Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
pcgamer.com
pcgamer.com
> Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network.
But their "Rule 5.12.7" is... not so clear:
> A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.
Well, which one is it now? All lawful purchases (pretty clear-cut) or only lawful purchases that will not "reflect negatively" on Mastercard in Mastercard's opinion (vague as hell)?
We can write language to allow booting people for fraud, hacking, etc if “legal” + “court order” are insufficient.
Would that apply to Australian courts?
Same thing in AUS: If there's a AUS law, they have to follow it.
"that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order"
They've got the credit card number, the merchant name, the time, and the total amount of the transaction.
They do not have line item level filtering of a transaction. Remember those old carbon paper credit card thingies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter - that's all that's needed and all they get. Similarly, the credit card terminals where the merchant enters the amount, swipes the card (or reads the chip) and that's it is sufficient.
Mastercard and Visa would only be able to say "that merchant" not "that product." Filtering based on products and if it's legal there needs to be done by the merchant. Mastercard cannot check to see if someone is selling liquor to an underage customer... but if a merchant is doing that, Mastercard may drop that merchant as one of their clients.
If Itch and Valve are unable to enforce Australia specific laws on their own storefront, Mastercard and Visa can only enforce it at the "this merchant isn't allowed to transact with our network."
Mastercard does not know the location where a given card holder is (or for that matter, any demographic information about the card holder). They know where the merchant is, but that's less useful for digital goods.
I suspect we’re going to find out that Stripe is unwilling to risk losing Mastercard in Australia and also unwilling to implement passthrough AoU restrictions to their sublicensees, and Mastercard isn’t willing to act against any single customer of Stripe or else they don’t profit from the “not our problem” discount rate they issue Stripe to make it their problem.
>(b) Prohibition.—No payment card network, including a subsidiary of a payment card network, may, directly or through any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, by contract, requirement, condition, penalty, or otherwise, prohibit or inhibit the ability of any person who is in compliance with the law, including section 8 of this Act, to obtain access to services or products of the payment card network because of political or reputational risk considerations.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.
it just means that they could be forced to defend those decisions in court, which is good and exactly the sort of thing that courts are supposed to decide.
I get the feeling many companies would find it easier to allow payment processors to censor something if the product isn't earning them much anyway.
"That's one of our least popular items we sell so honestly we don't really care..."
Which is within the right for the reseller to decide, but it does nothing for protecting access to a product that's otherwise only available on a select few digital storefronts.
Then it becomes an issue for the game studio, who may not have the funding to fight a case to remain available. And then you have a situation where the game studio has become a victim of a payment processor's conspiracy theory that they're tied to fraud.
The key point here is ”good faith”.
I don’t want to disadvantage their business or make them absorb fraud costs, but I want all excuses off the table.
OTOH Visa and MasterCard testified in front of Congress a couple of months ago that they have >50% profit margins which indicates to me that there is a regulatory failure in antitrust here.
I don't have insider information about how often Steam gets hit with fraud alleged chargebacks, but I can't imagine it's a significant percentage.
> Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.
Progress in this day and age is great. Progress right now is at least 2 orders of magnitude better than patiently waiting for a panacea.
It doesn't.
> (c) Civil penalty.—Any payment card network that violates subsection (b) shall be assessed a civil penalty by the Comptroller of the Currency of not more than 10 percent of the value of the services or products described in that subsection, not to exceed $10,000 per violation.
I see 2 problems as it is currently written: (1) The penalty's too low, & (2) restricting dispense of the law to only the Comptroller renders it ineffective.
(1) is easily solvable with regards to editing the text alone: raise the limit to 50% & $100k respectively.
(2) is also solvable, by striking out "by the Comptroller of the Currency", or adding in ", or by a federal court, whichever penalty is higher, " at the end of that part.
