Jack Ma's Ant Group set for record $34B market debut(bbc.co.uk)

206 pointsby headalgorithm6 tahun yang lalu255 comments

bbc.co.uk

Jack Ma's Ant Group set for record $34B market debut

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54692537

265 comments

bofadeez6 tahun yang lalu

This is not an IPO by a private company. This a wholly owned subsidiary of a government, just like Saudi Aramco. Jack Ma is a high ranking CCP member with government money, not a private businessman: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46353767

tanilama6 tahun yang lalu

And..?

It doesn't IPO in Western countries anyway.

bofadeez6 tahun yang lalu

And nothing. I agree with you that it's not a controversial thing to say.

tanilama6 tahun yang lalu

Financial institutions are semi governmental branches in most countries. Jack Ma also admitted if the Chinese government demands, he would handle Ant's control back to the government. This is also the reason I believe Ant didn't plan to go to oversea for IPO in the first place, regardless of the political climate in US. It needs the buying from Chinese government, so the CCP.

Frankly speaking, in a country such like China where capital is strictly controlled, Ant's existence itself is pretty significant.

peacefulhat6 tahun yang lalu

You've fallen for propaganda

bofadeez6 tahun yang lalu

You've fallen for propaganda. Read and learn: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46353767

peacefulhat6 tahun yang lalu

Ok, I read it. At no point does it say Alibaba is owned by the Chinese government. Jack Ma's not even the CEO anymore so dunno what you think this proves.

bofadeez6 tahun yang lalu

Okay, I guess you need a reading list to understand the implications:

1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/07/we-cant-tell-if-chinese...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...

3. https://justthenews.com/world/asia/made-china-owned-china-20...

4. https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...

This took me 1 minute to assemble. There's a lot more...

[deleted]6 tahun yang lalu

paxys6 tahun yang lalu

So Jack Ma being one of 88 million communist party members in China means his company is fully owned by the Chinese government? What are you smoking?

cepp6 tahun yang lalu

1) Jack Ma is neither the CEO nor the majority shareholder in Ant. [1]

2) Jack is one of > 91.2M party members in China. As are most high-ranking managers and professionals, it's simply a fact of life. [2]

Nothing about 1 or 2 makes Alibaba Group or Ant a state owned enterprise (SOE) more than any other company in China. Everything in the world need _not_ be late stage capitalist democracy. There are plenty of ways to attain success and happiness. Lastly, Ant isn't even IPOing in the West. If you disagree then vote with your wallet (or don't).

[1]: https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/ir/pdf/160614/12.pdf

[2]: https://www.statista.com/topics/1247/chinese-communist-party...

gonehome6 tahun yang lalu

I'm more skeptical after seeing this: https://youtu.be/f3lUEnMaiAU

I would have expected being a party member to just be the default in order for anyone to do anything of substance in China, but he comes across extremely poorly in that interview.

So poorly, that I find it more likely that the companies are being propped up/operated by the government than someone like him could successfully build/run them.

Maybe I'm indexing too much on that, but watch it for yourself, definitely weird.

cepp6 tahun yang lalu

I worked at Ali and have seen 马云 speak in person. I get that it seems a bit weird because he's _not_ technical, nor particularly enlightened in any area, but the success of the company is in part due to his excellence as a manager. It's part of the reason Ali wasn't, until very recently, in gaming because he wanted to focus the company and to abide by a certain set of principles.

To your second point: doing business in China is partially owed to the niche that the government carves for you. Look at the debacle of Ofo vs Mobike. You need to grow at all costs until you can overtake competition then you're protected.

gonehome6 tahun yang lalu

I guess I'm skeptical that you can be an excellent manager with that level of inability to discuss anything of depth. The excellent managers I've interacted with (especially at the exec level) have always been really sharp and had a pretty deep understanding of the stack even if they're not themselves programmers. The ones that don't or can't are usually bad.

> doing business in China is partially owed to the niche that the government carves for you...You need to grow at all costs until you can overtake competition then you're protected.

I suspect this protection is what allows people to succeed that would otherwise fail in a real competition. In that interview he comes across like an empty suit/figurehead. It wasn't a huge surprise to me that they got rid of him.

bofadeez6 tahun yang lalu

"it's simply a fact of life" - No

"Everything in the world need _not_ be late stage capitalist democracy. There are plenty of ways to attain success and happiness."

- You meant to say "early stage" and of course there are many ways to attain success and happiness. That's why we allow people to make their own choices, elect their own representatives, and speak freely. We don't force them into accepting one single system, like they do in China. In America, we believe humans have inalienable rights that the government has no authority to usurp. The government exists subserviently to protect our rights to pursue happiness as we see fit, provided we don't infringe on the rights of others. If you want to go live in a communist community within a free society, you're more than welcome to share your income with a group of people. What you have in China is totalitarianism / authoritarianism, which we believe is axiomatically immoral, as it removes option for people to decide on their own, it removes the inalienable rights that all humans naturally have at birth. Don't you agree that you own your physical body, and you own the fruits of your labor? Don't you think you have the right to express criticism against leaders? From where exactly do they derive their authority? It's not by elected mandate. I would love to hear why you think restricting freedom and being a cheerleader for totalitarianism / authoritarianism can (even in theory) lead to greater happiness. Thank you!

[deleted]6 tahun yang lalu

eunos6 tahun yang lalu

From what I read and watched about Alipay, seems very convenient.

Too bad it won't be available to non-Chinese users anytime soon.

woutr_be6 tahun yang lalu

I use it in Hong Kong, it's very convenient to pay utility bills with. Some merchants also accept it for online payments, and you can pay with it at convenient stores, although Octopus card is far easier there.

FeloniousHam6 tahun yang lalu

As an American ignorant of Alipay/WeChat, I don't understand why they are perceived to be more convenient/advanced than the credit card system here. I tap my phone/card to pay at the register, enter the card number once for utilities in a webpage, that pretty low friction.

woutr_be6 tahun yang lalu

For paying at stores, I also just use credit cars (Apple Pay), it’s indeed more convenient. For utilities, I open the app, check if I have a bill and click “pay”. It’s nice to be able to pay all utilities from one app, instead of having to log in to different sites and enter my details.

But I think one of the main things is also that you can connect it to your bank account, so it essentially becomes what a debit card is.

Tepix6 tahun yang lalu

If you pay on AliExpress today you are using AliPay.

bufferoverflow6 tahun yang lalu

"using" only in the sense that your website visitors use Google Analytics.

Tepix6 tahun yang lalu

No, you actually have to get an AliPay account if my memory serves me correctly. It's been a few years since i created the account.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

But it's still processed via the visa/mastercard network. It's "alipay" in the same sense that the recent magnetic accessories for the iPhone 12 is "magsafe". Totally different things, same branding.

Cthulhu_6 tahun yang lalu

Closer analogy would be Paypal I think.

ButWhatFor6 tahun yang lalu

I think I’ve seen someone pay with AliPay using their face... pretty far ahead of what we have...

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

>pretty far ahead of what we have...

call me a luddite but that's one innovation that I can do without.

ButWhatFor6 tahun yang lalu

Agreed - but if you live in China, the government already has your face mapped and is tracking you wherever you go... so maybe it is a zero additional cost for their citizens to give their face away to another application.

netsharc6 tahun yang lalu

I was in an airport in China. A screen said "Walk up to the camera and we'll tell you which way to your gate.". I did so, the screen highlighted my face on the camera feed, showed me my name and my gate. Geezus Christ, they don't hide the fact that they're tracking faces...

