The army of middlemen with their hands out is the worst part, where you also have fees paid to the merchant bank, the iso/payment service provider, and a chain of agents. In disfavored industries like adult content, this can reach 15% or more, plus thousands in annual "high risk" fees (even if chargeback rate is good). It's a huge anticompetitive racket, and the sooner US can shake off Visa/MasterCard, the better off we'll be.

EU regulations limit those interchange fees to 0.2% for debit card transactions and 0.3% for credit card transactions so total costs are much lower for businesses. Cards have replaced cash even for small transactions in most European countries.

The banks and the payment processors are the real customers of the payment networks and they all do better when they can squeeze more money from the end users - the cardholders and the businesses. Pix cuts out these middlemen and that’s an existential threat to their business model, ergo an “investigation” by the Trump admin.

All should be free. Imagine if government decided to impose 3% revenue tax, yet these companies get a free pass.

If these networks cannot run this for free, then they should be nationalised and tax payer should cover it. It will be cheaper (because it will become non-profit) for everyone and better.

Still greater than 0.

There's absolutely no reason for a country to outsource paynent infrastructure to US corporations.

> You could, in theory, use the VISA network and not pay those fees to a card issuer.

You can not. The only way is to have a private agreement with the card issuer. That's why stores all try to push their co-branded cards.

PSD2 is merely a framework for an uniform access to banking, same APIs everywhere. While you can send money through it, it's still through the same means as normal.

Many of the european countries have their own "Pix", but there's no European-wide alternative. The ECB wants to make one (tentatively titled "digital euro"), but it's going to take a long time to come out.