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Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks

263 points by pranay01 1y ago

netcrash 1y ago
The modified scrolling on the website is the worst!
- nielsbot 1y ago
  custom scrolling: not even once
- messe 1y ago
  Why do designers do this?
- blain 1y ago
  I usually agree with the sentiment but for some reason this implementation is so smooth on my old laptop I like it.
  - zachrip 1y ago
    trackpad?
- voidUpdate 1y ago
  Unless I'm on a touchscreen device, I never want my scrolling to have inertia. So just leave it on the default behaviour. I don't understand why you would put in the effort to make the scrolling feel worse
soared 1y ago
Super interesting read! I work in payments for context and see tons of different payment methods every day. People tend to find a payment method they like, and really only ever use that one method. It’s very hard to get someone to switch - even if an alternative is better. It’s just so ingrained to swipe that same card, click the same autofill button, etc. Digital wallets did somehow over come this, and those would be a super challenging but potentially valid approach #4. If Zenobia is in Apple Pay, google pay, link, etc it’s natural and easy for customers, saves money for merchants, and disrupts visa/etc without disrupting anything else (ie making people us QR codes). Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it. Or do like pix and give everyone $1500, but only if they use Zenobia :)
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it. I don't think so. A Jony Ive will not be in a position to solve the actual problem - what use is a non-universal payment mechanism to consumers and to retailers? I read the linked page and don't see answers to the main adoption problem: how is the purchaser supposed to pay? 1. Purchaser has to download the app? Okay, but purchaser already has a few equivalents on their phone (Pix, etc) - added friction! 2. How does the App get money to make payment? Purchaser has to fund a new account? Okay, but that is more friction! 3. How does merchant accept the payment? Do they need a new payment terminal? Must their payment terminal be updated with new software? Even more friction! I've worked in the EMV space, even quite recently, and merchants do not want to update and will only do so when forced to. Any new payment system (QR codes, etc) needs around 5 years (maybe more) before it is universally accepted. The best way, where I am, to rollout a new payment terminal is to pitch it to the banks, who then offer it to the merchants who have accounts with them. Adding new functionality to EMV terminals is a lot easier these days, since most of the new terminals are Android, and the vendors have app stores for third parties to write software for these terminals (Pax has Maxstore, etc). Now, maybe I missed it, but I did not see this application on Maxstore, or some of the other stores. I could have missed it, because these stores have literally thousands of payment applications. The long and short of it is, you came up with a non-universal payment method, and predictably it did not take off.
  - quesomaster9000 1y ago
    I'd argue that the problem is that QR codes shouldn't be an 'app' problem, and yes there's a chicken-egg problem with PoS terminals verifying incoming bank payments but that's a separate issue. If you want to do account-to-account payments you can show the customer the account/routing number, amount & invoice ID - but obviously that's high friction and the customer needs to login to their account and send a payment with lots of manual data entry. Making yet another app, adding a financial intermediary, requiring you to link your bank account - these aren't solving the friction points. We already have bank apps, when I scan a QR code in an industry-wide format it should ask me or confirm which bank app to open and pre-fill all the payment information. So from my perspective, the problem is that FedNow in the US, and Open Banking in the UK - they could have just dictated "Banks must support EPC QR, or EMV QR code scanning and deep-links", and QR code payments would happen very quickly - even with NFC/RFID you can do passive scanning to achieve the same thing. * Choose Account * Confirm details * Press send That's about as easy as you can get for push payments, with a real industry-wide standard for communicating payment intents via NFC/QR. But both FedNow and UK OpenBanking are structured in a way which requires friction, and onerous regulation, through their clunky APIs - meaning you can't actually solve that problem on your own.
ceedaxp 1y ago
US consumers are too conservative in the way they expect payments to work—checks are still in circulation and “swipe & sign” has barely been put to rest (has it?). Any system like this would require adoption by a few diverse and large-scale retail institutions to make it worthwhile for consumers to use. Or else it would be a mere alternative to “PayPal me”…
- thayne 1y ago
  It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it. I think for a new payment system to catch on it needs to either have a significant benefit for both payers and merchants, or be pushed by government policy (for example, require all merchants that meet some criteria to accept the new form of payment).
  - toast0 1y ago
    > It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it. I agree that both parties need a reason to adopt a new payment method... But the reason can't be only that there's a lot of merchants/customers that have it ... If there's benefits for enough participants, reach can drive adoption for those who don't care about the benefits, but you've got to have some material benefits to get people started. It's got to have a good experience, too. But from this rant, it seems like they were trying to be a middle man for instant bank payments... I don't see the value of that as a purchaser when I can use a debit card. For the merchant, running a debit card takes a small fee, but anything that needs someone to scan a QR code takes a lot of time.
  - _1tem 1y ago
    One way to solve this problem is to have a certain commodity require the new payment method. If AWS for example created a new currency/payment method and made it the sole accepted way to pay for servers it could very quickly catch on as others adopt. Look how “Sign in with Google” became the default. I’m pretty sure the main reason Apple/Google/Microsoft haven’t done this already is because they would be directly competing with the US government. The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.
ameliaquining 1y ago
Two of the linked GitHub repositories don't have licenses.
bruce511 1y ago
When you start at the wrong premise, you typically end up in the wrong place. The premise is that credit cards (visa / Mastercard) is broken. When actually it works really well. For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Merchants might pay 3%, (and ultimately yes, that's in the price of goods) but checkout "just works". They're in the "get paid" business, not the "teach customer new system" business. They'll accept new payment options (which the POS) just provides. But they don't drive the market. Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken.
- sneak 1y ago
  > Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Just like tariffs, right? Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy.
  - Tor3 1y ago
    It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive.
    - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      how is cash too expensive?? huh?
      - Tor3 1y ago
        _Handling_ cash is expensive. I never thought of that until my SO started working in a shop. To and from the bank, with stacks of coins and notes.. and there's presumably much more than that for larger firms. In general I rely my statement on what merchants themselves are saying. Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. "It's too expensive. It reduces our bottom line." That kind of thing. When I look around I see "Cards only" a lot of places.