Which groups or media that are commonly labeled 'far left' that are calling for nationalizing all land. Or eliminating all inheritances. Or nationalizing all communications and transportation industries. Or nationalizing the Federal Reserve (that one's really gone horseshoe theory, and is a republican plan now).
The only thing 'far left' people want to nationalize is health care, and that's simply the fiscally responsible policy. The thing that is crushing the federal budget is the obscene level of graft occurring in that industry, and the only way out is to nationalize or otherwise burn the existing system to the ground via government policy.
The meaning of left and right in US politics encompasses more topics than the matter of who may legally own things.
Pretending that those referred to as left and right are all the same because the only true scottsman is Karl Marx is silly.
Words have meaning, trying to characterise "far left" as some sort of US caricature of Blue haired liberal types is less than useful and only serves right wing outlets.
There is very little left wing discourse in the US.
I was just pointing out that even these are not actual socialists, they're Democratic Socialists of the stripe you find in the mainstream in a lot of staunchly capitalist European nations. There are definitely zero literal far-left politicians, objectively speaking.
Socialist/social democrat are two related but distinct concepts are confusing for those not versed in political science, but their definitions have certainly not changed: democratic socialists for example don't advocate for communal ownership or central planning. The actual policies put forward by DSA candidates in the US, viewed through a political science analysis, are vanilla liberal. The only thing making them 'far left' is that actual far right monied interests have systematically dragged the Overton Window into a place where "public figure performing the Nazi salute on the capitol steps" is "controversial, in some circles" rather than "immediately career-ending."
There are zero far left wing politicians in the US Congress. The far left is literally anti capitalist marxists.
Right now there are things that a significant majority think are terrible and shouldn't exist but aren't a high enough priority to actually make illegal because they are small because most mainstream service providers don't want to serve them.
Take that away an those things might grow enough that they do become a priority for legally banning.
Obviously the more complicated option with arbitrary criteria
Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
In many countries, if you pay locally, you absolutely can. China's UnionPay, India's UPI, PayNow in Singapore, PromptPay in Thailand, PayPal, Cash App, and more.
15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
See discussion here for example: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/6019100814124...
I expect the meta-plot with FedNow is to commoditize the backend network, then allow private companies to compete on top of it (e.g. Zelle on FedNow), then after adoption as the backbone, finally roll out P2P and P2B type support that finally kills off Visa / Mastercard / Amex (as processing networks).
Of course Pix had the backing of the government, so it had a huge initial boost, and didn't have to compete with entrenched players for market share.
Still, the fact is that it's universal, fast, efficient, lower cost for merchants, and less prone to censoring. What's not to like?
In a way it's more convenient than making congress pass laws to define payment providers as common carriers. With Pix, payment companies are free to chose their policies, but now citizens have options. Unfortunately that's not the reality in the US.
We've had that in EU/eurozone for years, SEPA.
EU will even arrange a special new bank account for ya outside of Visa Mastercard called CBDC.
No problem. EU is here for ya! /s
The other two superpowers are Eurasia (which as the name suggests is Europe less the UK and Ireland but with Asia) and Eastasia, which is South-East Asia more or less
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_geography_of_Ninetee...
Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU.
Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.
This is just Visa+Mastercard abusing their market position and the EU should come down on them like a ton of bricks. Incur heavy fines or break them up if necessary.
Regulations are empirical decisions, based on a very limited amount of data, whose implications can be endless. Regulations are a shortcut capable of poisoning the market and competition. Just look at what's been done with energy, automobiles, AI, GDPR, etc. Bureaucrats are not gods; they often make mistakes and don't predict the future. Regulations should be the last resort.
Furthermore, we're talking about a US monopoly here. The goal would be to grab a share of the pie through honest competition, not to enstablish golden collars.
Regulation should facilitate competition, not legitimize the status quo.
The only reason they have that market position is because there is insufficient competition.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
Go to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and see that there are 20-30 payment systems at every convenience store, electronics store, grocery store, etc... Then go to the US where there's effectively 2. The government claims this is because Visa and Mastercard have prevented competition.
