Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?

Re:Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayP... by konschubert on Saturday August 17, 2024 @06:23PM (#41278490)

I’m a merchant myself, I sell e-paper calendars. Last year I paid about 4% of my revenue for transaction costs in various shapes. That’s very roughly 20% of my margin. (!) Some of these are hidden as very bad, but non-optional, currency conversions.

The hard one here is acceptance by customers. No merchant wants to clutter their checkout page with a button that nobody understands. Or worse, have customers get trapped in a dead-end payment process.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayP... by jahabrewer on Saturday August 17, 2024 @07:06PM (#41278771)

Another way to think about this is in terms of how many marginal customers you get from being able to accept payments over the Web. 4% starts sounding less bad

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayP... by konschubert on Sunday August 18, 2024 @03:28AM (#41280769)

You can make the same argument for, say, paying protection money to the Mafia or for paying the 30% apple tax.

Just because it’s rational to pay off a monopolistic rent seeker doesn’t mean that the rent seeker generates economic value corresponding to the monopolistic rents they’re extracting.

[ Parent | on HN ]