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I'm surprised Visa and Mastercard were allowed to operate in Cuba before this. Most US financial companies don't serve the five countries on the US's naughty list: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.
It was likely part of the veradero tourist project Fidel worked out when they relaxed some rules to build more tourism. Cuba used to have a domestic currency and an international currency that was just 1:1 whatever the USD was trading at. I think they already abandoned that years ago
Those two companies have a lot more power and influence than I think they actually want anyone to grasp
Should be 100% nonprofit and owned by the public. Totally worthless to humanity that they remain as businesses.
Most of what they do should just be FOSS anyway or the equivalent.
Or at least, diversified so it's not only those two, and there's a multitude of options.
A fair few countries do that, for example, with payment being diversified into other systems like Alipay, and the other QR-based payment systems. Australia has EFTPOS, HK lets you use your Octopus to buy things in addition to paying for the train fare.
Otherwise, you'd be in trouble if MasterCard/Visa decided that they didn't like something you did very much, so you're barred from their services.
Totally agree
I'm glad most countries are developing their own national payment systems to get away from those leeches. The US central bank actually developed its own instant payment system called FedNow but you've probably never heard of it. Wonder why? Because participation is voluntary and banks aren't required to give their customers access to it...
I actually have! And for more fun this admin is currently trying to fuck with FedNow, becuase of course they are
They don't even want us to have a post office, you think they're going to let us get rid of way to siphon off a solid percentage of every transaction?
No but they could make it even worse!
Yeah, I'm also kinda surprised cuba apparently allowed them to operate there? There are few companies that more thoroughly exemplify the imperialist state than those two.
If I had to guess, it's because Cuba had tourism.
Well, yes. The Americans have money. People like earning that money.
It's not the Americans, it's the everyone else. We aren't allowed to go to Cuba
This doesn't prevent Americans from going to Cuba. I can book tickets right now online from New York to Havana for $550.
Nestlé? Amazon? HSBC? The fucking VOC?
Come on, there are a lot of evil companies but it's crazy to pretend Visa and Mastercard are somehow the worst of them.
All of them, as long as their only reason to exist is to chase profit above anything else
Well sometimes in their pursuit of making money, their interests coincidentally align with those of the public and they make the world a better place as a result.
For example, Valve trying to protect their market dominance in the PC gaming industry has resulted in large improvements to game distribution, consumer protection, and convenience for computer game players.
Another example is the mail order drug company owned by Mark Cuban (the billionaire). He's making buckets of money from it, but their profit model is to cut out the insurers to buy drugs from manufacturers at wholesale prices and sell them for cheap. So the medicines he sells are drastically cheaper. I actually am a beneficiary of this. I normally buy my medication from his company for $5 a bottle but one time I spilled it and had to get a refill from a local grocery store pharmacy which cost $100 a bottle (insurance paid $85).
But at least the pills from the grocery store pharmacy were blackberry flavour.
And this happens purely by chance, and always temporarily. As soon as it is financially better for them to throw you to the wolves that's what they'll do next
Sometimes. But even if it is temporary, it's still good while it lasts.
Nothing too deep about it. That's the whole thought.
... The dutch east india company hasn't been relevant for more than 200 years, but like fair enough. If you want to have "capitalist megacorp fightclub" that could absolutely be one of those few I mentioned. I'm gonna defend that "the primary architects of the global financial transaction system" are good entries onto the list though...
I feel like if you want to blame a company for creating the modern financial system, John Pierpont Morgan and the company which bears his name are probably 10x more responsible.
And that company isn't even a little bit relevant right now, nor has my intent ever been to figure out which company is the "most to blame". But neat, thanks for sharing your opinion, I will continue to consider Visa and Mastercard to be among the few absolute worst offenders.
J. P. Morgan is absolutely relevant in the modern day.
... J P Morgan Chase is not relevant right now because this is an article about Visa and Mastercard.