Like with DMA/DSA that force gatekeepers to open up? SEPA that mandates free immediate bank transfers? Caps on credit/debit card transaction fees? The million infrastructure projects? Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if it's decision making can't be explained (which the AI act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on e.g. railway operations?
It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
> Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if its decision-making can't be explained (which the AI Act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on, for example, railway operations?
It's such a naive question that I can't understand how you can take it seriously.
Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot
I would like to see the data, not the social or individual biases. It's only a matter of "when" AI will prove to be safer than humans at performing task X. I find it absurd to deprive ourselves of such an advantage, supported by data, just because our understanding isn't absolute.
Can we prove the safety or determinism of what we use or do on a daily basis? I doubt. Shouldn't we experiment with physics because our understanding is limited, and we might accidentally create a black hole? I doubt.
Also, I find it such a generic definition... Google Maps implements AI, and accidentally sends you into a ditch. What do you do? Ban AI from Google Maps? What doesn't put people's lives at risk?
I totally understand the skepticism and fear. The risks, etc. But I'll leave it to the fortune tellers to pass judgment before it's even "a thing".
> It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.
> Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
> Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
How is the EU killing the car market, exactly?
I understand your point, but I see no reason to invest time defending the EU's positive aspects. What's the point?
> Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you. The EU seems to listen to people like you, not people like me. I should be the one who's concerned, haha. I'm worried because bureaucracy is a slow-acting cancer. It's a process that's easy to start but incredibly difficult to stop or reverse.
The problem with bureaucracy, regulation, and welfare is that they all come with a price. Increasing costs require a strong, cutting-edge economy to sustain them. Yet, no one seems to be concerned. In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating. No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Of course, no one is against welfare; my concern is its unsustainability. As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power.
Europe is aging, and so is its appetite for innovation and risk. Yet, we keep adding costs upon costs. Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
How long can we keep going? The rope will break sooner or later. And why doesn't anyone seem to care?
> How is the EU killing the car market, exactly?
1) https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/dragh... 2) "The Draghi report: In-depth analysis and recommendations (Part B)" 3) Page 146
I think this report its quite comprhensive to state what its not going that well in EU.
I dont agree with everything in the document, but i think its a good starting point.
Because the "less regulation" is in response to the EU saying you can't have algorithms making life or death decisions if they can't be explained and can't be escalated to a human. People are literally asking for companies to be able to shrug behind "computer says no" with no recourse. We have the UK Post Office scandal for a closer to home example on why this is a terrible idea. "Less regulation" here would be plainly terrible for everyone.
> No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Along with migration, it's probably the two most discussed topics. Funnily for it too, everyone says "nobody cares", yet it's literally among the most discussed things.
> Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
> In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating
Because you're comparing massive economies with lots of capital to burn, vs a loose collection of much smaller countries. There is tons of innovation in various European countries, it's just of different types, and doesn't scale nearly to the same extent. And that is a problem (because, as you said, a lot of the economy is reliant on big old players, which isn't necessarily bad, but is lacking in economic diversification).
> As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power
It's the same in France too, and it is indeed worrying. Public budgets are getting increasingly more complicated to balance.
But, allowing companies to deploy AI to make life or death decisions won't change anything around this. Allowing them to harvest personal data without even knowing what they have won't change anything around this either. Allowing gatekeepers to stifle any possible competition (not having DMA/DSA), same thing.
The biggest changes needed are capital investments to help the tons of startups all over Europe scale; and complex policies to help minimise the demographic collapse. Some of it is natural and nothing can be done about it (if a couple doesn't want kids, no amount of aid is going to change their mind), but for others it's a matter of being unable to afford (more) kids.
Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting. This is a bubble.
> I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
We've reached the point where if there's a risk of something happening, no matter the probability neither the magnitude, something must be done. Even if the solution is totally destructive, inappropriate for the problem, etc. Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI. This is what you are proposing. This is what I criticize.