When you first enter China, you have to let a machine scan your face (IIRC fingerprints too?), and locals have to scan their (RFID-enabled) IDs to enter airports or train stations; so they seem to really have total control.

dmurray6 tahun yang lalu

London Heathrow has face-tracking gates. Entering the US has required fingerprints for many years, at least for me.

I can't imagine how an international traveller could in good faith single out China as having "total control" on these grounds in a way that is qualitatively different from Western countries.

wenc6 tahun yang lalu

U.S. airports do this too, but you can opt-out.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2019/08/1...

Some flights from Europe to US do this at the gate -- there's no opt-out. I remember flying AA from AMS and everybody had to get scanned before boarding (CBP agents were present).

nogabebop236 tahun yang lalu

I hear this and feel fear. "It's 1984 come to life", I shout. I suspect in China they look at this advance proudly and say "What a Brave New World!"

badwolf6 tahun yang lalu

here we have "Clear"

https://www.clearme.com

bb6116 tahun yang lalu

The difference is that Clear is a paid, private service, not a government requirement.

garmaine6 tahun yang lalu

How is a face authorization? Can I just point my phone at you and take your money?

spcebar6 tahun yang lalu

Don't know if it's nationwide, but at CVSs in Boston you can now use alipay.

_1tan6 tahun yang lalu

AliPay can be used at the German drug store chain "DM" as well.

QuietZelda6 tahun yang lalu

You can use Alipay Tour Pass in China

_-___________-_6 tahun yang lalu

I'm not Chinese and I use Alipay all the time :)

arusahni6 tahun yang lalu

I always wondered what org was behind the Ant Design React UI framework.

cfontes6 tahun yang lalu

I also did, Ant Design is pretty good, I was sure it was some major company but that explains it...

[deleted]6 tahun yang lalu

radihuq6 tahun yang lalu

My first thought as well

Cthulhu_6 tahun yang lalu

I started with it in a new project once, but wasn't allowed to use it because of its Chinese origins, :/

scaladev6 tahun yang lalu

I wrote a comment pointing out the lunacy of this situation, and it got flagged almost immediately. Do you also refuse to use the Linux kernel? It's got plenty of that dirty Chinese code these days. I see @huawei.com and others on LKML all the time.

The history repeats itself endlessly.

sudosysgen6 tahun yang lalu

"History repeats itself twice. First as a tragedy, then as a farce."

abc-xyz6 tahun yang lalu

The history repeating itself is the world’s inability and unwillingness to make sacrifices to stop China, similar to what we saw with Nazi Germany.

sudosysgen6 tahun yang lalu

The world's unwillingness to do so boils down to two reasons.

Firstly, all of the proposed courses of action involve giving more power to the US, which shall I remind you, kills millions of people in wars like it's nothing. It's not clear at all that decreasing China's power but increasing that of the US will do any good to anyone. Just in Iraq, the US killed more people than anyone accuses China of imprisoning illegitimately. So unless you can find a way to reduce China's power without also increasing that of the US, no one outside of those under US propaganda or interest will want to do much of anything.

Secondly, China is a nuclear armed country. Intervening in their domestic affairs is not easily done.

Finally, comparing the CCP to the NSDAP is frankly absurd. They are not comparable. The Nazi party wanted to kill around a third of the world's population and enslave another third. The CCP is accused, at worst, to be trying to change the culture of one of their provinces using inhumane tactics and torture, which sadly is just par for the course for the world in general.

bbaumgar6 tahun yang lalu

We are in the process of transitioning off it because of those same Chinese origins... probably justified but it's a painful process.

sojournerc6 tahun yang lalu

I'm curious why you feel it's justified? I use it and haven't had any reason to be suspicious.

It's open source and MIT licensed.

nogabebop236 tahun yang lalu

Also really good, even if you need to get past the default stylings and behaviours. They have continually moved upstream beyond basic components into more enterprise patterns that are as useful IMO if you need specialization but great for getting started (ex: login workflows, portals)

sojournerc6 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, I absolutely love the consistency and ease of customization. Typescript integration is great as well. I just wish I could read the comments in source sometimes.

I like that AntD has a more 'enterprise' feel than other component libs that tend to be based on material design.

scaladev6 tahun yang lalu

Jesus Christ. This is the Red Scare all over again.

nogabebop236 tahun yang lalu

I evaluated it for our company a few years ago (the entire Ant design system, not just React UI Components) and although everyone had heard of Alibaba few knew about Ant Financial (now the Ant Group) even though it's absolutely massive.

Funny how our 2 leading candidates, AntDesign and BluePrint, both come from less than "ideal" companies with similar baggage, though from opposite sides of the spectrum!

abc-xyz6 tahun yang lalu

(4)

wombatmobile6 tahun yang lalu

In this interview with Stephen A. Orlins, Kai-Fu Lee explains the value proposition of Alipay

https://www.ncuscr.org/media/podcast/uschinainsights/kai-fu-...

Orlins: You focus a lot on, kind of Alipay or WeChat Pay. How does that change the landscape for AI in China versus the United States, where we still are heavily reliant on a credit card system that seems quite old and outdated when you're in China?

Lee: It's a very unique opportunity for China to leapfrog. The U.S. had the world's most leading transaction tool, which was the credit card, but it became outdated. It charges too much, it's inconvenient, it's only customer to merchant. In China, with WeChat and Alipay, anybody can pay anybody. We can do micro payments and there are no fees, almost no fees, so the 2% extra charge is almost like a tax on the American economy charged by the credit cards. But with respect to AI, now everybody, including WeChat and Alibaba, but also, if you build an app, you know who your customers are, and what they paid and why. And if you're a retail shop and people scanned you, you know who pays you and why. There are even beggars in the street holding up a sign, "Scan me and give me money," and they know who paid them and why. So I think this is creating a huge amount of data that will help AI.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

>It charges too much, [...] so the 2% extra charge is almost like a tax on the American economy charged by the credit cards.

they seem to have forgotten about europe where they have the same credit card networks, but capped interchange fees to around 0.3%.

>[...] So I think this is creating a huge amount of data that will help AI.

This already happens to an extent in the US. Your credit card transactions are sold to data brokers for analytics/market research purposes.

abstractbarista6 tahun yang lalu

The merchant fee sucks for poor people because businesses likely raise margins to cover it (if they see significant volume via credit cards, like grocery stores).

Every transaction I make nets me 2-5% 'cashback'. Great for me since I get 5% back even on things like my electric bill and Internet.

But for everyone else paying cash at places where credit is primarily received, they're basically being fined for my benefit.

rfoo6 tahun yang lalu

An interesting fact is in China even traditional credit cards have significantly lower fee. UnionPay only charges around 0.6%. Not comparable to Alipay or WeChat Pay's effectively 0% but still.

an_opabinia6 tahun yang lalu

Do American consumers spend a lot more money on American credit cards than European consumers spend on European cards?

Obviously I think the fees are pointless.

MacsHeadroom6 tahun yang lalu

As an American, the only thing I don't spend on a credit card is rent (because my landlord doesn't accept it).

It's silly not to pay for everything on credit cards here, when you can get 3-5% back on anything with the right card. That's around $4k/year if you spend $100k before even accounting for doubling on some cards and other benefits like travel vouchers, Uber credits, and free insurance coverage. (Minus a $600-$1000 a year in annual card fees for high end cards.)

jjeaff6 tahun yang lalu

You aren't getting 3-5% cash back unless you are using tons of different cards for different types of purchases and are also keeping within limits.

