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0 pointsfilleduchaos6y ago0 comments

> What’s the likelihood that people are going to put their credit card information into some unknown website compared to using Apple/Google for payments?

Outside of HN's bubble, people do that all the time. Or at worst they will use PayPal or an equivalent to make payments.

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scarface746y ago· 2 in thread

It’s outside of the HN bubble that people are less trusting of random websites.

If people were so willing to make payments on random websites, merchants wouldn’t be falling all over themselves to use Amazon’s marketplace and sell their self published books through Kindle.

Not to mention that micropayments on the web has been the holy grail that no one has found in over two decades.

Apple was the first to make $0.99 payments over the internet feasible with iTunes back in 2005. There is much more friction to buying something on the web than just clicking on buy from Amazon/Apple/Google.

filleduchaosOP6y ago

> If people were so willing to make payments on random websites, merchants wouldn’t be falling all over themselves to use Amazon’s marketplace and sell their self published books through Kindle.

People fall all over themselves to use Amazon's marketplace because

- it has a lower barrier to entry to setting up and managing a store themselves - it has a built-in audience they can access without trying to hustle their proprietary domain name into the public consciousness (SEO is hard)

What on earth gives you the idea that it has anything to do with people's willingness or lack thereof to make payments on random websites?

> There is much more friction to buying something on the web than just clicking on buy from Amazon/Apple/Google.

Again, low-friction payment platforms that aren't "use Apple/Google's in-app payment SDKs" are readily available in 2020. PayPal is one such, Flutterwave is another (in sub-Saharan Africa), etc. In fact, I use those far more in a month than I've ever used Apple or Google Pay.

scarface746y ago

because - it has a lower barrier to entry to setting up and managing a store themselves - it has a built-in audience they can access without trying to hustle their proprietary domain name into the public consciousness (SEO is hard)

So the same advantages that using the App Store had over going to random websites and installing J2Me apps back in the day....

You realize Apple has had more users payment information on file than any other company since the iTunes heyday than maybe Amazon?

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