poopsmithe 1y ago
[flagged]
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
  After a laggy scroll led to me being flash-banged and closing the tab, I couldn't agree more.
poopsmithe 1y ago
I'm calling it-- 5 years and this will be vaporware. We live in a world where you have to 1) compete with VISA, Mastercard and 2) compete with Bitcoin Lightning Network.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- OutOfHere 1y ago
  It helps to get clued into what happened with stablecoin legalization and interest this year. Without this awareness one risks looking very foolish.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
  I was an early adopter of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. If my memory serves correctly, I made one (real) payment with it. That was almost 10 years ago now, and I haven't even seen the chance to use it since.
  - littlecranky67 1y ago
    Mostly because it is still innovated upon. Async payments (offline receival) and trampoline payments are in the pipeline, allowing true self-custodial wallets on the smartphone. That aside, I only use lightning with my Bitcoin-friends to settle stuff for fun. I live in a city of 300k people, and there are 3 restaurants that accept Lightning payments. Right now it is in its infancy, but I see Lightning as the only solution to actually enable web micro-payments (which failed as a standard because no credit card can provide .10 to .20 cent payments due to high fees)
- godelski 1y ago
  Considering they are closing shop, I don't think you need to wait 5 years. Did you even read the article? They say it in the opening of the second paragraph...
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I would bet more transactions are done in exchange for literal home-grown vegetables this month than over Bitcoin Lightning Network, yet no one claims a payment method needs to compete with bartered vegetables.
OutOfHere 1y ago
[flagged]
- squigz 1y ago
  How long have we been hearing that cryptocurrencies are going to save us from our existing payment systems?
  - OutOfHere 1y ago
    I do not think most people are even slightly familiar with what transpired this year with regard to stablecoins. The biggest players that move money are going forward with it. This means Amazon, Walmart, and numerous other big players. They don't like paying credit card companies, and why should they. It's going to be a game changer.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      If you want an Amazon stablecoin, fund an Amazon gift card with an ACH. (They already offer this, and they love it, as it bypasses the credit card companies. I often get offered a bonus for recharging this way.) Because that's fundamentally what it's gonna wind up being.
      - OutOfHere 1y ago
        It's not about what I want. It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute, and what is already legal. Yes, in a manner of speaking it could be like that, except that stablecoins can be self-custodied, safely be sent to others, and be exchanged for other stablecoins and forms of money, etc. I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        > except that stablecoins can be self-custodied I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people, like those who think Amazon is gonna make and promote a stablecoin they don't deeply control. Even Tether freezes addresses. Amazon absolutely will. > It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute… That applies to a whole bunch of things they eventually gave up on. (Like https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-business-robot-discontinued-refunds https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-busi...)
protocolture 1y ago
This sounds like a post mortem disguised as marketing material.
OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
This is what product market fit looks like; everyone is trashing various pieces of Zenobia, but it's still getting upvoted because we all want the solution.
- Copenjin 1y ago
  A solution to what? Serious question, I don't have any issue with the current model. Or are you referring to recent events?
  - kennywinker 1y ago
    The problem of paying 1-3% of every purchase to credit card companies, causing everything to cost 1-3% more.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      Are merchants going to charge different prices depending on your payment method? Or stop taking visa/MasterCard entirely? I don't see either one of those happening.
      - kennywinker 1y ago
        So, you don’t believe that a non-governmental tax on every transaction causes prices to rise? Because you’d be in disagreement with probably every economist ever. Or are you just saying change is impossible so why bother?
      - orthecreedence 1y ago
        > Are merchants going to charge different prices depending on your payment method? They are barred from doing so by credit card companies. That's why many smaller shops have "cash preferred" signs.
  - scotty79 1y ago
    To duopoly exploiting customers? Europe knocked down transfer fees to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit card. All fees for the merchant sum up to something around 1%. So anything on top of that, that Visa customers pay in US is pure exploitation. And US government isn't doing anything so people see alternate solutions for this problem.
nima999 1y ago
I totally disagree with “We proposed merchants "split the difference" in fee savings with their customer, giving customers ~1% in at-checkout "cashback". But this is just a worse version of credit card rewards.” As a shopper, if I know that a SMB is saving 1% or even 2% on merchant fees, I would gladly choose that option, even if I miss out on rewards for that purchase.
- nottorp 1y ago
  The thing is, Visa and MC are doing just fine(tm) on countries where their cut is limited by law to less than 1%. Everything else is just pure profit, no matter who runs it.
  - rprend 1y ago
    There are no countries which limit Visa and Mastercard’s cut. Visa’s cut is the same ~.14% in the US, Europe, and everywhere else.
blitzar 1y ago
> cheaper payments ... Zenobia Pay charges 1%. 5x higher than they would be allowed to charge in the EU. > accept pay-by-bank I am reminded of tech bros inventing the bus in 2025
- scotty79 1y ago
  They make sense on US market but I had a chuckle when they mentioned European brands giving them cold shoulder. This problem is solved in Europe through legislative action.
- rprend 1y ago
  Where do you get 5X? European interchange is regulated to .3-.4%, the network fees are the same as the US (.1-.2%) and then the payment service provider takes their fee. Online card processing in the EU costs around 1%.
jatins 1y ago
the home page says "ZENOBIA PAY IS NO LONGER ACTIVE" so this is a farewell post disguised as open source announcement?
- kennywinker 1y ago
  It’s both? Giving up and opening the code up. Most companies should do this. Why throw away all that work and effort if it could be useful to someone else.
bklw 1y ago
The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.
- kennywinker 1y ago
  Maybe. But the 39 billion in profits visa made last year suggests they make a fair bit more than that stuff costs.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance Visa and Mastercard’s pre-tax income margins for the quarter ending on 30 June were 62% and 57% respectively [1][2]. That is $10bn a quarter in absent competition. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/V/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/V/financials/ $6.33 on 10.2bn [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MA/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MA/financials/ 4.67 on 8.13bn
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
godelski 1y ago
