4 ms·

I don't see how unsecured CC is good for us. Credit card fraud raises national debt, makes your economy reliant on derivatives such as insurance and in the end

by arihant 12y ago

I don't see how unsecured CC is good for us. Credit card fraud raises national debt, makes your economy reliant on derivatives such as insurance and in the end you fall down. Maybe US economy could sustain derivative based approach because of it's size, but India would be in much worse position if something like 2008 happened here. Now, that said, this could be an opportinity for a startup, so stop complaining for a moment. Americans did not have easy way to pay, what did they do? They created PayPal. Indians don't have easy way to accept recurring payments, what should we do? Create an alternative to CC using ECS. We do have ECS, remember? It's a great system and roadside lenders are using it, so it's not hard to setup. It's just not a simple API yet. So get it there. You know, somebody must have ported CC online too. Wasn't the same since Adam. Somebody needs to do that with ECS and then we would have a system that is orders of magnitude more secure that recurring CC, requires almost no insurance, and puts the guy paying directly in control. Don't start off assuming that CC is a very bright idea, in general. With all that said, I do believe RBI is working on a simplified banking API guidelines. Also SaaS has nothing to do with recurring CC. Don't you use postpaid services in India? Generate an invoice and give someone a week to pay. I mean if it's good enough for other service providers, why not for SaaS? Just use a shorter payment deadline.

driverdan 12y ago
> Credit card fraud raises national debt, makes your economy reliant on derivatives such as insurance and in the end you fall down. That's not how credit cards work. Credit card fraud is never shouldered by the country, only the banks and stores that fall victim to it. There's no insurance involved, it's a cost of accepting credit cards. > Also SaaS has nothing to do with recurring CC. Don't you use postpaid services in India? Generate an invoice and give someone a week to pay. I mean if it's good enough for other service providers, why not for SaaS? Just use a shorter payment deadline. A big factor of having a successful SaaS product is reducing friction and making it scale. Invoicing for an inexpensive reoccurring service does not scale and is a pain for both sides of the transaction.
- kazinator 12y ago
  > Credit card fraud is never shouldered by the country, only the banks and stores that fall victim to it. That's a little near-sighted, I'm afraid. You don't think banks have a way to sock their debt to countries? Heck, individuals do. On my income tax form here, there is a write-off field where I can put in losses from investments and such.
  - chernevik 12y ago
    Only as nets against investment gains.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > Credit card fraud is never shouldered by the country, only the banks and stores that fall victim to it. It doesn't become part of the formal national debt tally, but a country full of debtors who can't pay their bills is sure as hell a drag on a country's economy.
- arihant 12y ago
  Invoicing does not scale? I bet if you write down a list of world's largest, most scaled out services that charge monthly, most of them would be using invoicing as the main mechanism. In India, don't you think invoicing scales for BSNL, Airtel, BSES, etc.? And there is a huge insurance component inc credit cards. Ever see the difference in accepting rates of CC and a debit card? Ever wondered why that is? Every damn transaction you do requires heavy handed underwriting. The underwriting requires insurance. If the underwriter pays later than the bank needs it, the bank needs insurance backbone to fall on. On individual fraud basis, banks themselves come under debt for extensive periods of times while the underwriter sits and decides. The rectification with the customer itself takes months during which the bank is in debt. The reason you're paying Visa or MasterCard any money is in hope that they underwrite in case there is a fraud or customer can't pay. How else do you define insurance?
ollysb 12y ago
The issues you describe regarding debt only apply to credit cards. There's no reason to have to pay with credit though, you can use debit cards in exactly the same way.
superasn 12y ago
> Also SaaS has nothing to do with recurring CC. Don't you use postpaid services in India? Generate an invoice and give someone a week to pay. I mean if it's good enough for other service providers, why not for SaaS? Just use a shorter payment deadline. SaaS has a lot to do with recurring CC. If you've ever done landing page optimization you know how much changing the color of headline or moving a few pixels around can boost your conversions. Hell, people have stated that by just putting that no-good "McAfee secured" logo on their payment page increases their conversions by 50%. Now imagine that instead of that I ask you that please mail me a blank voided check and a print out a consent form, fill it, sign it and mail it (that how I've enabled ECS for my internet) on the checkout page. Don't you think my conversions will be 1/10th after it? Also subscription billing is not always bad: Namecheap, and AWS are two services I'm really glad can bill me and keep my domain and hosting alive while I'm traveling.

by arihant 12y ago

driverdan 12y ago

> Credit card fraud raises national debt, makes your economy reliant on derivatives such as insurance and in the end you fall down. That's not how credit cards work. Credit card fraud is never shouldered by the country, only the banks and stores that fall victim to it. There's no insurance involved, it's a cost of accepting credit cards. > Also SaaS has nothing to do with recurring CC. Don't you use postpaid services in India? Generate an invoice and give someone a week to pay. I mean if it's good enough for other service providers, why not for SaaS? Just use a shorter payment deadline. A big factor of having a successful SaaS product is reducing friction and making it scale. Invoicing for an inexpensive reoccurring service does not scale and is a pain for both sides of the transaction.

kazinator 12y ago
> Credit card fraud is never shouldered by the country, only the banks and stores that fall victim to it. That's a little near-sighted, I'm afraid. You don't think banks have a way to sock their debt to countries? Heck, individuals do. On my income tax form here, there is a write-off field where I can put in losses from investments and such.
- chernevik 12y ago
  Only as nets against investment gains.
ceejayoz 12y ago
> Credit card fraud is never shouldered by the country, only the banks and stores that fall victim to it. It doesn't become part of the formal national debt tally, but a country full of debtors who can't pay their bills is sure as hell a drag on a country's economy.
arihant 12y ago
Invoicing does not scale? I bet if you write down a list of world's largest, most scaled out services that charge monthly, most of them would be using invoicing as the main mechanism. In India, don't you think invoicing scales for BSNL, Airtel, BSES, etc.? And there is a huge insurance component inc credit cards. Ever see the difference in accepting rates of CC and a debit card? Ever wondered why that is? Every damn transaction you do requires heavy handed underwriting. The underwriting requires insurance. If the underwriter pays later than the bank needs it, the bank needs insurance backbone to fall on. On individual fraud basis, banks themselves come under debt for extensive periods of times while the underwriter sits and decides. The rectification with the customer itself takes months during which the bank is in debt. The reason you're paying Visa or MasterCard any money is in hope that they underwrite in case there is a fraud or customer can't pay. How else do you define insurance?

ollysb 12y ago

The issues you describe regarding debt only apply to credit cards. There's no reason to have to pay with credit though, you can use debit cards in exactly the same way.

superasn 12y ago

> Also SaaS has nothing to do with recurring CC. Don't you use postpaid services in India? Generate an invoice and give someone a week to pay. I mean if it's good enough for other service providers, why not for SaaS? Just use a shorter payment deadline. SaaS has a lot to do with recurring CC. If you've ever done landing page optimization you know how much changing the color of headline or moving a few pixels around can boost your conversions. Hell, people have stated that by just putting that no-good "McAfee secured" logo on their payment page increases their conversions by 50%. Now imagine that instead of that I ask you that please mail me a blank voided check and a print out a consent form, fill it, sign it and mail it (that how I've enabled ECS for my internet) on the checkout page. Don't you think my conversions will be 1/10th after it? Also subscription billing is not always bad: Namecheap, and AWS are two services I'm really glad can bill me and keep my domain and hosting alive while I'm traveling.