The second part "but the banks (in Developed countries) have captured the government apparatus" seems to be true mainly of the USA?

As SEPA in the EU, and Faster Payments in UK don't seem to fit that.

Unless you have other examples outside of the USA, or a different opinion on SEPA?

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weberer a day ago | parent [-]

In Finland, I have to use Visa everywhere. Banks offer debit cards, but they use the Visa network. Some smaller sellers also accept Mobilepay, but its not very common.

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SideburnsOfDoom a day ago | parent [-]

> In Finland, I have to use Visa everywhere

Why? Finland is in SEPA.

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weberer a day ago | parent [-]

I have never seen a store offering any payment method called "SEPA". After reading up on it, it just looks like some protocol to do bank transfers between countries, and it requires exchanging IBAN numbers. I do pay rent and some bills via direct bank transfer, but that's it. Its nothing like this Brazilian payment alternative.

	▲	SideburnsOfDoom 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that's correct it's a protocol, it's under the hood. You won't see a SEPA Branding (or "Faster Payments" in the UK). It's for bank transfers between accounts, which could be in the same country, or not. If you do a bank transfer of e.g. a 3-digit sum, and it arrives the same day, that's SEPA. If it's in a few seconds, that's SEPA Instant (1). The grandparent post about "these capabilities" - specifically in comparison to the US FedNow -seems to cover more than just point-of-sale, right? Although that is mentioned in the SEPA Instant use cases. 1) https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...