What the fuck is with the comments here? Guys, it is a postmortem. So you all are complaining about the scrolling and accusing it of being advertising or an announcement? Frankly, I find this admirable and want to encourage these kinds of things. Guys gave it a shot, failed, and are putting their work out there. They are communicating why they think they failed and what they think would help someone pick up the mantel. What did you all want? Them to just die in quiet and all that code disappear? Hell, their READMEs have more documentation than most of the open source projects out there. What happened to that hacker mentality? That belief in an open source world, even if as just a pipe dream. To me it looks like they still care about their dream but realized they can't make it happen. They aren't asking for investment and their website says they are inactive, so what makes this advertising? FFS do we have to assume everything is done in bad faith? You don't advertise by giving your competition a leg up. If this gets them investment, who cares, the result is the same. Code and information is out there, you can't take that back. Honestly, I don't care even if the code was garbage (I don't know if it is or isn't), I'll respect anyone that releases their code instead of letting it die with the business. It's just a better outcome, so why are you all complaining?
thunfischtoast 1y ago
Interesting read. I'd suggest next time choosing a name that does not sound close to Xenophobia :) anyway, good luck on your further journey
- alsetmusic 1y ago
  This was my first thought as well. It reads like a dog-whistle at first glance.
Charon77 1y ago
But they're no longer active as mentioned on site https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments
ninalanyon 1y ago
In Norway there is already a low fee processor called BankAxept. It has made it practical for shops to sell even the cheapest item and accept payment by card without losing money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept
- laurencerowe 1y ago
  This seems to have happened in the UK now too, though all bank debit cards have been Visa Debit since 2009 or so. I think fees are now solely percentage based and close enough to bank cash handling fees that there's no longer any downside to accepting card payments for small transactions.
albertdessaint 1y ago
Interesting read, I searched if another startup got this market right, it seems truelayer did using open banking for online payment ($700m valuation) https://truelayer.com/ https://truelayer.com/
- _1tem 1y ago
  Many countries in Europe have pay-by-bank solutions that work really well.
hexo 1y ago
That scrolling. No way.
kalev 1y ago
Are these live private keys? https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf4b62f91479a46c87c1559/terraform/terraform.tfstate.backup#L52 https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf...
- fhars 1y ago
  These probably were live keys before they shuttered the project, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898330
- rprend 1y ago
  oops
olliem36 1y ago
Cofounder of Lopay here - we have the same mission: offer free payments to businesses, but we're working with existing networks to do this. QR code payments are particularly hard in countries like US and UK as you're trying to change consumer behaviour. I tried doing this in 2014 and again in 2019 - both failed to gain traction (aside from during COVID). In the UK it's possible to accept card payments for 0% via Lopay, but only if you spend your earnings on our card (essentially, passing the fees onto the merchant/supplier you're paying). We're launching the same proposition in the US soon too. If you don't use our card, our headline rate is 0.79%. We're a lean team of just 36, supporting over 40k weekly transacting businesses with £1B+ in card processing. If anyone reading this is interested in this space, we're hiring and on the look out for driven people to join us!
- panja 1y ago
  Just curious, why is there an extra per transaction charge for tap to pay? Is there more that goes into that?
- wat10000 1y ago
  QR codes feel like such a step backwards compared to NFC. The UX with current mobile OSes is not good. And if you require an app, or even worse an active data connection, well, I much prefer a quick double-click of my phone’s side button and then putting it near the payment terminal. And I’m really skeptical about security. NFC is vulnerable to relay attacks and QR codes can be secured by using one-time codes or rolling time-based codes, but showing a bright high contrast “scan this to take my money” image in public feels very wrong.
  - lan321 1y ago
    I couldn't get a wallet app to work with GrapheneOS, so for me, QR codes are better, but they feel like they have different use cases. I like QR codes in mail invoices (very common in CH), I'd like NFC in a shop if I could use it.
    - gunalx 1y ago
_1tem 1y ago
While almost every other major economy in the world has developed their own government-mandated low-fee payment network, the United States is a corporate oligarchy. Hurrah for the free market.
FabHK 1y ago
Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete not to mention that basically only the US has these high credit card interchange fees of 2-3%. EU & UK cap it at 0.3% (0.2% for debit cards), and the rest of the world are closer to EU than US fees, if I understand correctly. The power of the free market.
- voldacar 1y ago
  Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete to blame these fees on "the power of the free market" when the visa / mastercard duopoly exists due to regulations making the entry barrier to creating a new card network essentially infinite
  - TehCorwiz 1y ago
    I think that was parent’s point. That the US does not have as free a market.
    - randallsquared 1y ago
      > EU & UK cap it suggests that was not the GP's point.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    I don't think it's due to regulations. It's just a natural monopoly due to network effects. Any new entrant has to convince hundreds of payment processors and retailers to accept their cards before anyone even has them. Regulations are a trivial barrier compared to that.
  - abirch 1y ago
    Anyone is free to use discover and it works for most merchants in the USA. American Express leverages the fact that most consumers don’t care what the merchant is charged
- dzikimarian 1y ago
  Yes - entire cost of processing trx including all intermediaries in EU is around 1%. Less if you are huge. Unlikely they were able to beat it.
asdf333 1y ago
ngl i read it as zenophobia pay
codedokode 1y ago
What I need is not lower fee cards, but anonymous pre-paid debit cards that do not allow linking purchases to a person and profiling people. Until that appears, I will use cash only.
- irusensei 1y ago
  Thats very hard to pull off due to draconian guidelines imposed by unelected shadow governments.
- WorldPeas 1y ago
  does privacy-dot-com not do this? (this is a genuine question)
  - tossit444 1y ago
    The cards they give are mostly anonymous, but you still need to give privacy.com your ID, credit card, etc.
- Stevvo 1y ago
  You know anti money laundering laws make that impossible, right?
aus10d 1y ago
The post is really interesting. Sorry it didn't work out for you guys. Thanks for open sourcing the code. The world REALLY needs better/faster alternatives to the big payment processors
_1tem 1y ago
Something weird happens whenever someone tries to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard mob. Even in this post, the founders alluded to being "not well connected enough". Also look at how Plaid's acquisition by Visa was cancelled by the DOJ on antitrust claims but then Plaid dropped its plans to build a pay-by-bank network. Makes no sense when compared to the lawsuits filed and dismissed in 2024 and recently July 2025 claiming that Apple tried to build a payment network but were stopped by Visa/Mastercard.
- rprend 1y ago
