where do we think we would be at at this point if electronic payments were handled by government entities? Not trying to defend Visa or Mastercard, just genuinely curious what others think.
Comment on Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy.
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Visa continues to set the world’s content moderation policies extra-judicially.
Go figure having all electronic payments be through private companies would have eventual consequences.
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
We’d be in the same place. It’s not any better or worse for a private versus a public entity to do harm.
Also, the government is already part of this. If the DOJ told Visa, “hey, stop fucking around with that, you don’t need to be trying to control legal agreements between parties, that’s our purview”, they’d drop this behavior in an instant. They are doing this in large part because they believe it is in line with the government’s ideology.
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
True to some degree if you’re an American, but this is Visa setting internal policy for American politics, and that reflecting globally.
Not every country has the same laws or politics that the US does.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Every company is headquartered somewhere, or has some market that it cannot afford to withdraw from, and that makes them all ultimately subject to said governments. No business decision is made free from pressure when it comes to governments.
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Wed probably be in a similar place, but the advantage of a private entity being that it can bridge the already existing digital payments, so if a store big enough like steam had the option to, they could integrate with that country’s digital payments directly.
Telorand@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
The problem isn’t that they’re private, the problem is that there’s not many to choose from. Visa gets to throw their weight around, because they have a stranglehold on a huge swath of banks and businesses. MasterCard has another big chunk, and the rest go to AmEx and Discover.
If there were more providers to choose from, this would be a non-issue, but that wouldn’t be very capitalist (/s), and I doubt the big names would simply allow new competition.
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
The reason there’s so few is because people don’t want to have to figure out beforehand whether or not they can use the payment provider they have at the store they want to go to.
I’ve seen this happen multiple times especially in Japan when the barcode payment craze started. There were like 13 competing payment providers and now there are 2. Because people don’t want to have to carry around 13 different types of card or payment typed and have 13 different types of payments. They want one that works everywhere.
It’s why there needs to be sovereign digital payment systems that are legally enforced.
Telorand@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Yeah, like what need is there for these intermediaries in the first place? I get that there was probably a need once upon a time, but that seems superfluous now
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
In Germany we uszally use Debit bank cards for payment (if something like a credit card isnt included).
The GiroCard is standard across all banks and usually every shop accepts that method.
Problem is: They don’t work on the interwebz.