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Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
(europeanbusinessmagazine.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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They accept cash.
Great if you don't mind a wallet overflowing with loose change.
Crazy that we don't have a public sector payment processor, though. You'd think we could have a Generic Card tied to a public bank that handles electronic payments efficiently. But it's been over 40 years since we began consumer grade electronic transactions and its still entirely within the scope of the private sector.
Nobody ever put change in a wallet.
https://www.walletgear.com/leather-wallets/wallet-with-coin-pocket.html
Don't you guys have EFTPOS?
Hello fellow Aussie/Kiwi. No, they don't. Or they kinda do but call it something else and it still usually runs through a middleman rather than a direct bank-to-bank transfer - E.g Visa's Visa Debit or MasterCard's Maestro. EFTPOS still doesn't work online unless using a middleman either, like PayPal or Square.
yeah I know eftpos doesn't work online but they were discussing in person transactions at costco.
not having eftpos? Eeeeewwwww. Fucking backwards barbarians.
You want trump in control of our commercial transactions?
Brazil has a payment system (called Pix, IIRC) that seems to work well, and has survived some... questionable leadership.
I don't know much about it (maybe a Brazilian can say more about it), but it seems to serve the businesses very well there.
He's appointing the next Fed chair as we speak. We're a bit past feeling squeamish about what Trump controls.
So then you do understand how having our transactions controlled by the government is a bad thing?
Is it worse than private companies leveraging their dominance and effective monopoly to impose demands on all who depend on the critical infrastructure they provide, sidestepping all legislative processes and accountability to the public?
Besides, a corrupt government can just as well abuse regulatory powers to impose its will on private companies, since it doesn't have to observe due process. A sane government, however, will have less power to force a private company to do business it doesn't want to.
Privatisation is no protection against corruption, but a hurdle for public oversight. There are sectors where that is acceptable and the flexibility it provides may be worthwhile, but infrastructure isn't one of them.
A corrupt government can also be bought off by the companies to not fuck with things so that they at least remain functional.
In an ideal world, yes I'd rather these things be regulated in a way that the companies are accountable but that is not the world we live in. Moving this to the public sector now would just put even more power into the hands of our horrible government. Better to have everything split up so all the greedy malicious assholes are looking out for themselves than to have it all in the hands of one group who will do whatever they want with nothing to impede them. Regardless of consequences. Fix the government first , then give them control. You can't legislate based off the idea that it will only be well intentioned responsible adults running things.
...for whose definition of functional? Because any additional overhead from having to bribe the government would inevitably impact customers. And while they're at it, they might as well come up with more ways to be anti-consumer and the bribed government won't stop them.
They might also just bend over to please their dictator instead of buying him off, so it's not even a given thay they will keep him from interfering
I get your point about the current government situation though. I'm just not convinced replacing a corrupt private company with another not-yet-quite-as-corrupt private company from a different country would improve things in the long run.
Functional in the sense that people are able to make transactions with their credit cards. Trump would have zero hesitation to just destroying that system as part of some tantrum if he had control of it. Private companies controlling it will at least fight to keep it working as that is in their best interest. Is it the best option for consumers? No, but it's the best option under the current administration. We have to deal with that problem before we start giving things over to government control.
As opposed to a private for-profit company run by friends of the people in government?
At least the private company would act in their own interest to preserve profits. Trump will gladly blow the whole thing up regardless of consequences just to feed his ego. Like with the tariffs.
Not an american but personally i would most definitely prefer an absolute fuckwad with little self control in charge than an evil mastermind entity hellbent on squeezing me for every cent.
The former is too stupid not to ruin his lever of power, which would cause the system to decentralize and/or contribute to said fuckwad's downfall. The latter employs a huge amount of people specifically trained to maintain and increase the amount of profits extracted while maintaining their stranglehold.
Such as sharing ALL of its customer data with the government in exchange for subsidies? Which effectively means having a government entity in control of the data but with zero oversight or control from the public?
It's not ideal but at least people aren't getting their credit cancelled because they said something mean about Trump online.
Yeah? You mean it'd be independent of Trump's interference? Like US TikTok?
I already said it wasn't ideal. At least Trump had to do some shit first to fuck with tiktok. You think that wouldn't have been immediate if tiktok was controlled by the government?
No, I don't think so. Because - up until Trump - people in governments know that if they pull shit like this off, they risk the same shit being pulled against them, after they're gone and the opposition takes over.
And Trump has proven that reasoning invalid. Things are never going back to the way they were before now that he's shown just how much you can get away with. Until mechanisms are put in place to prevent such corruption and deal with his kind we can't trust the government to handle anything.
Only if the government isnt actually working for the people like it's intended to.
Which is the situation we're dealing with here.
Right, so we should just throw out any good ideas because the situation we're in right now is bad.
That totally makes sense yes.
No, but we shouldn't be arguing in favor of them until we deal with the more pressing matters.
Disagree, it needs to be part of the conversation as a replacement better system, if you come without a plan it's going to be more of the same.
Interac isn’t too bad right? I agree with you that sort of service should be public, but I heard (years ago) that Interac is non-profit.
Edit: I should have just checked before posting: “Interac and Acxsys were combined into a single for-profit organization, Interac Corporation, on 1 February 2018”
Still, talking to vendors, it sounds like the fees are quite low, and I try to pay debit when it’s a small business.
OpenAI started out as non-profit. Quite a few health insurance companies (Blue Cross Blue Shield, for instance) are organized as non-profits.
shrug
Sure. All good when it works for you. But this isn't some kind of wholesale replacement for Visa that doesn't run the obvious risk of becoming Visa 2.0 (or whatever X.0 iteration of credit card companies we're currently on).
One of the things I heard Musk say was that it shouldn’t be possible for a non-profit to just be converted into for-profit. Have to agree with him on that.
Musk was upset that his control over the company would be ceded to a broader pool of public investors. He's got no problem with privatization and securitization when it fattens his wallet.
That indeed helps maintain a more consistent picture of how he’s a douche. Still sucks a benevolent founder of a non-profit can’t stop enshittification in the long run.