Speaking as someone who tried (and failed) to build a competitor, merchants don’t actually care …

Not being the #1 priority is very different than not caring at all. It may feel that way when trying to sell the alternative, but the merchant would still disagree at the end of the day. The alternative to new competition (which would probably also raise its rates as soon as it became popular enough) is regulation on the fees, as seen in Europe. This makes some sense as the problem is less with the capabilities of the systems which exist today and more with the size of the fees of established players. I don't see the US going down this route any time soon though. Most likely, in my mind, is the world (and maybe eventually the US) moves away from US based solutions in this space over the coming decades as other governments continue to consider this something to act on.

I think the other issue is that "crypto" is not "money". There is no card I can carry that I can take to an ATM and convert crypto to money knowing before I left my house that day exactly how much I would get down to the penny. Crypto has value the way Gold or pawnable items do, and until that barrier has been crossed the people will never embrace crypto as an alternative to cash and credit. Realistically the only way for that to happen would be if the US replaced their currency with a government backed crypto, but that is unlikely to happen without a coup. Visa and MC could still offer lines of credit in such a system but they would not be the primary purveyors of capital motility and therefore their entire business model would collapse or require extensive restructuring.

> targeted specifically high ticket items (jewelry, luxury) My immediate instinct upon reading this is "of course those businesses wouldn't be interested". They are selling a brand and image first, and if it looked like they wanted people to download some new app and put in their bank details to make a purchase instead of swiping a credit card it would cheapen the brand. Luxury stores are all about a streamlined experience and the appearance that money is no issue.

I suspect high-end merchants get that the financially well-off potential customers who hold high-fee rewards cards expect to be able to use them. Worth the 3% on a high-margin purchase to attract the customer vs. annoying them. The fee ends up split between the cardholder, bank, Visa/MC, maybe the card brand sponsor… everyone’s happy.

AliPay, WeChat Pay, and PayPay succeed because they don’t target this market at all — they target cashed based transactions and provide cash-equivalents. The whole reason why people use them in Asia is because people could use cash but it’s inconvenient to collect and store. These are far and above lower value transactions where fees are important but not as important as simply existing. I think QR payments can exist in the US if they do the same things that happen in asia: you charge via cash and the balance is stored with the provider. There aren’t any ACH transactions to reverse. If you allow charging with ACH you only cover a small amount and you control risk accordingly.

> Merchants might say they care about the fees, but in practice they care about conversion and getting sales. Also highlighted by all the merchants jumping to support the “buy now, pay later” providers.

Do you think a FOSS version of this would be possible? Or is the infra too complex or require working with regulator bodies? I have been thinking how to empower individuals to collect payments without relying on Visa, Mastercard or Venmo necessarily and putting a pretty wrapper around ACH sounds nice.