides, so when you insert/tap the card into a reader the number is not facing you or anyone standing next to/behind you. Most of my cards support Apple Pay (The exception is my PayPal Business card which doesn't whoever I don't carry that card with me anyway) So most of the time I'm not getting my cards out of my wallet when I'm purchasing items in store (Prob the reason I misplaced my wallet, Its prob in the house SOMEWHERE...). But granted Apple Pay/Google Pay are not as widely used as the plastic cards shipped from the card issuers are. Replacing my cards was a piece of cake for me, granted I use more "modern banks" than the high street banks of old, so when I reported my cards as lost my bank issued me a temporary card to my phone so I could still do purchases while I waited for my new card to arrive (Not all banks do this, and the temp card had a max spend limit on it until my new card arrived). And on top of that the credit card has greater consumer protections than debit cards anyway if something were to happen. [0]: https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/magnetic-stripe/ https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/magnetic-s... EDIT: I forgot to say. Just because Credit cards have greater protections than Debit cards, that doesn't mean that debits cards have no protection at all.
- TomGullen 4y ago
  Consumers like the idea of chargeback and other legal protections. Crypto advocates say that you can add middle organisations to offer this, but then we've gone full circle and really there is no advantage.

TekMol 4y ago

At the moment, pretty much nobody is able to send payments via the lightning network. My question is about "what if". Would there be downsides? If the upsides outweigh the downsides, LN could slowly find its way into retail. Maybe by starting with some special use cases where speed, low fees, privacy or immutability are especially important.

Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
Customers like the ability to charge back if the product is faulty, not as advertised, or the retailer goes under. Heck its one of the advertised bonuses of using a credit card for purchases, You are spending the banks money so you are better protected against fraud/retailer bankruptcy. Customers with outstanding orders are often on the bottom of the list of creditors who get paid back when a company goes bust and even the companies themselves will often say in their final messages to customers to speak to their card company and issue a charge back for outstanding orders.
- TekMol 4y ago
  They like it, but are they willing to pay for it? The vendor needs to factor in the costs induced by Stripe. That's 3% fee plus the danger of your account being frozen. How much is that? Maybe another 1%? So if the "price" to use Stripe is 4%, the vendor could offer their customers the same products for 2% less if they pay via lightning - and share the savings with their customers. Sounds like a good deal. I have bought something with my CC hundreds of times and never ever did a chargeback. On top of it, as a customer, I find credit cards annoying and scary. To get one, I have to get it physically delivered to my snail mail box. And everytime I pull that thing out, someone could photograph or memorize the numbers on it and cause me trouble.
  - Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
    I too found credit cards scary to begin with, but that was down to my own youthful idiocy. But these days not so much (As I would like to believe I am now more responsible with money than I was at 18). > I have to get it physically delivered to my snail mail box. Same here in the UK, however the cards are not delievered "activated", so you have to verify account details to enable to the card so prevents against thieft of the card in the mail (as even if it was stolen from the mail and activated, you will quickly contact the card issuer to say "Hey, where my card?" at which point the issuer will cancel the card and cancel any trasactions made on the card) > everytime I pull that thing out, someone could photograph or memorize the numbers on it and cause me trouble. Same could happen with Debit cards too, however the card number alone is useless without the EMV chip for in store transactions here in the UK (Mastercard are even phasing out the magnetic stripe completely[0] - My accounts are set to refuse magnetic stripe transactions unless I enable them via the banks app) and online transactions offer lower fee's if you validate the 3 digits on the back of the card and the address of the card holder, so most online stores will have for all 3 pieces of info (card number, the CVV, and the card holders address) before accepting the transaction. Making it harder to commit the fraud. My cards (which I recently had replaced as I misplaced my wallet, guess i'm not as responsible as I thought I was) all now have the card number on the back of the card (makes it hard to photograph the card number as the chip and number are onn opposite sides, so when you insert/tap the card into a reader the number is not facing you or anyone standing next to/behind you. Most of my cards support Apple Pay (The exception is my PayPal Business card which doesn't whoever I don't carry that card with me anyway) So most of the time I'm not getting my cards out of my wallet when I'm purchasing items in store (Prob the reason I misplaced my wallet, Its prob in the house SOMEWHERE...). But granted Apple Pay/Google Pay are not as widely used as the plastic cards shipped from the card issuers are. Replacing my cards was a piece of cake for me, granted I use more "modern banks" than the high street banks of old, so when I reported my cards as lost my bank issued me a temporary card to my phone so I could still do purchases while I waited for my new card to arrive (Not all banks do this, and the temp card had a max spend limit on it until my new card arrived). And on top of that the credit card has greater consumer protections than debit cards anyway if something were to happen. [0]: https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/magnetic-stripe/ https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/magnetic-s... EDIT: I forgot to say. Just because Credit cards have greater protections than Debit cards, that doesn't mean that debits cards have no protection at all.
TomGullen 4y ago
Consumers like the idea of chargeback and other legal protections. Crypto advocates say that you can add middle organisations to offer this, but then we've gone full circle and really there is no advantage.