Repeating a thought from a week or so ago: Maybe opensource devs & indie creators need our own payment processor?
Stripe's pretty nice, but I'd rather not rely on VC startups. Maybe a cooperative alternative?
To be clear this would be a business endeavor satisfying Visa/Mastercard/etc rather than a technology.
You may argue this shouldn't be needed, but it is. I often see fellow techies overlook this need when proposing Patreon or Bandcamp or (prompting this toot) YouTube alternatives.
@alcinnz disagree only because there are so many good payment processing systems that are well made and secure. Security here is paramount; we're dealing with people's money, and getting it wrong very very bad.
@RyunoKi@mikebabcock Yeah, my mind went there too. Triggering a follow up toot a couple days later.
There's plenty of ickiness with the deployment of BAT, profiting from webmasters who haven't consented. And I'd rather users to put money in directly rather than attention.
It looks tricky for an upstart to create something beneficial here if not harmful. Maybe Mozilla's our best bet, building on RFC8905 & Taler?
@RyunoKi@mikebabcock Yeah, same. But I'm also seeing services like Bandcamp or Patreon who I treat like payment processors wanting to become more due to capitalist pressures...
That's where my desire comes from: Seeing VC, etc erode foundations the independent web has come to rely on.
@alcinnz One of my main public complaints about Bandcamp was the reliance on Paypal. I agree payment process appears to be very overlooked at the moment. Ironic considering large financial losses of Epic furthering Bandcamp's demise.
@alcinnz I really, really agree. The closest I’ve found is https://opencollective.com/ — they have a “fiscal hosting” idea a bit like what you describe. But last time I looked, I didn’t find one for artists. We need one!
@alcinnz so there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberapay which I think is probably the most reasonable support option, though it isn't actively marketed like Patreon, since it's not a financial venture. But then that's not really what you're saying, which is more like- couldn't good people have their own currency? But a currency and its banking corporation contracts are properties of the country and not optional attributes of the people.
@LovesTha ah, yeah. I was too-obliquely making the point that We Didn't Choose Stripe any more than we chose the banks our government(s) engaged. And if we were choosing to do something other than our state's fiat, would we really choose something that looked like it. @alcinnz
@screwtape@alcinnz Retail banking is such an unnatural market that I don't understand why we keep pretending free market concepts work in it. We probably shouldn't abolish the whole industry over night, but every bank failure should be a government buy out and then it's a state bank run with actual interest in the welfare of it's customers.
@alcinnz Well, in as much as there is a difference, my actual thought is that we need a full-on global communally owned and run bank, where you can have one or more accounts to keep funds indefinitely, and where internal transfers are free.
@Coffee
> we need a full-on global communally owned and run bank
There are millions of communally owned banks and credit unions around the world. But unless everyone who wants to pay or donate to a creative project is banking with one of them, this doesn't help us with the problem of depending on VC pwned payment processors like PayPal and Stripe.
@alcinnz
> Also there's RFC 8905 payto: URIs. If we can get banks to adopt either (Taler could be built upon RFC8905), that'd be great! I'm not holding my breath though
Maybe the companies that make up the payment processing oligopoly need to be identified as Gatekeepers under the EU Digital Markets Act, and forced to adopt appropriate interop standards?
> that only helps us if we can convince every person
I don't think we need to convince all or even most people. This can start fairly small.
Simultaneously, the features this bank will offer, in combination with cheap international transfers, privacy guarantees and being nonprofit and coop-owned, will do a lot of the talking.
> how difficult it is to get a financial institution recognised
Well yes, this is the kicker isn't it? I think we're all aware.
@strypey@alcinnz Also, it is possible to send funds from one bank to another. Depending on jurisdiction (read: which interbanking network you tap into), this can be friction-free as well as free of charge.
Now this could yield interesting advantages if our banking organization is present in many jurisdictions.
Yes, it's a protocol for payments that backs the proposed Web Monetization W3C standard. The developers of Write.as have experimented with this. There's a few links in this thread that might shed some light;
@strypey@meljoann@Coffee From what I see in these links, Payment Pointers appears to do essentially the same thing as RFC 8905 payto: URIs. Just there's a disagreement over these should be URIs (personally I say they should be!).
OpenPayments looks like the interesting piece, as a network protocol for initiating a transaction. Fairly well documented at a quick glance.
To go back to the original idea, I have 8 different digital wallets/bank apps on my phone right now. If there was a non-evil, cheap payment alternative I would be soooo on it 😆
Just had a look at GateHub and it appears you can’t use it for my main currency unless you are rich
@alcinnz@strypey@Coffee@splitradix when you think about it, it’s absolutely maddening that a handful of billionaires take a bite out of every single transaction that happens on the web.
@Coffee
> I don't think we need to convince all or even most people. This can start fairly small
This is even more true if the focus is on setting up a payment processor as a platform co-op. This is already a big challenge.
I don't see any advantage in piling on extra work, by trying to become a trading bank in dozens of jurisdictions on top of it. Why replicate what collectively-owned banks and credit unions have already done?
@Coffee
I don't know how much experience you have with starting new projects. I've been doing it for most of my life. Right now some friends and I are setting up a fediverse hosting service as a co-op;
@alcinnz I haven't been checking it's progress, but I've been hoping for them to grow into a free software answer to cross-country payments solution, similar to Wise.
@alcinnz is thay even possible? would banks accept the certificates from an organization that's not basically another bank? it would have to work internationally to be valuable
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