There used to be a 3% cashback on everything card with no limit. Now 2% is the best and difficult for most people to get.

You can get 5% credit back with an Amazon Prime card but only on Amazon.

Most other 3% or more back are either limited to a niche category and/or capped. (Like 6% back on groceries, but only for the first $6k).

pertymcpert6 tahun yang lalu

I imagine that spending is dominated by a few major categories, which you can find specific cards to cover. There are spending limits, but you can always get multiple cards. I do that with BoA, I have 2 basically identical credit cards, but each has a different bonus category set, or I can set both to use the same category like dining out.

So unless you're spending like 200k net a year on life expenses, it's pretty easy to get the max returns.

scarmig6 tahun yang lalu

You can get a pretty good, simple system set up with Chase CSR and FU, supplemented with the Amazon card. Just have to remember to use the CSR for the relevant categories, which isn't that hard.

bobthepanda6 tahun yang lalu

You need to have a good credit score and be fairly well off to get a CSR though.

jimbob456 tahun yang lalu

As an American, I don't care if I get 0% back, I'm still using a credit card because the identity theft protection discrepancy between credit and debit cards is enormous. I say this to people and those who have had to deal with identify theft before immediate are on board with me. Those who haven't proceed to argue.

patd6 tahun yang lalu

As a European, could you explain this a bit ? How does identity theft differ between credit and debit cards ?

bleepblorp6 tahun yang lalu

The US (and Canada) have much weaker consumer protections for debit than credit.

If a merchant posts a fraudulent transaction against a credit card, you'll most likely get your money back. If a merchant posts a fraudulent transaction against a debit card, you might not get your money back.

More dangerously, if your debit card credentials are skimmed and used to withdraw money from your account by any means other than the retail debit-card payment system, you won't get your money back.

1120121236 tahun yang lalu

Basically, when you purchase something with a credit card the bank fronts the money to the merchant and bills you for purchases later. If a transaction is fraudulent, either the merchant or the credit card company take the hit, and you're never out any money, even temporarily. For credit cards the market has settled on 0 consumer fraud liability pretty much no matter the circumstances (and very hassle-free too).

On the other hand, with debit cards money is withdrawn from your account when a fraudulent purchase is made, and you need to wait for your bank to complete an investigation to reimburse you. They also tend to have rather stricter reporting standards in that if you don't report fraud promptly, you might be stuck with (some) liability.

Either way you'll typically get your money back, but the hassle is much reduced with credit cards.

mehrdadn6 tahun yang lalu

> you can get 3-5% back on anything with the right card. That's around $4k/year if you spend $100k

How in the world would a tpical person spend that much? That's over $8000/month with credit cards!

Also... aren't your 5% cards capped at like $1500 spend per quarter ($500/month)?

Do you use cash back cards in your own life, and does your usage even vaguely match the numbers you suggested here?

[deleted]6 tahun yang lalu

lotsofpulp6 tahun yang lalu

Then China must not have 2% to 5% cash back rewards on their credit cards.

jbay8086 tahun yang lalu

Yes, instead, product prices are correspondingly lower (and then some).

nfriedly6 tahun yang lalu

Honestly, it's not even that great for you. For starters, you're basically giving your credit card company a free loan.

If given a choice between paying 100% and being done, or paying 105% and getting the 5% back later, almost no one would chose the 105% option. (I know it doesn't actually work this way, but it's still a good illustration.)

Additionally, that program necessarily adds some cost, which is just rolled into higher prices that you (and everyone else) pay.

All that said, I completely agree with your point. I wish credit card reward schemes would just go away.

ubercow136 tahun yang lalu

On average the credit card company is the one giving you the free loan.

nfriedly6 tahun yang lalu

I guess you're both giving each other loans, but even if you pay your bill in full each month, yours still isn't free. If you're getting 5% back, then the item was almost certainly marked up more than 5%. So you're still paying something for that loan in the form of higher up-front pricing.

And, of course, if you don't pay your bill in full each month, then you're likely looking at 15-20% or more (APR) on whatever balance you left unpaid.

mehrdadn6 tahun yang lalu

> If you're getting 5% back, then the item was almost certainly marked up more than 5%.

How though? The 5% back is not a rebate coming from the merchant, it's coming from the card issuer. Don't they (generally -- barring special agreements for specific cards) get the same amount of money regardless of what cards people use?

nfriedly6 tahun yang lalu

When I ran a business that accepted credit cards, I had to pay different levels of fees depending on the type of card and rewards scheme associated with it. I had to set my prices based on the highest rewards card fees, and if someone paid with a lower fee card, I just kept the difference as extra profit. (My agreement with the CC processor explicitly required me to give everyone the same price regardless of how they paid.)

I think 5% is a special case that's limited to specific vendors or products, I'm not aware of any general rebate higher than 2%.

I know Stripe and Square and other companies have come along now that charge the same fees regardless of the type of card - but note that they're all above 2%.

I think the only difference now is that Stripe/Square/etc. keep the difference as profit when someone pays with a non-rewards card, instead of the vendor. (But, in their defense, they're able to negotiate lower rates than I was ever able to get on my own.)

taftster6 tahun yang lalu

This is a good point. But realistically, that choice is not an option. Therefore, I'm at a disadvantage if I don't use the most "rewardy" type of card available. The cost of these points/rewards are priced in. So the only way to recapture that is to use a high reward card. It's a sucky model, but we're all caught in it and the folks paying with alternatives like cash are the ones holding the bag.

lixtra6 tahun yang lalu

If the item is expensive enough you can also negotiate a discount for not paying by credit card.

ryandrake6 tahun yang lalu

Isn’t this against the merchant agreements between them and the credit card companies? If it was allowed, wouldn’t you see separate cash and credit prices all over the place?

edoceo6 tahun yang lalu

I see those. Dentist, Gas, Pub. My dentist is 10% off for cash. Gas I bought last week in New Hampshire, $0.07 cheaper with cash. Pub has a minimum and sur-charge for card. And my coffee place too.

But, online, eg PayPal, has the same-price rule.

wombatmobile6 tahun yang lalu

> This already happens to an extent in the US. Your credit card transactions are sold to data brokers for analytics/market research purposes.

To an extent. US cc transaction data are batched. Alipay provides more agile context by integrating location data real time.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

>US cc transaction data are batched

to what extent? They might take a few days to settle, but the authorizations show up in my bank almost immediately. For all intents and purposes they're real time.

>Alipay provides more agile context by integrating location data real time.

The usefulness of this is questionable. Merchant terminals are mostly fixed, so correlating a merchant id/name to a physical location isn't too hard. Apple pay already has this, where it will show a map of where the transaction happened if you click into a transaction. This works even without location services enabled on your phone.

wombatmobile6 tahun yang lalu

Think bigger.

Think 600 million integrated surveillance cameras.

Think every aspect of consumer behaviour, pre and post every sale of every magnitude and every configuration, being fed through AI sieves every moment of every day, everywhere.

SiempreViernes6 tahun yang lalu

Arguably the big improvement in data coverage is at the small scale retailers, big chains have already spent the time and money need to investigate customer behaviour in that sort of detail.

mehrdadn6 tahun yang lalu

If by batching you mean aggregated (as opposed to delayed), it seems like a matter of time before more merchants start providing L3 data...

ulfw6 tahun yang lalu

As does Apple Pay (see Apple Card that displays your store/location of purchase).

mchusma6 tahun yang lalu

The 2% tax is IMO the easiest problem to see and fix in the american financial system.

lotsofpulp6 tahun yang lalu

As far as I can tell, there isn't much political will to fix it. Merchants already have the freedom to offer lower prices, and some do for paying with cash/debit. But for the most part, I think merchants are betting that people will spend more with credit cards.

