PFOF isn't gigantic revenue driver for many retail brokerages, including some that offer zero commission trading (like Schwab). Robinhood may have started the price war while making most of its money from PFOF, but you can have low to zero commission trading without PFOF.
The payments per share tend to be extremely small - on most symbols the broker isn't making $5-10 per trade from the MM, for reasonably sized trades.
Even if payment for flow was costing you that much, paying for an order vs giving more price improvement are indistinguishable. Payment for order flow just means that price improvement definitely goes to the broker instead of back to you.
Robinhood forced the discount brokers to adopt zero commissions. Robinhood only exists because of PFOF. Being on Schwab you indirectly benefited from PFOF and Robinhood because you don’t pay commissions. I personally don’t use Robinhood but I recognize that they have been beneficial to me.
The payments per share tend to be extremely small - on most symbols the broker isn't making $5-10 per trade from the MM, for reasonably sized trades.
Even if payment for flow was costing you that much, paying for an order vs giving more price improvement are indistinguishable. Payment for order flow just means that price improvement definitely goes to the broker instead of back to you.