Slowing down or stopping everything because MAYBE it's the right thing to do, MAYBE something we don't like might happen. This comes at a cost, especially if you apply this principle to everything around you in small doses. It's poison for productivity and efficiency.
I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy. China and South Korea are able to build reactors quickly and at low cost. The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
In the name of some ideology, we are destroying our productivity and efficency. Again. Why?
And I know very well that the answer is always the same. Safety. But it's just an excuse to sell you the services of yet another bureaucrat. There are very precise risk analyses that show nuclear reactors to be orders of magnitude safer than all other energy sources. So why this ideological obsession? Safety has nothing to do with it.
No one cares about risk analyses. Because the answer will always be “it's never enough.” But at what cost? Again, no one cares.
And thanks to this choices, in the name of safety, building reactors in Europe is difficult and expensive. But in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to build gas or coal-fired power plants.
Europe is full of this kind of hypocrisy.
No, it's discussed everywhere, at the EU and the local level. There has been plenty of action at various levels (like in France, under Macron first as minister of the economy and later president; and he's been decried and criticised a lot, but has also gotten a ton of reforms through).
> This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
That's the point though. Literally the main thing the law does is that if the AI can make decision that can result in deaths, there should be a human escalation and its decision making should be explainable. That's it. If that's too much burden, something is wrong.
> Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI
But the problem already exists, again, cf. United Healthcare Group in the US. We know they're killing people and hiding behind a well known faulty "AI". We don't want that shit in the EU.
> I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy
If you're pro nuclear, you should know what the real problems with EPR are. The main are failures at EDF with the quality of their work, due to lack of qualified personnel, like welders. This has been well documented for Flamanville and Hinkley Point, and EDF has even written extensively about all the lessons learned from those disasters that have been incorporated. They even flat out say that Flamanville has allowed them to build industrial capacity and human know how to be able to build the next ones.
Do you have anything to back your claim that somehow bureaucracy is to blame? EDF are a state owned company, but I'm pretty sure that the British wouldn't stop yapping around if EDF were bungling Hinkley Point because of French/EU bureaucracy. There should be at least as much material on it as there are about the quality control issues, right?
> The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
Yes, because we stopped building reactors for decades, and nobody is around that knows the intricacies of that. Hence the investment in EPR, to improve on the failures at Flamanville, Hinkley Point, Olkiluoto, and be able to reliably deliver EPR reactors with predictable costs.
A tangential nitpick: it's fizzle out, from a Middle English etymology meaning "to fart"; not to fission (fissile being an adjectival form), from Latin "to split".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fizzle#Etymology ("Attested in English since 1525-35. From earlier fysel (“to fart”). Related to fīsa (“to fart”). Compare with Swedish fisa (“to fart (silently)”). See also feist.")
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feist#Etymology
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fissile#Etymology ("From Latin fissilis.")
Like after lighting a firework that didn't actually go off.
"It's fizzled out!"
Does this mean "Missile" means "to miss"? 'Cause boy have we been using those things wrong :-)
Most countries have some kinds of domestic transaction systems, or at least a more local credit card brand. They're also usually instant. It's more or less an US-only situation that people use Visa/Mastercard even for intranational stuff.
China is kind of an outlier with Union Pay, and while a large number of countries offer their own alternatives, I'd say most are Visa-first. Apparently about 37% of cards around the world are Visa, so that's a huge chunk. JCB is the biggest non-Chinese non-American provider by revenue, and even they're a minor player in their home country.
Also there are a few QR networks, some made by the banks like "Modo" and other no-a-bank ones like "MercadoPago" and a few minor ones. Even the guy/gal that sells hot bread on the street accept most of them.
Somehow I'm able to use a JCB card though. As far as I'm aware, JCB cards aren't even available here.
To this point, it was even a punchline in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%
AFAIK all credit cards in the EU have similarly low interchange rates because of EU regulation.