Similarly, consumers also like the cash back/rewards game. Plus there are benefits to having an arbiter when dealing with an unknown party in a transaction.

justicezyx6 tahun yang lalu

I thought Democratic countries are designed to let the people fixing their own problem?

Funny people nowadays mentioning "political will", somehow this reminds me how domesticated Chinese people think about changing society: don't bother, the government does not want to do that...

Truly sad...

cooliosis6 tahun yang lalu

I think it's because the question asked about US vs China

nirui6 tahun yang lalu

Lee is a smart guy. But I think his missed one important point: It's not about fees. No it's not even about easy to use.

In China, technically anyone can setup a "business" account on Alipay with just one tap and then start to collect payment right way, the story is completely different if you have to deal with banks. Then with all that, you add the fact that not everybody here uses credit card which raises the bar for credit card adaption up yet again.

I'd recommend people who interested about the related development to checkout the DC/EP project. Which is aimed to be an alternative to Alipay and WeChat Pay, but backed by the banks.

jariel6 tahun yang lalu

It's definitely about the fees and underlying structures.

No economy is 'suffering' because businesses have to 'deal with a bank'. It could be smoother, but it's mostly not a big deal.

Since the world has 'gone digital' the '2%' system setup became the natural medium and it's possibly a bigger problem than Google and FB, it's just that nobody wants to talk about it.

erichocean6 tahun yang lalu

> No economy is 'suffering' because businesses have to 'deal with a bank'.

So, what was the market opportunity Stripe exploited if not that "dealing with banks" is painful?

jariel6 tahun yang lalu

First, Stripe, despite it's mega valuation, is small peanuts. They are just a part of something much bigger, and they are not really enabling new markets.

Second, they didn't invent anything new, they just made the process a easier. There are plenty of non-Stripe solutions you can use today.

To a teenage software developer without business exposure or experience, who thinks 'opening a merchant account' is a big deal, or that 'incorporating' is a big deal, Stripe seems like some kind of magic.

But none of that is hard. People do it all the time. Your plumber, hairdresser and local cafe probably have some kind of incorporation and collect/pay a VAT and business tax. It's not rocket science. You can usually do it online in a few minutes.

'Dealing with banks' is not a problem with scale. 2% of every transaction however, and the underlying power structures that want to keep it that way ... that's a problem.

jlokier6 tahun yang lalu

> Your plumber, hairdresser and local cafe probably have some kind of incorporation and collect/pay a VAT and business tax. It's not rocket science. You can usually do it online in a few minutes

I'm in the UK.

Setting up a company is easy. The last time I did it, took an hour or so of filling out forms online, but it's cheap and a few hours later, or the next day, you have a legal company.

Registering for tax/VAT etc takes longer. The forms took me longer to fill and the system took a few weeks to proceed through each step (codes sent in the post, figures in online forms checked by a person, etc), but you can start trading before they are done if you follow the transitional arrangements.

Getting a bank account is much slower. Recently I did it with Starling, because they offered a much faster online process than the high street banks. It still took a frustrating 4 working days, with support messages back and forth because they kept challenging me for "proof" that I was a business. Having a company was not sufficient proof. Lots of money laundering requirements, having to prove the type of business, having to provide evidence of online presence, etc.

I temporarily altered my LinkedIn profile (which I saw they did check) to satisfy their requirements.

The time before that was a high street bank, Barclays. The process took about 2 months. They interviewed me twice, and another of the directors, and conducted background checks on everyone. In the interviews they asked a lot of challenging questions about the nature of the business, even though it was a non-profit with 5 independent directors, handling only a small amount of money.

Other people, in more regular types of small business (plumber, hairdresser, cafe etc) report that getting business accounts can often take 1-2 months, and be quite frustrating because you want to start trading and that's a bottleneck.

Merchant accounts (for taking credit cards) are no longer necessary because of services like Paypal and Stripe. It used to be that merchant accounts were a challenge to get as a small business, because they didn't serve early businesses.

But even now, with Paypal, last time I did it, they set a cap on £1000/year of transactions until certain documentation was received by them. Despite sending them 10 different forms of business documentation at their request, they were never satisfied, and so that business stopped using Paypal, relegating it to a handful of users that couldn't pay any other way.

dmos626 tahun yang lalu

I understand that we're talking about feeding "AI" data here, so it's kind of moot, but I'd like to point out anyway that most of us don't want the merchants to know who we are (or to feed the "AI" in general).

rmah6 tahun yang lalu

It may surprise some folks here on HN, but in the real world, the vast majority of people don't care if merchants "know who they are". I'd bet that there are more people want merchants to know who they are than there are people who explicitly don't want them to know. But that said, the vast majority simply don't care. Just my opinion, of course.

hn_throwaway_996 tahun yang lalu

I think it's more like "the vast majority simply don't care, until they do". That is, I think most people think "Who cares if merchant XYZ knows I changed my shampoo brand", but when people are actually shown the full set of data that is known about them, and how that data is correlated with with tons of other data sources, and that data is used to make fairly accurate predictions about your behavior which affects what products and services are promoted to you, that's when your average person goes "holy shit!"

Right now it's just "out of sight, out of mind" and the full capabilities of what is possible with aggregated data is just not apparent to your average person.

Barrin926 tahun yang lalu

meh, people here in Germany are privacy focused as hell and even here nobody cares for more than five minutes when some data scandal breaks, of which we have at least one every year now.

AI, surveillance capitalism, manipulation and so on have been in pop-culture and news for years now, 'the social dilemma' just aired on netflix and a lot of people seem to have watched it, there's a documentary about 'big data' on TV every month, every other sci-fi movie has it as a plot point, we're all aware of it. People are genuinely indifferent about it. People will complain about it in theoretic debates but the number of people who actually delete the apps off their phone is basically zero, which tells you what you need to know.

saagarjha6 tahun yang lalu

> nobody cares for more than five minutes when some data scandal breaks, of which we have at least one every year now

Perhaps they don't care because they are accustomed and desensitized to it?

yurlungur6 tahun yang lalu

His point is less about what customers want but more about the value of the data being collected. By providing a payment service you are harvesting a large amount of data "for free" that can be directly turned into money.

wil4216 tahun yang lalu

Why would I want to give up my various credit/debit cards and use a single app? I would be giving a single app all the payment power. This works well in a highly regulated Government controlled market. The EU and US allow anyone to compete. China does not.

A better and more realistic solution in the US is the personal bank to bank transfers people can easily do in the UK/EU.

dmurray6 tahun yang lalu

There are two major credit card networks and essentially 0 new entrants in that space. Your "various credit/debit cards" are most likely with the same two networks, linked to different bank accounts, just as they could be with Alipay. They just have different branding.

Two is a lot more than one, for competition purposes, but it's hardly a wide open market where "anyone can compete", and it's the same as the number of major consumer payment networks in China (Alipay and Wechat pay).

jlokier6 tahun yang lalu

In practice, it doesn't work like that.

There are two major networks, but many vendors of credit cards, with very difficult qualities from each other.

