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Comment by SkeuomorphicBee

4 hours ago

That is by design. It separates the payment processor so it does just that, just payments. It is like money, once you give it to someone else there is no automatic way to fish it back from their pocket to yours. The correct avenue to deal with fraud, bankruptcy and other malicious actor is the small claims court (or civil court, or criminal court).

The moment you start burdening the payment processor with the roles of judge/referee over all goods and services you end up with the mess we have with CCs where Visa/Mastercard are morality czars that dictate what goods and services are valid or invalid, nuking people and companies out of modern society for their own arbitrary reasons.

Edit: And just to add, you can have "chargeback" for PIX as a separate service, most banks offer PIX insurance that is basically CC chargeback by a different name. But the key is that it is separate from the payment infrastructure itself, it is an insurance service that you contract separately. And that separation ins very important, the insurance company can't roll back transactions arbitrarily, or deny people access to the financial system, they have to pay the victim and then claw back their money in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.

If I get sent a fake (or no) product by someone halfway around the world there's absolutely no way I'm getting my money back in small claims court.

  • Then use a service that offers escrow. I don't need my groceries to use insurance for the eventuality that the store goes belly-up in the 2 days until I can check that the products arrived in good order

    Base payment products should just do payment at operating margins rivaling a non-profit. It's public infrastructure

> their own arbitrary reasons

Outside pressure behind much of it.

In any case, there's a fundamental mismatch between pressure groups and the leverage they can exert through single-consensus. I don't know how to describe the other consensus that is on my brain, but it is distinct.

That makes it a bad design, since every person you interact with has the potential to be a scumbag and not deliver on what you paid for. "Get a lawyer and sue them" or "Rely on your local consumer advocacy agency" cannot be the answers at the kind of scale that will be enabled.

This is the reason I only _ever_ spend money on credit cards, and never use cash or debit cards (European in the US). I've personally had at least three disputes this year resolved in my favor by American Express, and will not sign up for something that suggests courts should do so instead.

  • (I was editing when you repplied so I'll add it here for you:)

    And just to add, you can have "chargeback" for PIX as a separate service, most banks offer PIX insurance that is basically CC chargeback by a different name. But the key is that it is separate from the payment infrastructure itself, it is an insurance service that you contract separately. And that separation ins very important, the insurance company can't roll back transactions arbitrarily, or deny people access to the financial system, they have to pay the victim and then claw back their money in court, which is the appropriate venue to decide who is right or wrong in a transaction.

  • At least up til now, this doesn't seem to be a significant problem with iDeal. Any iDeal receiver will need to have at least a Dutch bank account, which requires the bank to be very sure of the identity of the person/people (UBOs) holding the account. So downright fraud is unlikely. If there is, one can file a police report, and hopefully the DA will take it to court.

    Disputes between non-fraudulent entities happen of course. But I really don't like some algorithm somewhere taking seemingly arbitrary decisions on that. It usually just amounts to robbing merchants of their money, and adding some exorbitant refund fee to top it of. Settling disputes is what small claims court and dispute committees are for.

    Of course, with iDeal now effectively becoming EU-wide, things may get more difficult.

  • > This is the reason I only _ever_ spend money on credit cards

    Which illustrates one of the most prolific examples of regulatory capture.

    Credit cards became mainstream because of that protection, which was a triumph for the payment processors. Whatever they spent on lobbying was a bargain.

  • There also a large number of typos that happen. Typos in the amount. Typos in email or mobile number where you are sending the funds to (if pushing a payment instead of seller pulling).