  I appreciate you looking out for my well being, but really there was nothing shady here. We weren’t forced out by a Visa mob or something like that. I actually wish that were the case, because that would mean that we were growing! We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious. But it’s not like there was some shadowy Visa conspiracy. We received pre seed investment from institutional investors and built a pay-by-bank network entirely fine without anybody stopping us
  - warkdarrior 1y ago
    > We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious. So instead of competing on merit by improving the value offered to merchants, your concern is to become connected enough to have the merchants switch to you in spite of "dubious value"??
    - BlimpSpike 1y ago
      If you read the article they do give merchants more value in the form of 2% lower fees. It's just that that's not enough.
  - _1tem 1y ago
    Thanks for the clarification in your particular case. No offence, but you were then probably not big enough to matter. There is plenty evidence of shadowy forces shutting down payment systems, however, just look at Marc Andreessen's public statements about crypto founders he invested in getting debanked.
xeromal 1y ago
Zenophobia
- rprend 1y ago
  nooooo zenobia is an ancient queen
FredPret 1y ago
Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure. I can securely complete transactions and subscriptions with ~anyone on the planet in mere seconds. But holy cow do they have large margins. 40-50%! The profit growth charts on these two are a sight to behold. http://valustox.com/MA http://valustox.com/MA http://valustox.com/V http://valustox.com/V The situation is simply begging for disruption.
- SteveNuts 1y ago
  It's amazing how it wasn't that long ago that you'd walk into an establishment and ask if they accept cards instead of cash only. Going into rural areas it's still not a 100% given that all places will accept cards.
  - jvergeldedios 1y ago
    Even more interesting is the small establishments that skipped over credit cards straight into Venmo/Zelle.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    There was even a place in Silicon Valley would not accept anything but cash, but I haven't been there in 4 years so don't know if its still the case
- crote 1y ago
  > Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure. A lot of that is smoke and mirrors. They give a very fast pinky promise of payment, but it usually takes several days to become irrevocable. Similarly, it has taken decades for them to implement any form of genuine security, and even today the main form of fraud protection is... simply having the merchant pay for it. The most impressive part is how they managed to stay this popular, despite being built on fundamentally flawed concepts.
  - rprend 1y ago
jrm4 1y ago
Wild how far down I had to scroll to even see "cryptocurrency" mentioned. Normally, I'm not a fan of always relying on incentives, but you can't begin to tackle this problem without understanding, and being grossly open about the fact that it's almost certainly not a "tech capability/efficiency" problem, but a (naturally) greedy financial sector company problem.
amadeuspagel 1y ago
Istanbul has a card that you can use to pay for some things like public transit and have to use to pay for public bathrooms (because that's so cheap that if you paid with credit card, the fee would more expensive than the payment). Maybe this is a way to break the credit card duopoly: offer something (like public bathrooms) that requires your card, and then try to expand it from there.
- yobbo 1y ago
  Many cities have rechargeable public transport cards. Famous Japanese example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica The plan: 1) Build correct and cryptographically sound open protocol for NFC cash-cards 2) Offer tech to public transport (as free open source) 3) Boom. Millions of users of an open payments system
robertpohl 1y ago
What many people are missing is what is in the fees. Consumer protection and risk mitigation. If you are dealing with "cash" payments, like A2A or crypto, there are no consumer protection. Not even auth and capture flows. These are basic needs in a transactional commerce system, which the card companies provide.
derrickrburns 1y ago
The failure of the Zenobia Pay encodes much of the REAL value of Mastercard and Visa: 1. A global, enforceable rulebook + dispute court. They standardize how authorization, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, retrievals, representments, reason codes, and evidence work—and they arbitrate when parties fight. That governance is why a corner bodega and a transnational airline can both accept the same credential. (Read the rulebooks; they’re huge, living specs.) 2. Credible liability commitments that change customer behavior. Zero-liability and liability-shift regimes make consumers fearless and pressure merchants to adopt secure tech (EMV, 3-DS). Fearless buyers = higher conversion. That demand-side boost is the engine of card commerce. 3. Tokenized, portable identity for payments. Network tokens (EMVCo) and wallet provisioning (Apple Pay/Google Pay via DPANs) are the reason card data can live safely in phones, browsers, and vaults. This reduces breach externalities and keeps the credential working when plastic changes. That’s not ACH. 4. Compliance offload and ecosystem discipline. PCI exists so the brands don’t directly police every merchant’s infosec day-to-day—yet they still set the bar and yank privileges when needed. It’s governance as a service. 5. Programmable payout rails on the same credential. They’re not just purchase networks anymore. Push-to-card (Visa Direct/Mastercard Send) rides the acceptance footprint for disbursements, wage advances, gig payouts, and remittances—instantly, to billions of cards. That makes the card a universal endpoint for money-in and money-out. 6. Regulatory navigation and durability. Interchange caps and business-rule constraints (EU IFR; U.S. Durbin/Reg II) didn’t kill them; they adapted by shifting economics across scheme fees, value-added services, and routing. Survivability under hostile policy is part of the value. 7. They own the “choice architecture.” Historically, anti-steering rules protected fee levels; those were curtailed, but the lesson stands: control over how credentials are presented and preferred at checkout is leverage. (See the AmEx case for the legal theory on two-sided markets and steering.) What they don’t do (important) • They don’t issue credit or carry most fraud losses—that’s issuers. Networks set rules and move bits; issuers/acquirers take primary financial exposure and then sling chargebacks through the network’s process. (Still: the rules are the value.) • They aren’t the only rails that can scale: account-to-account can win when the state or banks coordinate (Pix, UPI, iDEAL). Those systems prove rails alone can beat cards on price and UX—if you also deliver governance and adoption. Where they’re vulnerable next (and already hedging) • A2A/instant schemes (Pix, UPI, iDEAL) are re-wiring consumer habits. If U.S. open banking + FedNow/RTP ever gets real UX and liability parity, cards will feel it. Meanwhile, Visa/MC are buying into open banking to stay the orchestration layer (Visa–Tink; Mastercard–Finicity). • Checkout is being intermediated by wallets and platforms. Apple/Google own the front door; card brands keep the credential alive via network tokens, but UX power is shifting up-stack. Tokenization keeps them relevant; control of the UI does not necessarily stay with them. • Policy pressure keeps grinding down interchange/steering constraints. They can adapt, but the rent skim is under scrutiny—again. The blunt summary Visa and Mastercard don’t win because they’re the fastest rail or the cheapest. They win because they govern trust at scale: a portable identity (token), a standardized contract (rules), and a credible promise about who pays when things go wrong (liability). That cocktail reliably boosts conversion for merchants and confidence for consumers. Until an alternative can match all four—rail + rules + identity + liability—cards remain the default operating system for commerce.

