Elon is always obsessed with WeChat’s model. (For those who don’t know about WeChat, it is basically the name of the ‘Everything app’.)
Everything in one single point is pretty convenient but has led to a bunch of risks…
Leave a risk that you know in the comment.
Convenience and marketing will always win at the end. We’re heading that way anyway. People use Apple Pay and Google pay and don’t think for a second what it means. Other forms of ID are going that way too. People want ecosystems without having to lift a finger. Just let big brother take care of everything.
What, you want to talk privately? Use cash? What do you have to hide?
On the other hand, Google/Apple Pay are both pretty great products that replace a horrendous legacy payments system. Recall that for like 40 years the most innovative consumer payment system looked like this. And it was essentially a duopoly as well (Visa/Mastercard).
At the end of the day, cash is still a thing as well.
Well, some countries indeed still commonly use payment systems from 50 years ago. That’s pretty bizarre. I remember hearing about PayPal 20 years ago, how revolutionary it is, and I didn’t quite get what the big deal is. That’s because all around Europe we had secure online payments (secure against theft and such, not against the bank snooping) since the late 90’s, and chipped cards even earlier.
But anyway yea… In person, cash is king. Let’s keep it alive. Some countries are planning to phase out cash, and that really is only because we’re letting it happen due to our lazyness.
I can’t talk about google, but I do recall at launch that increased provacy was a widely touted feature of apple pay. If you’re using a credit card, all of your purchases are tracked, and your credit card provider is able to mine and sell all of that data.
In addition, the merchant can do the same if you use a credit card. With apple pay, your phone anonymizes the number by only sending the merchant an authorization. In addition, apple does not store your transaction info.
If I recall correctly, one of the reasons walmart originally failed to implement apple pay at their terminals was their loss of the ability to track customer purchases. They tried implementing some janky thing with qr codes.
Increased privacy in language of these corporations means “the only people who can access all of your data is us, our 50000 partner companies and every their partner company, and half of the governments on this planet that are currently touted as friendly. But nobody else, trust us bro”.
I know banks are shit, but well I have 4 bank cards from 4 banks from 4 countries, and for now, that shit isn’t pooled yet.
Plus I can still use cash, and even leave my phone at home if I wanna buy… Something… Without it being tracked.
The problem of merchants tracking or stealing your card data is mainly in certain countries using banking systems that are 30 years out of date.
Besides, people keep flocking to using all the store chains’ apps and reward cards and whatnot, using their real names and data, so enhanced privacy in that regard is moot if people don’t care in the first place.
I also don’t recall any talks about giving banks nonstop access to all our IDs and car keys and other stuff that’s slowly creeping into phones, or rather into the hands of the handful big brother entities.
But the payment systems are just one thing that came to mind, it’s not the only problem with these ideas.