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I actually designed software that could integrate with existing POS systems (the really hard part) that allowed for interchange free commerce using a card or Ap

I actually designed software that could integrate with existing POS systems (the really hard part) that allowed for interchange free commerce using a card or Apple Pay integration. I showed it to an investor. His only response was, "This is a very fast way to end up dead." You don't fuck with monopolies that bring in hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in profit a year. People get killed for way less. On a secondary note, when I was working in payments, I once met the SVP of Payments for Wells Fargo. I got him drunk. He told me that when WF internally separated out their business units P&Ls, payments/interchange made up 64% of WF's total public Net Income.

serial_dev 4y ago
When I read "fast way to end up dead", I naively though as a company, meaning that you have no chance of getting traction and breaking into the market... I am still actually wondering if this would get you killed or you would face simply an uphill battle in the market and never get traction. In a sense it is similar to the two party system in the US. I wonder if there isn't a viable third party still today because people are so used to voting Republican or Democrat, and because all the institutions (including media) are set up in a way that makes it very hard to start a third party or because third parties that actually want to change the game are infiltrated and threatened behind the scenes.
- gsibble 4y ago
  In this case, he meant physically dead. A few years later, my life was threatened credibly by a billionaire I was doing business with and it opened my eyes that murder is just another part of corporate America (usually made to look like suicides).
CharlesW 4y ago
> You don't fuck with monopolies that bring in hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in profit a year. People get killed for way less. He didn't mean that a corporation would literally kill you, because that comes with the possibility of unimaginable risk. He meant that they had effectively-infinite resources to fight you for decades with an army of lawyers and politicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/visa-inc/summary?id=D000029689 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/visa-inc/summary?id=D000029... https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mastercard-inc/summary?id=D000022099 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mastercard-inc/summary?id=D...
- gsibble 4y ago
  No, he made it very clear they would kill me. I've had my life credibly threatened before over business in big deals. It comes with the territory and isn't as uncommon or unbelievable as people think.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  There is this naive modern believe that killing people is something exceptional and difficult. It's not. 1 out of 2 homicide is unsolved in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r... As for straight murder, it's the cause of death of 5 persons out of 100000 (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...). Diabetes is 20/100000 in comparison (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm). And that's mostly by people with no master plan for the killing in the first place. If you die, NCIS will not come to your house to do a full tv show like murder solving. They will send an average joe cop, probably eating a sandwich on the murder site putting his print and crumbs everywhere, he will suspect your close ones, and ask a bunch of questions, because that statistically the only thing that works well. If the killer is obvious, it's solved. If not, nobody will ever know.
  - gsibble 4y ago
    Correct. Not to mention when my life was credibly threatened in another business situation, they described in detail several other murders they had gotten away with and how easy it was. They made them all look like suicides and all were ruled suicides. Murder is just another part of big corporate business. He also made it clear (and demonstrated) he had very high connections at the FBI to make sure he would never be investigated. I wouldn't have believed it either until I experienced it first hand.
Shindi 4y ago
> payments/interchange made up 64% of WF's total public Net Income. This is wrong and not possible. WF is a public company so you can look up their financials: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WFC/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WFC/financials/ You can see that interest revenue > non interest revenue always so there is no way interchange can account for 64% of their revenue.

serial_dev 4y ago

When I read "fast way to end up dead", I naively though as a company, meaning that you have no chance of getting traction and breaking into the market... I am still actually wondering if this would get you killed or you would face simply an uphill battle in the market and never get traction. In a sense it is similar to the two party system in the US. I wonder if there isn't a viable third party still today because people are so used to voting Republican or Democrat, and because all the institutions (including media) are set up in a way that makes it very hard to start a third party or because third parties that actually want to change the game are infiltrated and threatened behind the scenes.

gsibble 4y ago
In this case, he meant physically dead. A few years later, my life was threatened credibly by a billionaire I was doing business with and it opened my eyes that murder is just another part of corporate America (usually made to look like suicides).

CharlesW 4y ago

> You don't fuck with monopolies that bring in hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in profit a year. People get killed for way less. He didn't mean that a corporation would literally kill you, because that comes with the possibility of unimaginable risk. He meant that they had effectively-infinite resources to fight you for decades with an army of lawyers and politicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/visa-inc/summary?id=D000029689 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/visa-inc/summary?id=D000029... https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mastercard-inc/summary?id=D000022099 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/mastercard-inc/summary?id=D...

gsibble 4y ago
No, he made it very clear they would kill me. I've had my life credibly threatened before over business in big deals. It comes with the territory and isn't as uncommon or unbelievable as people think.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
There is this naive modern believe that killing people is something exceptional and difficult. It's not. 1 out of 2 homicide is unsolved in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r... As for straight murder, it's the cause of death of 5 persons out of 100000 (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...). Diabetes is 20/100000 in comparison (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm). And that's mostly by people with no master plan for the killing in the first place. If you die, NCIS will not come to your house to do a full tv show like murder solving. They will send an average joe cop, probably eating a sandwich on the murder site putting his print and crumbs everywhere, he will suspect your close ones, and ask a bunch of questions, because that statistically the only thing that works well. If the killer is obvious, it's solved. If not, nobody will ever know.
- gsibble 4y ago
  Correct. Not to mention when my life was credibly threatened in another business situation, they described in detail several other murders they had gotten away with and how easy it was. They made them all look like suicides and all were ruled suicides. Murder is just another part of big corporate business. He also made it clear (and demonstrated) he had very high connections at the FBI to make sure he would never be investigated. I wouldn't have believed it either until I experienced it first hand.

Shindi 4y ago

> payments/interchange made up 64% of WF's total public Net Income. This is wrong and not possible. WF is a public company so you can look up their financials: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WFC/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WFC/financials/ You can see that interest revenue > non interest revenue always so there is no way interchange can account for 64% of their revenue.