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Payment processors have too much power, because they managed to wedge themselves into such a fundamental part of the economy. We need alternatives, but crypto isn't really a good answer. What other options do we have?
Regulation limiting the "approval" powers of the payment processors.
Or, an increase in viability of direct bank payments. There's vanishingly little reason that instant payments can't be available.
I'm not really hopeful about regulatory solutions, because having the ability to lean on Visa/Mastercard to shut down whatever you don't like without having to actually legislate it is actually super handy. If we had a better government I'd like that option more, but that seems like a bigger ask.
Direct bank payments seem like a good solution, but it seems like that keeps getting held up and it's hard to not think that that's due to the same regulatory capture.
Honestly, even if the government did attempt to regulate them, what's to stop MasterCard & Co from just telling them "no"? What are they going to do, shut down the credit card processors in America? The entire economy requires those to function. They've made themselves into a required part of the way the country operates on a day to day basis. If you turn off the debit and credit cards of all American citizens then 99.99% of all commerce grinds to a screeching halt instantly. Some people will have, or be able to get, cash money and make do with that in the meantime but many many more will not. I imagine crypto might become a more legitimate market in this situation, because otherwise you just straight up can't buy things online anymore. But how you obtain crypto from cash money, I could not tell you. I imagine it looks like a shady drug deal involving a USB drive.
Especially in the modern political climate I could easily see our government trying to say "you can't do that" and then Visa/MasterCard just respond "yes we can" and then yes, in fact they can, no matter what "that" is today, because any tangible threat to them will also crash the national economy.
Well, we HAD the CFPB, but Project 2025 and Fascist 47 got rid of it.
Checks.
It seems like that wouldn't scale well. I know a lot of places around me don't accept checks anymore, and it doesn't seem like much of one's digital life like Steam has any interest in accepting checks.
The whole physical and virtual world has to be child proof these days because companies don't want to get sued
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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