I'm not really sure how "better" became part of the conversation because nothing in my comment implies I think having a choice is better. Better would be determined by an evaluation of the services by the dev. Really really not sure how we got to consumers, but hey, I'll adjust.
I have difficulty keeping up with all the parallel discussions happening here, so I tried the topics I though were relevant. Sorry if I was quoting you out of context.
Consumers - Here you conflate consumer payments and vendor payment processing into a single entity: one central account/one central payment processor. This is flawed for a number of reasons. Primarily because those two things are not even remotely related contextually. Consumer payments aren't often one central account either. There can be multiple credit/debit/gift cards associated with a consumer's account. Also, your wrong about 3rd party access to payment data. The 3rd parties the consumer uses to make the payment (banks, credit unions, card companies) have access to that info, as well as access to personal data. Whether or not the payment processor is Apple or another company doesn't change that. Contrary to your claim, consumers would not need to monitor and maintain multiple accounts. Backend processing is not a consumer facing process. It's invisible to them. Consumer would simply continue doing as they always have. Payment process is a vendor/developer facing process.
Well, there are different things to consider here. When I talk of a "single account", I am talking about "shopping account" (by the lack of better term). If I do purchases via Apple, it's Apple who has my name, address, credit card numbers etc. and it's Apple who uses them to carry out payments. The fewer internet accounts exist that have access to my payment information, the safer is my data and the easier it is for me to manage. So I don't really see how your comment applies here.
On the level of actual payments, of course agencies like banks, credit card institutions and other actual financial institutions have access to the data (although services like Apple Pay are challenging them lately). But we are talking about companies that initiate payments as a service — these companies exist at a completely different level and they are much less transparent than say Visa, as they are significantly smaller and subject to far less scrutiny.
Developer - Your assumption that 15% to Apple is cheaper than using 3rd party processor is based on what? Certainly not factual info because there isn't any right now. We 100% agree a large dev could probably process payments cheaper than Apple currently does. Where we disagree is on the assumption that 3rd party processing would have to be more expensive for the small dev. Why assume that? Wouldn't a more likely scenario exist where the 3rd party processor offers cheaper rates than Apple to entice devs to use their payment systems?
Because you are not looking at the entire thing. Payment processing itself is not expensive — the usual rates I've seen are around 3-5%. But the 15% Apple cut does not just cover payment processing. It covers many other things. If a developer chooses to use a different payment processor and in doing that refuses to give Apple a share of their business, why would they be allowed to use all the infrastructure funded by App Store revenues? Hosting, deployment, cloud storage and sync, technical support, new API development, certificate management, push notifications... all this stuff does not come for free! If a significant number of developers decide to use alternative payment processors — which is almost certain given that most of the App Store revenue comes from the few big players — Apple would need to completely change the App Store financing model.
As I wrote before: the beauty of the App Store is that it is financed by success. As an aspiring dev, you get access to one of the best infrastructures in the world — with many sophisticated features — virtually for free (the $99 for the dev program access is basically a joke). What you are talking about is changing this to the old good "pay for what you consume" model, which will wipe out a big chunk of independent devs and make the platform only accessible to a few companies that have money. I don't want to go back to that crap.