263 points by pranay01 1y ago

netcrash 1y ago

The modified scrolling on the website is the worst!

nielsbot 1y ago
custom scrolling: not even once
messe 1y ago
Why do designers do this?
blain 1y ago
I usually agree with the sentiment but for some reason this implementation is so smooth on my old laptop I like it.
- zachrip 1y ago
  trackpad?
voidUpdate 1y ago
Unless I'm on a touchscreen device, I never want my scrolling to have inertia. So just leave it on the default behaviour. I don't understand why you would put in the effort to make the scrolling feel worse

soared 1y ago

Super interesting read! I work in payments for context and see tons of different payment methods every day. People tend to find a payment method they like, and really only ever use that one method. It’s very hard to get someone to switch - even if an alternative is better. It’s just so ingrained to swipe that same card, click the same autofill button, etc. Digital wallets did somehow over come this, and those would be a super challenging but potentially valid approach #4. If Zenobia is in Apple Pay, google pay, link, etc it’s natural and easy for customers, saves money for merchants, and disrupts visa/etc without disrupting anything else (ie making people us QR codes). Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it. Or do like pix and give everyone $1500, but only if they use Zenobia :)

lelanthran 1y ago
> Tough problem. You need a Jony Ive on your team to help solve it. I don't think so. A Jony Ive will not be in a position to solve the actual problem - what use is a non-universal payment mechanism to consumers and to retailers? I read the linked page and don't see answers to the main adoption problem: how is the purchaser supposed to pay? 1. Purchaser has to download the app? Okay, but purchaser already has a few equivalents on their phone (Pix, etc) - added friction! 2. How does the App get money to make payment? Purchaser has to fund a new account? Okay, but that is more friction! 3. How does merchant accept the payment? Do they need a new payment terminal? Must their payment terminal be updated with new software? Even more friction! I've worked in the EMV space, even quite recently, and merchants do not want to update and will only do so when forced to. Any new payment system (QR codes, etc) needs around 5 years (maybe more) before it is universally accepted. The best way, where I am, to rollout a new payment terminal is to pitch it to the banks, who then offer it to the merchants who have accounts with them. Adding new functionality to EMV terminals is a lot easier these days, since most of the new terminals are Android, and the vendors have app stores for third parties to write software for these terminals (Pax has Maxstore, etc). Now, maybe I missed it, but I did not see this application on Maxstore, or some of the other stores. I could have missed it, because these stores have literally thousands of payment applications. The long and short of it is, you came up with a non-universal payment method, and predictably it did not take off.
- quesomaster9000 1y ago
  I'd argue that the problem is that QR codes shouldn't be an 'app' problem, and yes there's a chicken-egg problem with PoS terminals verifying incoming bank payments but that's a separate issue. If you want to do account-to-account payments you can show the customer the account/routing number, amount & invoice ID - but obviously that's high friction and the customer needs to login to their account and send a payment with lots of manual data entry. Making yet another app, adding a financial intermediary, requiring you to link your bank account - these aren't solving the friction points. We already have bank apps, when I scan a QR code in an industry-wide format it should ask me or confirm which bank app to open and pre-fill all the payment information. So from my perspective, the problem is that FedNow in the US, and Open Banking in the UK - they could have just dictated "Banks must support EPC QR, or EMV QR code scanning and deep-links", and QR code payments would happen very quickly - even with NFC/RFID you can do passive scanning to achieve the same thing. * Choose Account * Confirm details * Press send That's about as easy as you can get for push payments, with a real industry-wide standard for communicating payment intents via NFC/QR. But both FedNow and UK OpenBanking are structured in a way which requires friction, and onerous regulation, through their clunky APIs - meaning you can't actually solve that problem on your own.

ceedaxp 1y ago

US consumers are too conservative in the way they expect payments to work—checks are still in circulation and “swipe & sign” has barely been put to rest (has it?). Any system like this would require adoption by a few diverse and large-scale retail institutions to make it worthwhile for consumers to use. Or else it would be a mere alternative to “PayPal me”…

thayne 1y ago
It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it. I think for a new payment system to catch on it needs to either have a significant benefit for both payers and merchants, or be pushed by government policy (for example, require all merchants that meet some criteria to accept the new form of payment).
- toast0 1y ago
  > It is very much a chicken and egg problem. Merchants have no reason to adopt it if there aren't very many customers that use it, and customers have no reason to adopt it unless there are a lot of merchants, or at least some important frequently used merchants that use it. I agree that both parties need a reason to adopt a new payment method... But the reason can't be only that there's a lot of merchants/customers that have it ... If there's benefits for enough participants, reach can drive adoption for those who don't care about the benefits, but you've got to have some material benefits to get people started. It's got to have a good experience, too. But from this rant, it seems like they were trying to be a middle man for instant bank payments... I don't see the value of that as a purchaser when I can use a debit card. For the merchant, running a debit card takes a small fee, but anything that needs someone to scan a QR code takes a lot of time.
- _1tem 1y ago
  One way to solve this problem is to have a certain commodity require the new payment method. If AWS for example created a new currency/payment method and made it the sole accepted way to pay for servers it could very quickly catch on as others adopt. Look how “Sign in with Google” became the default. I’m pretty sure the main reason Apple/Google/Microsoft haven’t done this already is because they would be directly competing with the US government. The idea must get shut down pretty quickly by powerful people.

ameliaquining 1y ago

Two of the linked GitHub repositories don't have licenses.

bruce511 1y ago

When you start at the wrong premise, you typically end up in the wrong place. The premise is that credit cards (visa / Mastercard) is broken. When actually it works really well. For starters it works everywhere. Online. IRL. In my home country, in foreign lands. Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Merchants might pay 3%, (and ultimately yes, that's in the price of goods) but checkout "just works". They're in the "get paid" business, not the "teach customer new system" business. They'll accept new payment options (which the POS) just provides. But they don't drive the market. Fixing Visa doesn't work because the people that matter don't think it's broken.

sneak 1y ago
> Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Just like tariffs, right? Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy.
- Tor3 1y ago
  It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    how is cash too expensive?? huh?
    - Tor3 1y ago
      _Handling_ cash is expensive. I never thought of that until my SO started working in a shop. To and from the bank, with stacks of coins and notes.. and there's presumably much more than that for larger firms. In general I rely my statement on what merchants themselves are saying. Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. "It's too expensive. It reduces our bottom line." That kind of thing. When I look around I see "Cards only" a lot of places.

poopsmithe 1y ago

[flagged]

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
After a laggy scroll led to me being flash-banged and closing the tab, I couldn't agree more.

poopsmithe 1y ago

I'm calling it-- 5 years and this will be vaporware. We live in a world where you have to 1) compete with VISA, Mastercard and 2) compete with Bitcoin Lightning Network.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
OutOfHere 1y ago
It helps to get clued into what happened with stablecoin legalization and interest this year. Without this awareness one risks looking very foolish.
OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
I was an early adopter of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. If my memory serves correctly, I made one (real) payment with it. That was almost 10 years ago now, and I haven't even seen the chance to use it since.
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  Mostly because it is still innovated upon. Async payments (offline receival) and trampoline payments are in the pipeline, allowing true self-custodial wallets on the smartphone. That aside, I only use lightning with my Bitcoin-friends to settle stuff for fun. I live in a city of 300k people, and there are 3 restaurants that accept Lightning payments. Right now it is in its infancy, but I see Lightning as the only solution to actually enable web micro-payments (which failed as a standard because no credit card can provide .10 to .20 cent payments due to high fees)
godelski 1y ago
Considering they are closing shop, I don't think you need to wait 5 years. Did you even read the article? They say it in the opening of the second paragraph...
sokoloff 1y ago
I would bet more transactions are done in exchange for literal home-grown vegetables this month than over Bitcoin Lightning Network, yet no one claims a payment method needs to compete with bartered vegetables.

OutOfHere 1y ago

[flagged]

squigz 1y ago
How long have we been hearing that cryptocurrencies are going to save us from our existing payment systems?
- OutOfHere 1y ago
  I do not think most people are even slightly familiar with what transpired this year with regard to stablecoins. The biggest players that move money are going forward with it. This means Amazon, Walmart, and numerous other big players. They don't like paying credit card companies, and why should they. It's going to be a game changer.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    If you want an Amazon stablecoin, fund an Amazon gift card with an ACH. (They already offer this, and they love it, as it bypasses the credit card companies. I often get offered a bonus for recharging this way.) Because that's fundamentally what it's gonna wind up being.
    - OutOfHere 1y ago
      It's not about what I want. It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute, and what is already legal. Yes, in a manner of speaking it could be like that, except that stablecoins can be self-custodied, safely be sent to others, and be exchanged for other stablecoins and forms of money, etc. I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        > except that stablecoins can be self-custodied I will not apologize for the cluelessness of other people, like those who think Amazon is gonna make and promote a stablecoin they don't deeply control. Even Tether freezes addresses. Amazon absolutely will. > It's about what Amazon wants, has said they will institute… That applies to a whole bunch of things they eventually gave up on. (Like https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-business-robot-discontinued-refunds https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-busi...)

protocolture 1y ago

This sounds like a post mortem disguised as marketing material.

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago

This is what product market fit looks like; everyone is trashing various pieces of Zenobia, but it's still getting upvoted because we all want the solution.

Copenjin 1y ago
A solution to what? Serious question, I don't have any issue with the current model. Or are you referring to recent events?
- kennywinker 1y ago
  The problem of paying 1-3% of every purchase to credit card companies, causing everything to cost 1-3% more.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Are merchants going to charge different prices depending on your payment method? Or stop taking visa/MasterCard entirely? I don't see either one of those happening.
    - kennywinker 1y ago
      So, you don’t believe that a non-governmental tax on every transaction causes prices to rise? Because you’d be in disagreement with probably every economist ever. Or are you just saying change is impossible so why bother?
    - orthecreedence 1y ago
      > Are merchants going to charge different prices depending on your payment method? They are barred from doing so by credit card companies. That's why many smaller shops have "cash preferred" signs.
- scotty79 1y ago
  To duopoly exploiting customers? Europe knocked down transfer fees to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit card. All fees for the merchant sum up to something around 1%. So anything on top of that, that Visa customers pay in US is pure exploitation. And US government isn't doing anything so people see alternate solutions for this problem.

nima999 1y ago

I totally disagree with “We proposed merchants "split the difference" in fee savings with their customer, giving customers ~1% in at-checkout "cashback". But this is just a worse version of credit card rewards.” As a shopper, if I know that a SMB is saving 1% or even 2% on merchant fees, I would gladly choose that option, even if I miss out on rewards for that purchase.

nottorp 1y ago
The thing is, Visa and MC are doing just fine(tm) on countries where their cut is limited by law to less than 1%. Everything else is just pure profit, no matter who runs it.
- rprend 1y ago
  There are no countries which limit Visa and Mastercard’s cut. Visa’s cut is the same ~.14% in the US, Europe, and everywhere else.

blitzar 1y ago

> cheaper payments ... Zenobia Pay charges 1%. 5x higher than they would be allowed to charge in the EU. > accept pay-by-bank I am reminded of tech bros inventing the bus in 2025

scotty79 1y ago
They make sense on US market but I had a chuckle when they mentioned European brands giving them cold shoulder. This problem is solved in Europe through legislative action.
rprend 1y ago
Where do you get 5X? European interchange is regulated to .3-.4%, the network fees are the same as the US (.1-.2%) and then the payment service provider takes their fee. Online card processing in the EU costs around 1%.

jatins 1y ago

the home page says "ZENOBIA PAY IS NO LONGER ACTIVE" so this is a farewell post disguised as open source announcement?

kennywinker 1y ago
It’s both? Giving up and opening the code up. Most companies should do this. Why throw away all that work and effort if it could be useful to someone else.

bklw 1y ago

The fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance. That stuff costs real money.

kennywinker 1y ago
Maybe. But the 39 billion in profits visa made last year suggests they make a fair bit more than that stuff costs.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> fees are for fraud prevention and sanctions compliance Visa and Mastercard’s pre-tax income margins for the quarter ending on 30 June were 62% and 57% respectively [1][2]. That is $10bn a quarter in absent competition. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/V/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/V/financials/ $6.33 on 10.2bn [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MA/financials/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MA/financials/ 4.67 on 8.13bn
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

godelski 1y ago

What the fuck is with the comments here? Guys, it is a postmortem. So you all are complaining about the scrolling and accusing it of being advertising or an announcement? Frankly, I find this admirable and want to encourage these kinds of things. Guys gave it a shot, failed, and are putting their work out there. They are communicating why they think they failed and what they think would help someone pick up the mantel. What did you all want? Them to just die in quiet and all that code disappear? Hell, their READMEs have more documentation than most of the open source projects out there. What happened to that hacker mentality? That belief in an open source world, even if as just a pipe dream. To me it looks like they still care about their dream but realized they can't make it happen. They aren't asking for investment and their website says they are inactive, so what makes this advertising? FFS do we have to assume everything is done in bad faith? You don't advertise by giving your competition a leg up. If this gets them investment, who cares, the result is the same. Code and information is out there, you can't take that back. Honestly, I don't care even if the code was garbage (I don't know if it is or isn't), I'll respect anyone that releases their code instead of letting it die with the business. It's just a better outcome, so why are you all complaining?

thunfischtoast 1y ago

Interesting read. I'd suggest next time choosing a name that does not sound close to Xenophobia :) anyway, good luck on your further journey

alsetmusic 1y ago
This was my first thought as well. It reads like a dog-whistle at first glance.

