SEPA transfers within the EURO area are basically free. TransferWise is dirt cheap.

Crypto might seem appealing because, yes, the traditional banking system is very bad (though not everywhere is it as bad as in the US), but in nearly all cases there is a better solution available (good old fintech) without the inefficiencies of crypto.

> SEPA transfers within the EURO area are basically free.

Not international; not a payment processor on any popular platform.

> TransferWise is dirt cheap.

Not really, when you compare it to low-fee crypto networks. If you sent 1.5 GBP to USD the fee is 0.35 GBP (23% of total), which makes it a poor choice for tips and small payments. Sending 15K GBP to USD carries a 61 GBP fee, or 150K GBP to USD carries a 563 GBP fee.

Compare with a low-fee network like Tezos or zkSync. My last Tezos transfer was a fixed fee of 0.000544 XTZ or $0.001 USD. zkSync currently has an approx fee of $0.11 per transfer (a cost which will likely be reduced in the coming months with EIP 4844). These fees are fixed, regardless of whether you are sending 0.1, 1, 10K, or 100K tokens to the beneficiary.

"low-fee" crypto networks are not a comparison because your goal is not to send "low-fee" cryptos, it's to transfer money. Transferring money requires a domestic transfer from your bank account to an exchange, purchasing on an exchange for a 1-2% fee, performing a "low-fee" transfer, selling on an exchange for a 1-2% fee, then performing a domestic transfer to a local bank account. Then adding these taxable events to your income taxes.

Sending money this way is almost certainly slower, more expensive, way more prone to failure and exposes you to tons of counter-party risk. Remember the guy who lost $400,000 trying to send himself money between the US and Canada using Quadriga and got caught without a seat in the game of musical chairs?

A better comparison would be a Wise Multi Currency Account [1]. You get a variety of worldwide bank account numbers. You can ACH into it for free (and SEPA, and EFT, and so on). There is no step two. Anyone in most world jurisdictions can open such an account. Anyone in much of the world can perform a free domestic transfer to send money into it no matter where you are. $0.00. This is what innovation looks like, IMO.

Places payment processors charge you a large fee are almost certainly to cover the risk associated with that transaction - the risk which is not covered when performing a crypto payment. Let alone all the new risks that enter the picture when performing a crypto payment. You're still on the hook for these risks personally, mind you, it's just an unaccounted for externality.

Dig into the business model of these payment processors and you'll quickly learn exactly why they charge what they do.

Unpopular opinion: we have middlemen because they add value.

[1] https://wise.com/gb/multi-currency-account/

> "low-fee" crypto networks are not a comparison because your goal is not to send "low-fee" cryptos, it's to transfer money.

we are both talking about sending 'value' across the globe, e.g. Ko-Fi-style tips, international payments, charitable donations, Kickstarter-like crowdfunding, etc.

for example, as an artist I am selling digital + physical media and accept fiat and crypto as a form of payment. I know many others in a similar situation, including nonprofit organizations that accept crypto.

obviously not everybody accepts crypto and it is highly localized; but any merchant or online platform that decides to accept XTZ as a form of payment can already do so to mitigate the 2-5% payment processing fees that I mentioned earlier.

Ok but it's not value if you can't spend it on things. In order to spend it on things you have to convert it to something that can be spent. So it's disingenuous to exclude that conversion step from your calculus.

> ... but any merchant or online platform that decides to accept XTZ as a form of payment can already do so to mitigate the 2-5% payment processing fees that I mentioned earlier.

But of course they won't because they can't spend it on things, like the inputs to the goods they sell (be that physical, rent or mortgage). They'll need to convert it, and that conversion fee will be something you pay by marking up the cost of goods.

I already am spending it on things e.g. art, donations, and peer-to-peer international payments. The number of services accepting crypto can continue to grow without transfers reaching the 2-5% processor fees I mentioned earlier.

>For example donating to an artist via Ko-Fi will result in 2-3.4% + $0.30 fees due to Stripe/PayPal payment processor

Cryptobros would kill for transaction fees that low

Many digital artists I know have a Tezos address, and I could send them a donation of any size for a fixed fee of about 0.000544 XTZ or $0.001 USD.

And since you can't exchange Tezos for goods and services, you need to send it to an exchange, sell it for 1-2%, deal with foreign exchange changes over the time you held it, counter-party risk on the exchange, then perform a domestic transfer into your bank account, and add the transaction to your income taxes.

not really. I just checked a CEX - to exchange 1,000 XTZ into 2,268K GBP and have it directly deposited into fiat account, the fee is 3.76 GBP, i.e. 0.17% rather than 1-2%.

you also seem to be taking the opinion that all crypto must eventually be exchanged to fiat. obviously it is wise to exchange enough to fiat for taxes, monthly expenses, and to have a balanced portfolio. but some users may choose to keep some in crypto, for example to stake, continue paying for other crypto-localized goods and services, or exchange into a stablecoin in order to have self-custody of a USD-pegged asset.

fwiw, if more merchants did accept crypto and taxes were payable in crypto (as it is becoming the case in some very specific jurisdictions around the world), there would be less need to exchange to fiat via a CEX.

> not really. I just checked a CEX - to exchange 1,000 XTZ into 2,268K GBP and have it directly deposited into fiat account, the fee is 3.76 GBP, i.e. 0.17% rather than 1-2%.

Cool. So the same as a debit card payment in Europe, which is capped at 0.2%. It's also way more expensive than a Faster Payments UK transaction. In exchange you take on huge counter-party risk, and massive forex risk. This doesn't sound better, in fact, it sounds a lot worse.

> fwiw, if more merchants did accept crypto and taxes were payable in crypto (as it is becoming the case in some very specific jurisdictions around the world), there would be less need to exchange to fiat via a CEX.

Taxes are only 'payable' everywhere on earth for crypto in the sense that some governments offer a gateways that exchange it to fiat. Like Pay1040 does for credit card tax payments in the US. That doesn't make 'taxes payable in credit card.' The issue isn't payable it's denominated in.

You keep mentioning localized EU/UK bank transfer fees when my original post that triggered this discussion is referring to international payment processor APIs (Stripe, PayPal) and the web that builds on top of them (Ko-Fi, Etsy, Bandcamp, Kickstarter, Patreon, Shopify).