If you have any problems, it's the vendors you will deal with and who decide things like your credit limit, how often that's revised (up or down), whether payments are blocked and how to unblock them, how you are notified about transactions, whether paying off the card turns into credit instantly or takes a few days, your interest rates, whether the interest is applied immediately or not, whether you have balance transfer and money transfer, whether you have 0% transfers, cashbacks and other deals, and the kind of customer service you get (whether it's on the phone or forced to be via chat, whether they answer quickly and are helpful or take forever and are not), and whether their website and app are down "for maintenance" regularly.

Almost everything you'd care about is up to the vendor of which there are many, not the network.

wil4216 tahun yang lalu

There are actually 4. Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover.

Yes and I make about $1500-$2000 in cash back a year using my various branded credit cards. How can you do that with Alipay?

Does Alipay offer theft protection, travel insurance, or price protection for buyers? My Amex and Chase cards do.

What about disputes and fraud on Alipay?

Spearchucker6 tahun yang lalu

Are these cashbacks truly gifted to you though, or is the price of another product or service from the provider simply adjusted to compensate? Like Black Friday discounts, where product prices are raised so that the "discount" only drives sales volume, rather than offer a truly marked-down/discounted price to the consumer.

wil4216 tahun yang lalu

6% back on groceries with a $6,000 cap for the Amex, $95 fee, cap met in July, gas is 3% back. Chase visa has 5% back on groceries with a 12k cap, no fee. Bank of America visa has 3% back online orders, no fee.

Delta Amex with 100,000+ miles is used for automated bills, $95 fee. Pre-covid I made back the $95 fee by saving on checked bags etc. Will be cancelled in January due to covid.

jdeibele6 tahun yang lalu

I have United-branded Visa. I was going to cancel it but the rep said that I could pay the annual fee of $95 with miles. I have it to avoid paying bag fees. Haven't traveled with United for more than a year. I guess I'll keep it until the miles run out.

I don't know if you can do the same with your Delta Amex but FYI.

mdorazio6 tahun yang lalu

It’s even worse. A significant portion of cash back/rewards are financed from fees and interest payments charged to other credit card holders. So in effect, you’re getting money from poorer and/or less responsible people who carry balances and use their cards to get cash advances.

jjoonathan6 tahun yang lalu

What? No. Cash back is a cut of the fees the CC company charges to the merchant.

toomuchtodo6 tahun yang lalu

Where do you think those fees come from? You! Rebates are your own money you have to optimize to get back, and those who are less well off are usually the ones who are disproportionally impacted by the aggregate costs of reward cards (because they're paying with cash, debit cards, or other mechanisms where they don't receive a rebate).

Rewards for payments and unregulated interchange fees need to die. They are a financial transaction tax on everyone.

jjoonathan6 tahun yang lalu

Yes, exactly.

"Your reward points come from interest charged to poor people" is both gross (in that some people are placated by it) and incorrect.

paulryanrogers6 tahun yang lalu

Merchants pass these fees on as higher prices. No such thing as a free lunch.

(Rewards cards similarly offer insignificant benefits or are paid for by increases elsewhere.)

disgruntledphd26 tahun yang lalu

Which are paid for by increasing prices for cash buyers.

It's just another regressive tax on poor Americans, sadly.

mdorazio6 tahun yang lalu

No, they are partially a cut of the fees the CC company charges. Show me proof that they're 100% from fees and I'll believe you. Otherwise a quick google search shows that you're not correct here.

ozi6 tahun yang lalu

Aside from the cost of the cards themselves, the rewards are free so long as you don't carry a balance.

If you pay your balance off each month, these cards are great. I enjoy thousands/year in benefits after fees.

mbesto6 tahun yang lalu

> Yes and I make about $1500-$2000 in cash back a year using my various branded credit cards. How can you do that with Alipay?

Which are essentially funded through merchant fees. CC's will gladly give you $2k in cash back for all of the fees that it charges merchants. If those fees didn't exist, your overall cost of goods would likely be ~3% cheaper.

Looks like Alipay has disputes and fraud: https://intl.alipay.com/ihome/user/protect/memberProtect.htm

z3ncyberpunk6 tahun yang lalu

markus_zhang6 tahun yang lalu

Because it's a lot more convenient, for the customer to just carry their cell and scan a QR code to pay, and a lot more convenient and cheaper for a small seller to just print a paper showing a QR code. Yeah for sure there are security issues (e.g. thieves changing the QR code pic so the money goes into another account) but most people out there put more value in that convenience. Plus they are a lot cheaper than cc.

Personal bank to bank transactions, at least in Canada, still involves a lot of trouble.

nine_k6 tahun yang lalu

The fun thing is that you have a number of ways to pay electronically in the US, PayPal and Venmo are pretty widespread.

What is missing is an effortless way of asking to pay, like by scanning a QR code. Contactless payments using NFC in cards and phones do not quite cut it, and require a terminal.

reader_mode6 tahun yang lalu

I think Visa is working on NFC to phone for Android (without a terminal)

https://www.globalcosmeticsnews.com/visa-tap-to-phone-to-exp...

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

How is QR any different than NFC from a user perspective? Both require a terminal to be effortless for the consumer (an LCD or e-ink display that shows a real time QR with transaction details like amount, or an NFC chip that does the same thing).

I think QR is slightly worse since I have to open my camera app, or open my payment app and select camera, vs just waving my watch/phone at a terminal.

Things like metro payments are 100% doable with NFC and would be an awful nightmare with QR.

vishnugupta6 tahun yang lalu

> How is QR any different than NFC from a user perspective?

Back when AliPay and others were scaling up not too many phones had NFC.

However, more importantly, QR is way better from merchant's stand point. A static QR code is a thing of beauty. A tiny mom-and-shop merchant could take a printout and stick it up on their physical store front. It allowed AliPay to onboard of hundreds of thousands of merchants with minimal or no operations team on the ground. This strategy was almost 100% replicated in India by Paytm and their ilk. It was incredible to see even the smallest of shops with a printed QR codes stuck to their push carts, rickety shops etc.,

cher886 tahun yang lalu

Most QR systems (in merchant presented mode, anyway) require good internet connectivity, which may not be a given in developing markets. This isn't a problem for NFC.

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

Until everyone starts faking receipts, and then you’re back to terminals and someone validating they did receive a payment.

Or they go the other way and they’re scanning your QR code.

Basically, it isn’t actually better than NFC, just different. And maybe a little worse for speed, but better for donations or things that anything is better than nothing.

alisonatwork6 tahun yang lalu

"Anything is better than nothing" is exactly the point. We are talking about businesses that run on a shoestring here. Peddlers, street vendors, people who may not even have a phone of their own but one of their family members does, and that's whose QR code they have printed out to accept payments. In a society where nobody carries cash any more, the best you can hope for as a bottom-rung vendor is that your customers aren't desperate enough to try cheat you out of a few kuai.

At the next level up, of course, vendors will have their own phone so they can check their notifications to make sure that a payment went through. And that is a big step forward for vendors in developing countries - there's no risk of receiving counterfeit currency with electronic transactions.

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

Unfortunately the bottom rung can least afford the fraud.

If the currency is good enough to fool a street vendor, it’s probably good enough to spend with their suppliers. Not like they’re sticking it in a bank. I suspect those street vendors are also not accepting bills so large they’re worth counterfeiting.

Chargeback fraud of course being more likely with credit card payments - but again, unlikely for small vendor transactions. It’s not worth it for anyone.

