Yes this is very bizarre.

But this is official story, contractors and employees who worked for Czech arms manufacturer got their personal! accounts disabled.

They had mortgages in these accounts and bank notify them to move mortgage elsewhere.

Reason given by bank, broken internal policy, we cannot disclose which. Ridiculous.

It's a joke but Visa and Mastercard are American corporations so Americans can feel relatively secure using them. If you live in another developed country, relying on the whims of American entities feels less secure than something subject to the laws of your own country.

Americans are pretty aware that government by large, multinational, unaccountable corporations sucks and has basically all of the downsides of big government without any of the accountability upsides.

American media may be less likely to share that narrative with you. But the actual people figured this out a while ago and they're mad.

Dang has stated these sorts of comments do not belong on HN news. Discussion of specifics are fine, but nationalist slurs are not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100358

Edit: wow, my bad. HN really loves low effort nationalistic slurs as entire comments now.

[flagged]

I certainly trust the EU a lot more than I trust US corporations.

Not if your government properly implements separation of powers, as is the case in most Western countries.

Yes, I'm aware someone is trying to undermine it in the U.S. currently. That doesn't mean that companies are a safe haven suddenly.

This reminds me of how all the drug dealers use USPS because it actually requires a warrant to open the package.

If the government has to enforce banking KYC/AML itself they won't be able to hide behind all the third party fuck-fuck games and they'll get sued into oblivion. I'm sure they'll play the normal federal court and sovereign fuck-fuck games but it would be glorious trying to watch them try to enforce the BSA and Patriot act bullshit while not being able to hide behind the auspice it's just a private bank collecting the data.

> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly if they are bad.

There are exactly two companies in the global credit card market and they operate in lockstep, literally coming to agreements to shut down legal businesses together. Visa and MasterCard have absolutely no right to determine who is and isn't allowed to receive payment. Governments have that right, but that doesn't mean they should use it -- if they're abusing that right, people can vote them out. The effectiveness of people voting out harmful politicians is another matter, but that's kind of on the people being bad at voting, not the idea of government altogether, and at any rate you have no vote whatsoever in what MC/Visa do (unless you vote for government to regulate them!).

> You have choice with a company,

This is wrong for a large share of the companies that most people deal with on a daily basis. And that share has been steadily increasing every single year.

Ok, I choose to not use Visa/Mastercard in the US, and I want to subscribe to some saas. What do I do now? Or do you mean "choice" as in "you can always choose not the breathe or eat"?

In the context of mastercard and visa being a duopoly and the recent debacle such as certain games being removed from steam because they threatened to not allow stream to use the card payment system, it's a pretty bad take.

Not that central bank won't be able to do the same, but it would have to follow laws set by the government rather than law+whatever the card companies decide to.

Like others said that choice is not really given in this case.

Also with the government option it wouldn’t mean that you can’t still use other methods - for example in brasil credit card or cash work just fine, PIX is just one (very convenient) option.

Agree to disagree. Lock-in is a thing that companies design for.

I've moved countries five times in my life. I still haven't been able to fully get rid of my dependency on Big Tech or the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

You only have a potential choice until a company buys out all its competitors and surpresses the rest.

> You have choice with a company, and people can switch provider very quickly

Oh yeah?

Please enlihhten me, how exactly can I switch providers from the Visa/Mastercard duopoly?

I think the idea of what’s authoritarian sounding is more of a cultural/historical/ideological distinction, not something that would naturally map to an economic label like BRICS.

Also Western and Eastern are just labels in this context, not opposite directions, even if Brazil was “not Western” in some way, it wouldn’t make sense to call it Eastern.

>on the West of what?

On the West of every single country in Europe, to start with.

Don't take this the wrong way, but have you looked at a world map? I ask since a significant chunk of people from the US cannot find Mexico on a map ...

Aside from its very evident geographic location, Brazil was the site of the first lasting European colony in the Americas established by Portugal.

People in Brazil speak Portuguese[1], a Romance language derived from Latin and closely related to Spanish, French and Italian.

The genetic lineages most commonly found within the Brazilian population include Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and to a much lesser degree but still significant, Lebanese and Turkish [2].

The top countries whose citizens visit Brazil as tourists are overwhelmingly from the Americas and Europe: Argentina, the USA, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy and the UK.

Likewise, when Brazilians travel abroad, their main destinations are Argentina, the USA, Chile, Portugal, France, Italy, Uruguay, the Caribbean, Spain and the UK.

Share of exports to Asia: ~41%

Share of exports to the Americas and Europe combined: ~47%

Share of imports from Asia: ~43%

Share of imports from the Americas and Europe combined: ~50%

How could one reach the conclussion that Brazil is an "Eastern" country? Oh yeah, they joined a trade organization with China and Russia ... sure, they must be Eastern now.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil

???

Wrong thread?

The comment I see reads like this:

"That sounds a little authoritarian for many Western countries, I imagine."

> The new alignment isnt East vs West... But North vs Global South, which Brazil sees itself a part of the South.

Where's Russia and Australia then?

I would say West is Europe, Japan and a few others. But I think I need a new word for that one.

You cannot do a chargeback on iDeal, but I don't think that is related to it being a product of commercial banks.

The American companies Mastercard and Visa are subject to American rule of law. In the case of a criminal or authoritarian president, such is an issue. You can see how Russian assets got frozen and SWIFT stopped working for Russia after they did the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Should the USA invade Greenland, they could stop bank payments done via Mastercard or Visa networks.

So for sovereignty, we are better off without USA. We should also transfer our gold and other assets out of USA, since the country is moving towards fascism.