this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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How to get rid of Mastercard and Visa? (feddit.org)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by minilemmy@feddit.org to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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Hey guys!

Visa and Mastercard are the 8th and 15th biggest companies in the world, worth more than 1.1T USD (!!!).

For any purchase made with a credit or debit cards and you give them 2-3% of your money.

That's one the biggest waste of money from EU you can imagine.

I'm trying to find viable alternatives but except paying cash it seem there is no real alternative. Even in where I live there is an alternate payment service but they take the money from my mastercard, duh...

And the idea would be to have something even my grandma can use, not some nerdy solution, any thoughts?

Edit: Bitcoin would be a solution if widely adopted, but more realistic would be something accepted by every cashier machine, and if possible using the NFC of your phone, a kind of "Apple/Google" Pay, that goes directly from your bank to the bank's shop. Where I live all debit cards are either visa or mastercard...

Edit2: There is an EU initiative that seem to be starting with WERO, never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative

Edit3: It seem that Paysafecard and Skrill are EU solutions and sometimes proposed in the payment method, but not with STRIPE payment solutions

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[โ€“] HubertManne@piefed.social 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Bitcoin uses way to much energy to use as currency like that. gridcoin or any other one that uses proof of stake would be better if accepted but its a bit nicer if the energy put into it results in a useful product which gridcoin does.

[โ€“] ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

How does production of physical cash and movement of money between accounts compare to crypto?

[โ€“] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

creation of physical cash's cost are not inflated and get changed based on cost and necessity. Using cheaper materials to reduce cost but adding advanced elements which increase cost. Again though it does not have an artificial inflation mechanic causing it to use more energy over time and is just based on method and materials. A big thing in this is how long it functions. coins cost more than paper mostly but one thing people don't take into account is how long they last versus paper. So you typically see things about a penny costing more than a penny but whats not taken into account is that it is least lasting coin at 25 years while most paper under 50s last less than 10 years but longer lasting denominations are usually used less. It comes down to how much value physical money gets in its lifetime vs its cost to make. So you add up every transaction and average out the value for a particular currency type. Movement is done in the real world so its a bit apples to oranges. It does not require anything necessarily. If all computers and electricity. So its going to vary greatly if I give my brother a fiver for grabbing his oj than if I go deposit it at a bank to if I buy from a retalier to if I foolishly mailed it directly. I don't think physical money can be compared to much of any electronic equivalents honestly. That is in the realm of folks that believe in cashless system to ones who want some ability to have the physical ability.