Charon77 1y ago

But they're no longer active as mentioned on site https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments

ninalanyon 1y ago

In Norway there is already a low fee processor called BankAxept. It has made it practical for shops to sell even the cheapest item and accept payment by card without losing money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankAxept

laurencerowe 1y ago
This seems to have happened in the UK now too, though all bank debit cards have been Visa Debit since 2009 or so. I think fees are now solely percentage based and close enough to bank cash handling fees that there's no longer any downside to accepting card payments for small transactions.

albertdessaint 1y ago

Interesting read, I searched if another startup got this market right, it seems truelayer did using open banking for online payment ($700m valuation) https://truelayer.com/ https://truelayer.com/

_1tem 1y ago
Many countries in Europe have pay-by-bank solutions that work really well.

hexo 1y ago

That scrolling. No way.

kalev 1y ago

Are these live private keys? https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf4b62f91479a46c87c1559/terraform/terraform.tfstate.backup#L52 https://github.com/zenobia-pay/core/blob/6b79cc494d3f14e4ddf...

fhars 1y ago
These probably were live keys before they shuttered the project, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898330
rprend 1y ago
oops

olliem36 1y ago

Cofounder of Lopay here - we have the same mission: offer free payments to businesses, but we're working with existing networks to do this. QR code payments are particularly hard in countries like US and UK as you're trying to change consumer behaviour. I tried doing this in 2014 and again in 2019 - both failed to gain traction (aside from during COVID). In the UK it's possible to accept card payments for 0% via Lopay, but only if you spend your earnings on our card (essentially, passing the fees onto the merchant/supplier you're paying). We're launching the same proposition in the US soon too. If you don't use our card, our headline rate is 0.79%. We're a lean team of just 36, supporting over 40k weekly transacting businesses with £1B+ in card processing. If anyone reading this is interested in this space, we're hiring and on the look out for driven people to join us!

panja 1y ago
Just curious, why is there an extra per transaction charge for tap to pay? Is there more that goes into that?
wat10000 1y ago
QR codes feel like such a step backwards compared to NFC. The UX with current mobile OSes is not good. And if you require an app, or even worse an active data connection, well, I much prefer a quick double-click of my phone’s side button and then putting it near the payment terminal. And I’m really skeptical about security. NFC is vulnerable to relay attacks and QR codes can be secured by using one-time codes or rolling time-based codes, but showing a bright high contrast “scan this to take my money” image in public feels very wrong.
- lan321 1y ago
  I couldn't get a wallet app to work with GrapheneOS, so for me, QR codes are better, but they feel like they have different use cases. I like QR codes in mail invoices (very common in CH), I'd like NFC in a shop if I could use it.
  - gunalx 1y ago

_1tem 1y ago

While almost every other major economy in the world has developed their own government-mandated low-fee payment network, the United States is a corporate oligarchy. Hurrah for the free market.

FabHK 1y ago

Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete not to mention that basically only the US has these high credit card interchange fees of 2-3%. EU & UK cap it at 0.3% (0.2% for debit cards), and the rest of the world are closer to EU than US fees, if I understand correctly. The power of the free market.

voldacar 1y ago
Seems misleading or at the very least incomplete to blame these fees on "the power of the free market" when the visa / mastercard duopoly exists due to regulations making the entry barrier to creating a new card network essentially infinite
- TehCorwiz 1y ago
  I think that was parent’s point. That the US does not have as free a market.
  - randallsquared 1y ago
    > EU & UK cap it suggests that was not the GP's point.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  I don't think it's due to regulations. It's just a natural monopoly due to network effects. Any new entrant has to convince hundreds of payment processors and retailers to accept their cards before anyone even has them. Regulations are a trivial barrier compared to that.
- abirch 1y ago
  Anyone is free to use discover and it works for most merchants in the USA. American Express leverages the fact that most consumers don’t care what the merchant is charged
dzikimarian 1y ago
Yes - entire cost of processing trx including all intermediaries in EU is around 1%. Less if you are huge. Unlikely they were able to beat it.

asdf333 1y ago

ngl i read it as zenophobia pay

codedokode 1y ago

What I need is not lower fee cards, but anonymous pre-paid debit cards that do not allow linking purchases to a person and profiling people. Until that appears, I will use cash only.

irusensei 1y ago
Thats very hard to pull off due to draconian guidelines imposed by unelected shadow governments.
WorldPeas 1y ago
does privacy-dot-com not do this? (this is a genuine question)
- tossit444 1y ago
  The cards they give are mostly anonymous, but you still need to give privacy.com your ID, credit card, etc.
Stevvo 1y ago
You know anti money laundering laws make that impossible, right?

aus10d 1y ago

The post is really interesting. Sorry it didn't work out for you guys. Thanks for open sourcing the code. The world REALLY needs better/faster alternatives to the big payment processors

_1tem 1y ago

Something weird happens whenever someone tries to disrupt the Visa/Mastercard mob. Even in this post, the founders alluded to being "not well connected enough". Also look at how Plaid's acquisition by Visa was cancelled by the DOJ on antitrust claims but then Plaid dropped its plans to build a pay-by-bank network. Makes no sense when compared to the lawsuits filed and dismissed in 2024 and recently July 2025 claiming that Apple tried to build a payment network but were stopped by Visa/Mastercard.

