Mike
- May 25, 2023
- 5 min read

The Schedule - Day 145

The Schedule - Day 145

5/25/2023

The current tech landscape has adopted a protocol that has envisioned more problems, headaches and complications for users because the current generation's insistence on screwing things up that have worked perfectly well for decades keeps large numbers of tech workers employed in an overcrowded space as their role now is to sell you solutions to the problems they create.

Setting up a payment gateway is very simple universally understood process that involves entering 'pay to' account information and verifying the connection to 'pay out' incoming transactions to a specified account.

Some major platforms instruct users to 'make a test purchase' using their own credit card to 'test the payment gateway.' This can lead to having your credit card cancelled by your credit card company as it violates the TOS agreement you have with every major credit card company. So why are platforms telling users to do this?

This is only part 2 of an even bigger problem

A 'payment gateway' is a bridge. It is a connection from a customer to the merchant. There is no such thing as 'half of a payment gateway'. Why then do platforms tell merchants things like 'you are set up to receive payments, but you have not verified that you are able to have the funds transferred to your bank account...' even after you have entered all of the necessary information? This is backwards. The logical universally understood method of setting up a payment gateway involves first verifying the connection to the 'pay to' account which is obvious because why would anyone ever want design a platform to process incoming customer transactions without FIRST having verified a method for payout? Why are these same companies telling their customers (merchants) things like you need to run your own credit card through your payment gateway by performing a 'test transaction' to verify the 'pay to' account... what? For what reason? Because you are set up to receive payments (process incoming transactions), but not 'receive them in the sense that the funds will be transferred to your bank account? Instead they will be held hostage by the 'ecommerce' platform until you violate the TOS agreement you, the merchant, have with your credit card company by running your own credit card through your own payment gateway?

Imagine coming up with an idea for a business, securing funds, finding a brick and mortar space, signing a lease, coming up with an advertising campaign and all of the other elements of taking the risk to put your ideas into action by opening up a shop only to have the landlord tell you, "I am not going to give you the keys to the front door of the shop until the first customer shows up at your door." Call me. I still have control over you and every aspect of your business including what the first impression of your business will be on your very first customer. Maybe the customer will just get tired of waiting for me to show up with the key and leave and subvert your entire grand opening campaign by posting to social media that you are really not open for business after all. What kind of impression do you think that will make?

They do not allow you to prepare in advance and create a professional functioning system that used to require ZERO human involvement as the entire process was automated and worked perfectly well before there was human interaction or AI involvement.

AI does not solve as many problems as people think it does. People have tolerated an unreasonable amount of nonsense for so long and put up with so many things that just do not work that getting a simple answer to a simple question seems like some sort of magic trick.

Keep that in mind and understand the alternative uses for these tools and what it is that they are being trained for. Platforms that do this were designed that way and the people who should be allocated to customer service and addressing issues reported in their 'community forums' are instead tasked with PR damage control and seeking out dissenters who have identified this pattern.

In short, you have done the hard work, accomplished the goal of creating a product that people want, so why are you wasting time screwing around with a back end process that should be as simple as connecting and verifying accounts ONE TIME to make sure you are ready to go. Technology that seeks 'handle' and exercise some sort or power jag by controlling every aspect of your business is a reflection of the people who have embedded and layered themselves throughout this very poorly developed infrastructure that is overpriced, overly complicated and requires constant maintenance.

Since when do I need to give platforms tax related information? Are are you gong to do my taxes and bookkeeping for me? You don't need that information.

My recent experience setting up a payment gateway, which I have done many times in the past successfully and without disruption, went like this:

Purchased ecommerce web hosting package from a company I have done business with for many years.
Contacted them to find out where I needed to enter my account information as intuitive interfaces are a thing of the past.
Was told that I would be prompted to enter my account information after the first customer purchase from the website.
Then, I received an e-mail stating that I needed to provide them with way too much information to set up the payment gateway, so I did. This was before any purchase from the website. Just to recap, you are not reading this incorrectly the conflicting information and axiom protocol involved here is reason for this post.
After that I receive the 'notification' that I needed to run my own credit card through the payment gateway to perform a test transaction and that I am set up to receive customer payments but have not 'verified' the 'pay to' account to have the funds transferred to bank. Again, there is no such thing as half of a payment gateway. A payment gateway is bridge. There is no room for misinterpreting this deliberate obstruction that has been intentionally implemented into what used to be a simple process.