undefined | Better HN

0 pointsthayne4y ago0 comments

Do you really want to deal with the legal and compliance hurdles of handling credit cards/debit cards/etc. right out of the gate? (Assuming that isn't what your new company is about).

0 comments

noogle4y ago

No, I do not.

However, I've heard (too) many stories like "our payments/ads/infra vendor banned us out of the blue for suspicion/politics/obscure-AI-decision" to ignore this. It could be fine for a start-up that is inherently risky, intended to fail early and risks Other-People's-Money (TM), but not always.

thayneOP4y ago

Unless your business deals exclusively in cash and/or cryptocurrency, I don't think you can really avoid that. Even if you are dealing with a credit card company directly, that company could ban you out of the blue for suspician/politics/obscure-AI-decision.

noogle4y ago

Using Stripe etc. adds another point of failure.

But yes, the fact that essentially all payments are bottlenecked through two vendors with no legal supervision is quite troubling.

Maybe we should form a co-operative of payment recipients? It doesn't need to operate anything, but rather be a "suicide pact" that will extoll a high price from payment processors if they try to unfairly ban a business. Some sort of a smart contract could guarantee fair enforcement.

DarylZero4y ago

Every hole in the wall restaurant and convenience store somehow manages to do it... are they so much better at all that??

thayneOP4y ago

I think they usually use some sort of point of sale device and service to handle credit cards. That is pretty analogous to using a payment processing service.

shapefrog4y ago

That is a payment processing service.

patmorgan234y ago

They pay a bank for merchant services. They don't become their own payment services.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

noogle4y ago

No, I do not.

thayneOP4y ago

noogle4y ago

Using Stripe etc. adds another point of failure.

But yes, the fact that essentially all payments are bottlenecked through two vendors with no legal supervision is quite troubling.

DarylZero4y ago

Every hole in the wall restaurant and convenience store somehow manages to do it... are they so much better at all that??

thayneOP4y ago

I think they usually use some sort of point of sale device and service to handle credit cards. That is pretty analogous to using a payment processing service.

shapefrog4y ago

That is a payment processing service.

patmorgan234y ago

They pay a bank for merchant services. They don't become their own payment services.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse