Nah, Stripe just paid a bunch of folks with funny money everyone is kicking the can on making real and this is the cost of that strategy due to the mechanizations around equity comp.

Tangentially, I think the card networks in general are not going to look great when the Fed's FedNow instant payments go live this summer. If you can get instant settlement up to $100k in value for a few pennies, that's a lot of volume that is going to move to new rails to avoid the ~3% tax (which is a tax on most of the current digital economy). Sure, there is a lot of value to consumers in the ~30 day float, but if merchants start passing the CC fees on (which they are legally allowed to do, and many already do)...

Digital wallets might be the next step (Pay with Stripe/Paypal/ShopPay/whatevs) but there ain't much moat there either. Optimistically, it's nice to see payments moving to what it should've always been: a utility, and priced accordingly. The US joins 54 other countries with instant payment networks. Hurray!

As for Digital wallets, if Apple would let developers use NFC other apple certified cards and apps it would be already happening tap to pay with digital wallets.

Will this come with an API so anyone can integrate with it or will that be up to the banks?

Like some Euro banks have API's to do fund transfers.

The EU has legislation requiring such interfaces [1]. The US does not. With that said, you're likely be able to go to a technology provider (FiServ is a big one [2], but there are many in the space) who will get you plugged in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive

[2] https://www.fiserv.com/en.html

(not in payments, but adjacent at a fintech)

> Tangentially, I think the card networks in general are not going to look great when the Fed's FedNow instant payments go live this summer.

This is and will be huge.

With this the US is following India's pioneering UPI payment infrastructure and Brazil's (PIX) in realtime payments.

Once FedNow launches, there really wouldn't be much use for card payments really and definitely no need for cryptocurrencies at all.

Maybe, I have read that credit cards result in people willing to pay higher prices. Which is supposedly why most retailers, especially large ones, do not offer discounts for debit cards, even though the transaction costs would be a lot lower.

People are willing to spend more (Amex is famous for marketing this as to why their interchange fees are reasonable [1] [2]), not necessarily pay higher prices.

Is it good that people are encouraged to spend more with certain financial instruments? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] https://thepointsguy.com/credit-cards/american-express/more-...

[2] https://www.hostmerchantservices.com/articles/american-expre...

Yes, spend more is more accurate than higher prices.

I sell items that cost $2.

The $15 dispute fee is by far my largest expense.

I really wish I could set an option on my account to auto-refund any customer who disputes and not have to pay the fee.

Do you refund upon receiving an early fraud warning?

https://support.stripe.com/questions/protecting-your-busines...

Stripe is still taking 2.9% + 0.30 even if you refund in any situation. All these fees make selling low cost items prohibitive.