Is this obvious only to Europeans?
For instance, whenever I mention the dangers of a single corporation owning everything, including money, and how indistinguishable it makes it from a government, it gets downvoted with no discussion.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
—- From the movie Network, 1976
This comic about Orwell's and Huxley's vision of things really lays it in simple terms (https://twistedsifter.com/2010/06/the-saturday-strip-week-13...). The source is, of course, very interesting to read.
Between "do it" and "don't do it"? Well obviously no. But compared to getting thrown in jail? Obviously it's better?
A ban by facebook could literally be lifethreatening?
Same way I can be "sure" my bank is going to keep my money safe and give it to me when I need it?
It's not a stretch from today to imagine living on company-built cities with private security, paying rent and utilities to the company, with contracts and EULAs serving as laws in all but name.
The network is owned by the Dutch banks, which also provide the online payment platform iDeal.
The fees are low and fixed. Offline, between 15cts and a couple of cents ( I don't know how low for the big retailers, 5cts ? )
The online fees are a bit higher, starting at 29cts.
There are no variable fees. There is no 'refund' or 'insurance'. Lots of shops do not accept creditcards ( I know of no big retailer which does ).
Note that I don't believe having companies - especially large ones that isn't primarily banks - in control of payments of any kind is a good idea, I think it's a terrible idea.
Yes, us Swedes use cards a lot, and almost every card in Sweden has Visa or MasterCard stamped on it. Most are debit cards, and the well know logos weren't there to begin with. Initially, almost all cards were debit cards issued by the various Swedish banks. Banks that people used to trust back then.
While those payment systems are technically private, they aren't perceived as such. Maybe because of the banks, maybe because they are regulated quite heavily, but people generally have confidence they won't be cut off by the bank. Personally I don't know anyone, or have heard of anyone getting denied a debit card. While that's not a useful statistic, it shows why people might perceive it the way they do.
Since 2017 the laws implementating the then new EU banking directives demands that the banks must offer any basic payment solution/product to everyone if they offer it to anyone. There are some exceptions, mostly regarding money and banking fraud, but it seems to be somewhat rare in practice, at least it doesn't seem to have garnered much attention in news.
There are however talks of introducing some kind of legal tender laws, as it is currently possible to get into a situation where you have money, but can't pay. Which is obviously terrible.