The argument that people don’t carry cash anymore is certainly real enough - and the beggars/window washer at a red light types are the most impacted rather than real merchants.

angio6 tahun yang lalu

A camera has been available on lower end phones for at least 10 years, NFC not so much. QR codes are also ubiquitous in China so it's a familiar concept to people there, even less tech savvy/educated people.

bmitc6 tahun yang lalu

Using WeChat or Alipay in China does not require anything other than the app, which is quickly opened. Merchants just have pieces of paper with their QR code on them, and the payment is nearly instant. NFC is extremely finicky and much slower. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen lines held up by people needing to wave their phone or credit card around to get the NFC recognition to work.

As someone who has visited China, it truly feels like stepping back in time when coming to the U.S. with regards to payments.

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

How do you validate I've paid and let me through with a static QR code for something like the metro, or a ticketed event, or even a coffee? How do you know they paid the right amount? I turn and show you my receipt, and you hope it's not faked?

The answer is they don't do that - and they do it the other way around. The user shows THEIR QR code to the merchant (or automated kiosk).

Which means they still need a terminal - and it's going to be slower than NFC.

And NFC works when my battery dies.

bmitc6 tahun yang lalu

It goes both ways and depends. The point is there are options and your statement is not correct.

Some merchants, like street merchants or drivers, will simply have their code printed out. You scan it and pay them and they get a notification on their phone or tablet that you've paid. Other places, like at bigger restaurants, have QR screen readers that will scan the purchaser's phone.

Either way, I don't see what you're getting at. The terminal is the phone in many cases, and other cases, there is a terminal in the sense of an integrated scanner system, but why does that matter? For the user it is much more convenient and faster. It's essentially instant, and I have never waited for the amount of time it takes for a credit card or NFC payment method to process. Further, it allows basically anyone to have this method because, again, the terminal is your phone and can be so for both parties in the transaction.

> And NFC works when my battery dies.

So what? You can charge your phone essentially anywhere in China.

sfifs6 tahun yang lalu

> How do you validate I've paid and let me through with a static QR code for something like the metro, or a ticketed event, or even a coffee? How do you know they paid the right amount? I turn and show you my receipt, and you hope it's not faked?

By and large when I've used these systems, the vendor just checks they received the correct amount of payment in their app. It's largely immediate

yuanchenxi956 tahun yang lalu

Most of the merchants will just ask the customers to show the transaction detail in their phones.

ryandrake6 tahun yang lalu

What about people without smartphones? I assume credit card or cash is still an option in China?

sfifs6 tahun yang lalu

Only foreign visitors carry cash these days in China in cities in my personal experience :-) Some shops actually don't accept cash at all - so you have to pay a colleague in cash and they'll pay the vendor with Ali or Tencent Pay on your behalf.

China netizen population is estimated around 900 million. So essentially all adults in Urban and many in rural excepting small kids. Generally for the elderly, their kids or grand kids will help.

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

Sure, which works great until rampant abuse shuts that down.

Pretty easy to fake a receipt.

scarmig6 tahun yang lalu

It's also pretty easy to take an item and walk out without paying. But it doesn't happen. At least, it doesn't happen that much, and I would guess it happens much less in China than in the USA (though I'd be curious to see actual shrinkage numbers).

QR codes seem to have largely supplanted cash and credit cards in mainland China, whatever hypothetical downsides they might have. And the very limited hypothetical advantages of NFC (it's unclear to me what they actually are, but let's grant they exist) don't compensate for the fact that an expensive terminal is needed, so NFC isn't displacing QR codes in the near future.

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

The five finger discount is a risk regardless of payment method and doesn’t have a bearing on which method is superior.

NFC terminals aren’t expensive - especially since they can be a cheap phone now.

QR without validating payment received is probably only viable up to maybe $10USD before the risk of being defrauded is too high.

I bet you’ll find lots of one way QR shops have a phone that they verify they’ve received payment on anyway.

scarmig6 tahun yang lalu

It doesn't have a bearing on which method is riskier, but it does have a bearing on the idea that everyone is going to be generating fake receipts on their phones.

And, yeah, most places do verify based on another phone.

smachiz6 tahun yang lalu

At which point the QR is no better - and probably worse - than the stripe app and an NFC reader.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

>NFC is extremely finicky and much slower

weird, must be a regional thing. both NFC cards and apple pay are pretty reliable for me. as for speed, I don't see how getting out your credit card and waving it next to a terminal can be slower than getting out your phone, unlocking it, opening wechat, selecting the qr scanner, lining up the camera, waiting for it to focus/scan, and confirming the transaction.

bmitc6 tahun yang lalu

WeChat's QR scanning is basically instant and doesn't need to be lined up. In my experience, it basically has scanned and processed the QR code when I've barely realized I got it in view.

Regarding NFC, I've just seen too many times of having to put the phone in the right place in the right orientation to get the communication to work, and then it still takes time to make the payment. It's faster than credit cards when it just works but slower when it doesn't. And Alipay and WeChat are faster than both.

In China, you don't need a wallet. You just need a phone. So you get used to knowing what you need. There's an initial learning curve, but then you can be paying and biking around and everything else with just your phone.

alisonatwork6 tahun yang lalu

The difference is that for most people their phone is always in their pocket or easy to grab, 24/7. A credit card may be tucked away somewhere for emergencies, or left at home. I lost my credit card somewhere years ago and didn't care when I lived in China because the physical object was irrelevant. It's only when I got back to North America that I realized some retailers still awkwardly require you to present the physical thing.

Just like the phone made wrist watches and portable music devices obsolete, it's also made the wallet obsolete. I agree that both NFC and QR code are equally convenient (although obviously QR codes are more accessible because they work on all phones and no special scanning devices are required), but I think the main issue is with NFC in a card versus NFC in a phone. The phone is always going to be more convenient, because people today are rarely - if ever - without their phone.

nine_k6 tahun yang lalu

No need to come close and touch. This can be important in some scenarios, like paying to a street musician, or donating to a cause by just pointing your camera at a billboard, or a graffiti, or a printout on something.

I think I need to restate the well-known: the gulf between reasonably easy and zero effort is quite large, and crossing it changes a lot in user behavior.

quickthrowman6 tahun yang lalu

> This can be important in some scenarios, like paying to a street musician, or donating to a cause by just pointing your camera at a billboard, or a graffiti, or a printout on something.

Pointing a camera at something that deducts money from you seems extremely ripe for abuse, what’s to stop someone from putting fake QR code’s over real ones and hijacking payments?

bmitc6 tahun yang lalu

> Pointing a camera at something that deducts money from you seems extremely ripe for abuse, what’s to stop someone from putting fake QR code’s over real ones and hijacking payments?

How would that work? If someone somehow put a fake QR code over a merchant's real one, the merchant or person you're paying would not get a notification when you scanned their code to pay them. Thus, both parties involved in the transaction would be alerted to the situation immediately. The wrong QR code would be tied to someone's account and be easily found by the system.

nine_k6 tahun yang lalu

The act of paying indeed should involve pressing a button "pay $amount to $party", and the flow should go through a server verifying both parties.

I'd say that paying with a contactless card has a problem here, an NFC credit card lacks a confirmation button, and the one on the terminal is controlled by the receiving party.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

>The act of paying indeed should involve pressing a button "pay $amount to $party"

That doesn't solve the "Stripe, Inc" issue. https://web.archive.org/web/20170715000000*/stripe.ian.sh

baybal26 tahun yang lalu

> How is QR any different than NFC from a user perspective?

