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Credit card is also bad. That does not make PayPal acceptable. It's frankly ridiculous that these are the only two widely supported options for international p
by mcv 4y ago
Credit card is also bad. That does not make PayPal acceptable.
It's frankly ridiculous that these are the only two widely supported options for international payment. It's easy to make something better, but somehow much of the world seems stuck with the two worst options.
- brazzy 4y ago> It's easy to make something better, but somehow much of the world seems stuck with the two worst options. You got some interesting cognitive dissonance there...
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoI don't think you know what cognitive dissonance actually is.
- hot_gril 4y agoIs it when I hear voices in my head?
- hot_gril 4y agoIt's not easy to make something better. Electronic payments are gonna be regulated and tracked to the fullest whether it's PayPal or someone else. The only digital solution is cryptocurrency, and love it or hate it, it has big hurdles.
- mcv 4y ago> It's not easy to make something better. Better solutions already exist. Just not internationally. And I frankly don't understand why.
- hot_gril 4y agoI haven't seen anything better that fulfills the same purpose in the US. You can't use Zelle like PayPal. If you use Venmo with a business, it's basically the same as Paypal (besides being owned by Paypal). Stripe has similar rules around credit card payments. This is because of regulations, not technical issues. Maybe the situation is better in certain countries, but who knows how long that'll last.
- mcv 4y agoYeah, if the US supported something decent, I'm sure most of the world would soon follow. Netherland unfortunately doesn't have that kind of pull. But the Dutch iDeal system for online payment is, as its name suggests, pretty much ideal. When I buy something (on Steam or GOG, for example), I select iDeal as payment method, then select my bank, then the shop redirects me to my own bank's website which processes the payment, and then redirects me back to the webshop which knows that the payment succeeded. The webshop doesn't have to know anything about me except which bank to redirect me to. Unfortunately it only supports Dutch banks, and lots of international webshops don't support it. To my bafflement, even lego.com doesn't support it, which is just plain weird (they intend to, they say, they just haven't gotten around to it yet in the 18 years that iDeal has been around). For interpersonal payments, rather than from a shop, you can send someone a payment request. The brandname that named the idea is Tikkie, an app from a major Dutch bank, but I think it can be used by anyone no matter what your bank is, and it uses iDeal for the payment. But every bank now has its own payment request system. You just send someone a link, and they can choose how to pay it. It's ridiculously simple, and it's all done through your own bank. No need to trust any third party with your payment information.
- hot_gril 4y agoThat all sounds similar to US payment processors. But you aren't exposed to the challenges unless you're a business.
- mcv 4y agoIf domestic payments in the US use a similar system, can we please make this work across borders? Because everything from the US seems to work with credit cards or PayPal instead.