rprend 1y ago
I appreciate you looking out for my well being, but really there was nothing shady here. We weren’t forced out by a Visa mob or something like that. I actually wish that were the case, because that would mean that we were growing! We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious. But it’s not like there was some shadowy Visa conspiracy. We received pre seed investment from institutional investors and built a pay-by-bank network entirely fine without anybody stopping us
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  > We just aren’t well connected enough to convince established merchants to switch over to a startup’s payment network, especially since the value to them is dubious. So instead of competing on merit by improving the value offered to merchants, your concern is to become connected enough to have the merchants switch to you in spite of "dubious value"??
  - BlimpSpike 1y ago
    If you read the article they do give merchants more value in the form of 2% lower fees. It's just that that's not enough.
- _1tem 1y ago
  Thanks for the clarification in your particular case. No offence, but you were then probably not big enough to matter. There is plenty evidence of shadowy forces shutting down payment systems, however, just look at Marc Andreessen's public statements about crypto founders he invested in getting debanked.

xeromal 1y ago

Zenophobia

rprend 1y ago
nooooo zenobia is an ancient queen

FredPret 1y ago

Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure. I can securely complete transactions and subscriptions with ~anyone on the planet in mere seconds. But holy cow do they have large margins. 40-50%! The profit growth charts on these two are a sight to behold. http://valustox.com/MA http://valustox.com/MA http://valustox.com/V http://valustox.com/V The situation is simply begging for disruption.

SteveNuts 1y ago
It's amazing how it wasn't that long ago that you'd walk into an establishment and ask if they accept cards instead of cash only. Going into rural areas it's still not a 100% given that all places will accept cards.
- jvergeldedios 1y ago
  Even more interesting is the small establishments that skipped over credit cards straight into Venmo/Zelle.
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  There was even a place in Silicon Valley would not accept anything but cash, but I haven't been there in 4 years so don't know if its still the case
crote 1y ago
> Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure. A lot of that is smoke and mirrors. They give a very fast pinky promise of payment, but it usually takes several days to become irrevocable. Similarly, it has taken decades for them to implement any form of genuine security, and even today the main form of fraud protection is... simply having the merchant pay for it. The most impressive part is how they managed to stay this popular, despite being built on fundamentally flawed concepts.
- rprend 1y ago

jrm4 1y ago

Wild how far down I had to scroll to even see "cryptocurrency" mentioned. Normally, I'm not a fan of always relying on incentives, but you can't begin to tackle this problem without understanding, and being grossly open about the fact that it's almost certainly not a "tech capability/efficiency" problem, but a (naturally) greedy financial sector company problem.

amadeuspagel 1y ago

Istanbul has a card that you can use to pay for some things like public transit and have to use to pay for public bathrooms (because that's so cheap that if you paid with credit card, the fee would more expensive than the payment). Maybe this is a way to break the credit card duopoly: offer something (like public bathrooms) that requires your card, and then try to expand it from there.

yobbo 1y ago
Many cities have rechargeable public transport cards. Famous Japanese example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica The plan: 1) Build correct and cryptographically sound open protocol for NFC cash-cards 2) Offer tech to public transport (as free open source) 3) Boom. Millions of users of an open payments system

robertpohl 1y ago

What many people are missing is what is in the fees. Consumer protection and risk mitigation. If you are dealing with "cash" payments, like A2A or crypto, there are no consumer protection. Not even auth and capture flows. These are basic needs in a transactional commerce system, which the card companies provide.

derrickrburns 1y ago

The failure of the Zenobia Pay encodes much of the REAL value of Mastercard and Visa: 1. A global, enforceable rulebook + dispute court. They standardize how authorization, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, retrievals, representments, reason codes, and evidence work—and they arbitrate when parties fight. That governance is why a corner bodega and a transnational airline can both accept the same credential. (Read the rulebooks; they’re huge, living specs.) 2. Credible liability commitments that change customer behavior. Zero-liability and liability-shift regimes make consumers fearless and pressure merchants to adopt secure tech (EMV, 3-DS). Fearless buyers = higher conversion. That demand-side boost is the engine of card commerce. 3. Tokenized, portable identity for payments. Network tokens (EMVCo) and wallet provisioning (Apple Pay/Google Pay via DPANs) are the reason card data can live safely in phones, browsers, and vaults. This reduces breach externalities and keeps the credential working when plastic changes. That’s not ACH. 4. Compliance offload and ecosystem discipline. PCI exists so the brands don’t directly police every merchant’s infosec day-to-day—yet they still set the bar and yank privileges when needed. It’s governance as a service. 5. Programmable payout rails on the same credential. They’re not just purchase networks anymore. Push-to-card (Visa Direct/Mastercard Send) rides the acceptance footprint for disbursements, wage advances, gig payouts, and remittances—instantly, to billions of cards. That makes the card a universal endpoint for money-in and money-out. 6. Regulatory navigation and durability. Interchange caps and business-rule constraints (EU IFR; U.S. Durbin/Reg II) didn’t kill them; they adapted by shifting economics across scheme fees, value-added services, and routing. Survivability under hostile policy is part of the value. 7. They own the “choice architecture.” Historically, anti-steering rules protected fee levels; those were curtailed, but the lesson stands: control over how credentials are presented and preferred at checkout is leverage. (See the AmEx case for the legal theory on two-sided markets and steering.) What they don’t do (important) • They don’t issue credit or carry most fraud losses—that’s issuers. Networks set rules and move bits; issuers/acquirers take primary financial exposure and then sling chargebacks through the network’s process. (Still: the rules are the value.) • They aren’t the only rails that can scale: account-to-account can win when the state or banks coordinate (Pix, UPI, iDEAL). Those systems prove rails alone can beat cards on price and UX—if you also deliver governance and adoption. Where they’re vulnerable next (and already hedging) • A2A/instant schemes (Pix, UPI, iDEAL) are re-wiring consumer habits. If U.S. open banking + FedNow/RTP ever gets real UX and liability parity, cards will feel it. Meanwhile, Visa/MC are buying into open banking to stay the orchestration layer (Visa–Tink; Mastercard–Finicity). • Checkout is being intermediated by wallets and platforms. Apple/Google own the front door; card brands keep the credential alive via network tokens, but UX power is shifting up-stack. Tokenization keeps them relevant; control of the UI does not necessarily stay with them. • Policy pressure keeps grinding down interchange/steering constraints. They can adapt, but the rent skim is under scrutiny—again. The blunt summary Visa and Mastercard don’t win because they’re the fastest rail or the cheapest. They win because they govern trust at scale: a portable identity (token), a standardized contract (rules), and a credible promise about who pays when things go wrong (liability). That cocktail reliably boosts conversion for merchants and confidence for consumers. Until an alternative can match all four—rail + rules + identity + liability—cards remain the default operating system for commerce.