In that it doesn't shut off nearly a half of all smartphones, which don't have NFC (iphone has nfc, but that's a long story)

baxtr6 tahun yang lalu

What about PayPal? I think they provide a unique link

nine_k6 tahun yang lalu

Yes, they have everything in place, except the zero-effort contactless payment feature, a way to show or export / print a QR code.

Paypal.me works great on the web as a clickable link, even though the commission is several percent (don't remember exactly), not the 0.3% which Alipay boasts.

neves6 tahun yang lalu

The 2% is a tax in the world economy that goes to America. And in a lot of countries, the credit card companies cartel charges a lot more of 2%

Cu3PO426 tahun yang lalu

The credit card fees are made up of multiple smaller fees: the largest part, the interchange fee goes to the issuing bank wherever it is in the world. The scheme fee goes to the scheme (e.g. Visa, MasterCard, ...) which is indeed ultimately a fee that goes to America, however it is much lower than 2%.

neves6 tahun yang lalu

Sure, but if you buy a chocolate in Kenya, part of the money goes to the US.

Cu3PO426 tahun yang lalu

Yes, and I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I do think it's important to stay factual in complaints.

However another massive issue except the fees is data flow. I don't need US corporations to know about all my transactions that otherwise do not relate to them at all.

It should be in the interest of all countries to have a payment scheme that is not reliant on the US or another massive foreign power. Thankfully, many countries do have their own scheme, though it seems Kenya unfortunately doesn't.

011000116 tahun yang lalu

Do WeChat Pay or AliPay offer payment protection and dispute resolution?

peacefulhat6 tahun yang lalu

Haven't used Alipay but Wechat is really annoying because they get your Wechat contact info and text you ads. Other than that, yeah it blows away US payment system. Amazon Go store has potential to get us back on top, though.

jorblumesea6 tahun yang lalu

Venmo, Paypal and other forms of digital payment are extremely popular. It's not as ubiquitous as WeChat but it's not some unknown quantity. The US has a hybrid system with mixed credit card and digital pay systems.

hesarenu6 tahun yang lalu

So similar to India's UPI?

x87678r6 tahun yang lalu

One thing is how can this be a $300B company if there are tiny fees?

blackrock6 tahun yang lalu

By massive volume? Or by targeted ads, since the company has an idea of what you buy. And your phone is just a convenient personalized billboard in your pocket.

wombatmobile6 tahun yang lalu

You might similarly ask how Alphabet can be a $1 trillion company when it charges no fees for google search, maps, or Android.

valuearb6 tahun yang lalu

Because Wall Street sells junk like this to suck, er, retail investors and tells them financials don’t matter.

sangnoir6 tahun yang lalu

Wall Street has little to do with this listing, which was unimaginable 5 years ago, as Jack Ma noted.

valuearb6 tahun yang lalu

You are correct. I was wrong in using Wall Street as a generic term for investment bankers when this is a record and ground breaking offering on Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

Still it’s being priced by Chinese bankers at such a ridiculous level that it is almost certain to work out very poorly for buyers.

valuearb6 tahun yang lalu

Thus us how the street sells garbage to retail investors. Focus on strategy, product, benefits, etc, anything other than actual financials.

dicomdan6 tahun yang lalu

You can send money for free P2P with a myriad of services in the US. Credit cards serve a different purpose.

goatinaboat6 tahun yang lalu

In China, with WeChat and Alipay, anybody can pay anybody. We can do micro payments and there are no fees

If you aren’t paying, then you are the product.

BizyDev6 tahun yang lalu

The point is that with Visa/Master Card you're the product and you pay for it.

FYI They both sell your data to brokers.

piokoch6 tahun yang lalu

I am not sure if I share Mr. Lee's enthusiasm about this massive spending control in the hands of a single company and the government that routinely puts people in concentration camps. Also helping some AI is also not on my list of life priorities, delicately speaking.

trophycase6 tahun yang lalu

They are both middlemen. If Alipay is more profitable than Visa, they are extracting even more rent and thus "taxing the economy" even more heavily.

sjg0076 tahun yang lalu

It does raise the question of why don’t we have QR payments. And why not have a line of credit behind it.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

Because compared to swipe/NFC payments, it's a downgrade or a sidegrade.

Advantages:

* cheap, no need for a dedicated terminal

Disadvantages:

* requires internet connection for both parties (credit cards only require the merchant to be connected)

* cellphone is a single failure point (eg. losing it, battery running out, dropping it), whereas you can carry spare credit cards

* scanning is worse ux than tapping

_-___________-_6 tahun yang lalu

> requires internet connection for both parties (credit cards only require the merchant to be connected)

In China it's quite common for the merchant to have a static printed-out QR code for receiving payment. This requires a connection only for the payer (and merchants will often have WiFi available, so you're likely to be able to connect one way or another). These merchants tend to just trust you when you pay and then show them the "paid" screen on your phone. You could fake it, but I guess in general people don't, and the "paid" screen does include the merchant's chosen profile image, so you would have to have done your homework to fake it.

> scanning is worse ux than tapping

This is really true. When I lived in Shanghai it was pretty common to be stuck behind someone at the metro turnstile who was trying to use the stupid QR scanning thing to get in. Contactless is much smoother, but at one time QR code was the only way to use your mobile device to get into Shanghai's metro. Now Apple Pay supports the Shanghai transit card.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

>In China it's quite common for the merchant to have a static printed-out QR code for receiving payment

"for the same amount of security" should be implied. If we're talking about what's possible, credit cards can also be processed fully offline by using an imprinter (eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Credit_card_imprinter.JPG).

franklampard6 tahun yang lalu

I think you are misunderstanding, which part of a print-out receiving QR code is insecure?

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

From the GP:

>These merchants tend to just trust you when you pay and then show them the "paid" screen on your phone. You could fake it, but I guess in general people don't, and the "paid" screen does include the merchant's chosen profile image, so you would have to have done your homework to fake it.

sudosysgen6 tahun yang lalu

But that's only if they don't want to verify themselves. Which is not an issue, really. Or, if they do not have internet, in which case with NFC they couldn't do the transaction at all.

I feel like it's a case of abuse being so rare that they don't care.

scarmig6 tahun yang lalu

One consequent advantage of cheap that you leave off:

Ubiquity.

I can't assume that every place, even in the most sophisticated cities in the US, will support NFC payments. Most don't, actually. So I still have to carry around a credit card and use it, with all the inconvenience and security issues associated with it.

Also, that cheapness allows for user experiences that are prohibitively expensive for NFC. E.g., paying at your table after eating.

angio6 tahun yang lalu

Isn't this classic innovator's dilemma? On one hand we have the incumbent that provides a good, polished solution to the problem (credit card companies), on the other we have the innovator that can focus on markets that are too small for the incumbent (micro transactions, small shops etc).

Jommi6 tahun yang lalu

Doesn't require active internrt connection. There is an SMS and credit based fallback for when connectivity is low.

Scanning is better than tapping as it can be done from range.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

> Doesn't require active internrt connection. There is an SMS and credit based fallback for when connectivity is low.

How does this work? Do you manually compose a text message to alipay with the payment information?

>Scanning is better than tapping as it can be done from range.

In what context would this be advantageous? If you're at a supermarket checkout, you're already standing close enough to the cashier that you can easily tap/swipe. The same applies to most other situations I can think of.

scarmig6 tahun yang lalu

> In what context would this be advantageous?

Plenty of corner cases which collectively add up to a majority of cases.

Pandemic: you don't want to get too close to the checkout, so you can do it from a six foot distance.

