There should be a national payment processing operator as an alternative to VISA/MC. Just like they do it in many other countries.

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dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

A national public payment processor in the US would not be more immune to political pressure from religious moralist groups than a duopoly of private processors.

For evidence see, well, all the other institutions of the US federal government.

	▲	Aspos 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, at least such pressure will be well documented and there will be legal avenues of controlling those.

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grishka 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We have one in Russia, called Mir (world/peace, somewhat ironically). While, yes, there was literally zero downtime on card payments when Visa and MC left the country, they are still irreplaceable for international payments. As a result, everyone who needs to make them or travels a lot has a foreign bank account now, with, you guessed it, a Visa or MC card.

Edit: forgot to say, Mir cards used to work in a few other countries, for example, Turkey and Armenia. But eventually the US government pressured the banks in those countries to stop accepting Mir, because apparently that would somehow help defeat Putin or something.

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danso 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Has Mir in the past ever implemented any kind of bans or restrictions for specific vendors or use cases?

	▲	grishka 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		None I'm aware about. But there's a growing list of things that the government itself considers straight up "extremist" or other forms of forbidden, so it doesn't get to the payment processor banning them.

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advisedwang 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, that sounds like the best of both worlds

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bootsmann 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is what the Digital Euro is supposed to be.

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lotsofpulp 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Then government leaders would be less able to circumvent civil rights and transparency measures (where those exist). That is why the government farms out infrastructure to non government entities.

This way, there is always a threat of businesses deciding not to do business with you by unaccountable forces.

	▲	cucumber3732842 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		>This way, there is always a threat of businesses deciding not to do business with you by unaccountable forces. Visa/Mastercard vs the government itself is bordering on a distinction without a difference. From the perspective of the average business or person they're both wholly unaccountable. If you're Kickstarter or some Megacorp, well then it probably just depends which you have more friends in high places.