It's surprising that Visa and Mastercard are even private companies. I expected that the government would be in charge of money and not let a group of people impose a 1-3% tax on their population. In the US, credit cards account for "71% of nationwide retail sales dollars".

Governments aren't competent enough to do tech stuff well and they would never make something that works in a different country as well as credit cards do, but still.

The US already has a competing payment system for benefits (EBT cards), as do many other countries.

Payments themselves are not a technical challenge, no matter who's doing it. The fundamentals are trivial. You move numbers between accounts.

It's tackling fraud and dealing with disputes that's a challenge.

> a group of people impose a 1-3% tax on their population.

It seems the consensus is that a taxes are only bad if you have to pay the government. If it's a small set of companies that collectively own a virtual monopoly, it's because they earned it.

Most countries have some kind of bank wire system that is in charge of the money itself. Cards are pre-authorization system. The movement of money is authorized when you swipe the card, but not actually moved until up to a few days later, through the existing bank wire systems. If there's a currency conversion involved it can be even trickier.

Banks are private companies. The Federal Reserve is partially private.