Retail locations with limited space: all you need is a flat wall to put a QR code on, and you can put it up in multiple areas. You could even put it on the floor or hang it from the ceiling.

Forced serialization: multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously, while the NFC nearness requirement means that only one person can tap at once.

Restaurant table: put a QR code on the menu, scan.

Websites on your desktop or laptop: can't tap, but can scan as usual

That's all just talking about payer UX, not even considering seller UX. QR codes are cheaper and more flexible than NFC.

And, most of all, the fact that QR codes work in such a wide range of scenarios enables the biggest advantage: ubiquity. When they're ubiquitous, they become a single payment interface that you can assume will be available no matter where you go, which is game changing.

alisonatwork6 tahun yang lalu

The way "passive" payments work is that your phone generates a new QR code every few seconds, same way that those one-time password authenticator apps work. The vendor scans your code and charges an amount, then you get an SMS receipt (or confirmation request, for larger amounts).

The other way around - the internet-lacking vendor has a static QR printout (or one-time code) which the buyer scans, keys in the amount, then pays with their internet connection. Vendor gets SMS receipt.

Either way, I do think one of the two parties needs to have internet for a payment to successfully go through.

Jommi6 tahun yang lalu

Tap/swipe requires you to be able to extend hand to a specific terminal. QR tags can be: - Printed all around the store/restaurant - Zoomed in from distance and still scanned

yibg6 tahun yang lalu

yea there are a few use cases where scan is better. For example when you're too far to comfortably tap, like a drive through / toll station. With a tap you often have to reach over, of they have to bring the terminal out of the window / booth. Scan they just hold it up and you scan.

Jommi6 tahun yang lalu

Or for example if you want true no contact, you can scan through protective see through plastic.

franklampard6 tahun yang lalu

You are right about the advantage, which doesn’t not make it an downgrade.

It literally takes $0 and seconds to setup cashless payments

sjg0076 tahun yang lalu

Dunno. I could carry around a card with a QR code on it or embedded on the chip to solve that problem.

tokai6 tahun yang lalu

I paid for my diner earlier by scanning a QR code. It's only something I do when I have forgotten my card, as it is much more of a bother than contactless.

seanmcdirmid6 tahun yang lalu

QR is really awkward compared to NFC. It might make sense for person to person transactions, but otherwise I really prefer tap and go.

whoevercares6 tahun yang lalu

Well in China people also scan QR stick on the wall when exiting the parking lot, which seems handy. Also in some places You could start paying while you are in the line by scanning the QR. Anyway it has seen vast success in China

_-___________-_6 tahun yang lalu

> You could start paying while you are in the line by scanning the QR

You can save them in the app and not have to scan every time too. It's pretty common at people's regular lunch places for them to pay while they wait in line. There's no deep technical reason this couldn't be implemented with the card system either, of course.

luckylion6 tahun yang lalu

How does the shop know who paid? Do they then check your phone screen for the correct verification code that matches their transaction?

_-___________-_6 tahun yang lalu

At the kind of shops I'm thinking of, they just look at the amount you paid and make sure it matches what you're ordering.

seanmcdirmid6 tahun yang lalu

I pay for Starbucks on my phone while ordering also. No QR code scanning involved.

The_Founder6 tahun yang lalu

sct2026 tahun yang lalu

PayPal's app has a Pay in Store QR code but I don't think I've seen anywhere that actually uses it.

wcerfgba6 tahun yang lalu

A reminder that Jack Ma is a supporter of the 996 working schedule, which is hazardous to one's wellbeing and illegal under PRC labour laws.

https://996.icu/#/en_US https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU

abc-xyz6 tahun yang lalu

Also worth noting that all the Chinese companies that operate popular browsers (Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and Qihoo 360, etc.) ended up censoring that specific GitHub page because they didn't like it (https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/3/18294030/tencent-xiaomi-ch...).

And the way they did it was so shady. They basically revealed to the world that they are able and willing to replace the content on any website and as a user then you'll have no idea if they did it or not (for instance, one of the browsers made the repo visible but prevented people from starring the repo). CCP could easily order all these browsers (which come pre-installed with their cheap phones) to rewrite the content on any website. Imagine them rewriting the content of Wikipedia articles, Twitter posts, Google search results, hijacking download links to download software bundled with spyware (e.g. if you were to download Chrome), etc.

If they're willing to engage in such shady behaviour and break all users' trust just because they didn't like a repo complaining about long work hours, then imagine what they would do with all your financial transactions. My god. The fact that we're allowing these companies into our markets truly saddens me.

cmdshiftf46 tahun yang lalu

Are people being forced to work for him?

booleandilemma6 tahun yang lalu

Have you not seen how companies (especially tech companies) bandwagon on each other?

The company I work for follows several practices Google and Spotify follow, even though they don't make sense for us.

cmdshiftf46 tahun yang lalu

>The company I work for follows several practices Google and Spotify follow, even though they don't make sense for us.

So your company is cargo culting "thought leadership" from Google, you can see it's a poor fit and you're still there because...? Let me guess, the money?

As with the 996 stuff, if you're not happy to work in those conditions then don't.

lotsofpulp6 tahun yang lalu

Are children and poor people forced to work in sweatshops?

valuearb6 tahun yang lalu

Nope.

lakecresva6 tahun yang lalu

He's a person with influence who is endorsing a labor practice. I'm pretty sure no one was ever forced to work for Karl Marx or Adam Smith, yet somehow their opinions on labor managed to affect peoples' working conditions.

mas3god6 tahun yang lalu

kleton6 tahun yang lalu

They really ripped off the Alibaba shareholders when they just split it off in 2011 with no compensation.

gruez6 tahun yang lalu

So who were the owners after the 2011 split? Did alibaba essentially sell off one of their divisions to jack ma for $0?

ryanar6 tahun yang lalu

If you want to learn more about Jack Ma's story I highly recommend Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built [1]. Chinese tech is this separate bubble that has grown independently from the rest of the world and it is fascinating to me.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25817524-alibaba

eunos6 tahun yang lalu

An excellent exposition describing what ant group is.

https://emerging.substack.com/p/chasing-ant

lemax6 tahun yang lalu

The Economist recently had some great analysis on Ant Group's evolution and how it does internal credit scoring https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/10/10/what-ant-group...

SpaceRaccoon6 tahun yang lalu

Any non-paywalled links?

partingshots6 tahun yang lalu

It was very frustrating to see, as a former Alibaba shareholder, Ant Financial get spun off with zero compensation or new share distribution. My primary reason for buying Alibaba in the first place was for Alipay.

It was a good learning experience though to be honest. Since then, I stay away from Chinese stocks on principle. I was lucky enough to be able to sell off my shares without losing anything this time, but who knows what could have happened.

bassman90006 tahun yang lalu

Many US investors are going to receive a rude awakening a few years from now, if not before.

https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinese-companies-listed-major...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/19/nasdaq-to-tighten-listing-ru...

And sadly, as usual, fund managers will face zero consequences.

blahblahblogger6 tahun yang lalu

Does the US have protections that prohibit companies from doing that? Or is it just that there's more faith in our legal system if a company does what isn't in the shareholders' best interest?

rokobobo6 tahun yang lalu

I believe that the managers of the company that sells/spins off a subsidiary have a fiduciary duty to get the best price for shareholders in such a transaction. This is even more so the case when a major stakeholder gets to benefit from such a transaction.

batt4good6 tahun yang lalu

I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. This reeks of fake inflated / manipulated Chinese currency / gov't backed debt.