incredibly delayed subpost about payment processing
I don't even remember who was talking about it at this point, but there were some folks talking about how we should have a communally owned alternative to stripe and I cannot possibly emphasise how bad of an idea that is
like, the sentiment is good, and if it were actually possible, sure, it'd be better than the status quo
but ultimately, the role a payment processor serves is to put up with a large majority of the bullshit from visa and mastercard. I got a tiny taste of working in online billing and you absolutely, absolutely do not want to deal with even a small portion of that
a much better idea is to convert the currently extremely-private payment infrastructure into publicly owned payment infrastructure so that these for-profit corporations aren't in the way of every penny made online
would that be possible to achieve locally, let alone internationally? idk. the alternatives are crypto bs and I'm not very hopeful anything reasonable will ever come out of that space, since it's been vile since day 1
honestly, I hate stripe as much as anyone, but given the alternatives and the cost of entry, you're better off aiming for systemic change, which shows how ridiculously difficult entering that niche is
re: incredibly delayed subpost about payment processing
@clarfonthey I feel like better inspiration could probably be taken from stuff like iDeal, which is a Dutch payment system originally set up by a consortium of banks, and which is now apparently going to be expanded to be Europe-wide, and integrates directly with banks' own e-banking systems
re: incredibly delayed subpost about payment processing
@joepie91 yeah, like, drawing from Europe is a good idea
while I hate that banks are involved at all, going directly between them instead of through a central third party is much better than what we have right now with credit card nonsense