> Payment service providers shall not offer or request a per transaction interchange fee of more than 0,2 % of the value of the transaction for any debit card transaction.
"Privacy concerns" won't hold out long against relentless pushes for more deregulation of privacy laws for AI/other tech/"the economy"/etc and removal of data access hurdles for police/security services/etc coming from certain political spectrum - whose voters generally don't have high concern for such fundamental rights issues when at the ballot box.
It's not enough to simply have an alternative to the credit cards, that alternative has to be in the pockets of 90% of your user base before you'd be willing to lose the method of transaction they currently rely on.
Why not? Lots of people, especially in lower income brackets, don't have ANY credit cards at all. I know many. They buy groceries and gas with cash and pay their utilities by ACH or mailing a check. Everything else they need, they buy locally.
What you mean to say is that it's _inconvenient_ for you personally to boycott Visa/Mastercard. Which may be true enough.
Even lower income citizens use debit cards more than cash nowadays.
You would need to use different networks like Discover and American Express to effectively boycott them
It’s almost trading one for another but it would be an effective way to boycott these companies
Every single time I have the option to buy an event ticket by SEPA transfer or credit card, which is actually very often, I choose SEPA transfer.
One time I even used Bitcoin.
It does seem to be mostly event tickets that have this option, for some reason. And I'm not talking about the TicketMaster monopoly, either.
Why did we make all those monopoly laws only to completely forget they exist or why we ever made them?
American Express' card started in 1958, as a pivot of their then already 100-year-old business: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Express#1920s%E2%80%9...
Visa also in 1958 as a Bank of America (and friends) card, which quietly expanded into the mid-60s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc.#History
Mastercard in the mid-60s from banks who BoA wouldn't invite into the Visa clubhouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastercard#History
And Discover in the mid-80s because Sears was big enough to be its own financial services firm: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_Card#History
these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.
/s
Anyway, email itself is broken, but this system works because if it costs money to send a message, it discourages any spambot and/or misuse.
(There's a similar system in Denmark.)
Well, it probably would be, except guess who killed it in favor of a crypto scheme? https://www.jitumaster.com/2025/06/us-president-signs-execut...
I agree about the PO though. Social media shouldn't be a for-profit enterprise either.
I do find the ending of the EO pretty amusing. You're telling the agencies exactly what to do, how is that not impairing their authority?
> Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
> (i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
The point of EOs is that they aren't laws and cannot change laws, but they can provide [mandatory] guidance to entities, under the Executive, on how to implement laws. So imagine there's a law that says some agency can ban whatever widgets they want. An EO requiring that they not ban widgets made in Timbuktu would not contravene that law, but provide guidance on how the law will be implemented. By contrast if the law said that the agency must ban any harmful widgets, an EO would not be able to prevent them from banning harmful widgets, even if they happen to be made in Timbuktu.
Thankfully modern EO's are (contrary to intuition) pretty much weak sauce because of this balancing act. See, for contrast the dictatorial mandate that is executive order 6102. [1]
The agency is no longer allowed to do something against the guidance! Or the Order must not be ordering some action?
My argument is not the EO has the legality to make a claim; it's that the top half of the EO is at odds with the disclaimer at the end. If you mandate somebody to do something then you're impairing their authority to have chosen not to do something.
Like by definition the EO impairs agencies that were using their authority to issue paper checks to continue doing so. It may be advantageous to stop issuing checks but to claim mandating that they don't doesn't impair their authority is just false.
[0] was from March, and demanded treasury modernization (like paperless and stuff), but didn't really say anything about crypto or FedNow. And FedNow's website mentions nothing about the program being slowed down (just announcements about new things happening in Q3 and a bunch of new signed on banks).
0: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/28/2025-05...
A government organization like the mint should be in charge of the layer 1 of money transfer. Let the current providers adapt and sell their other services on top of it. It could be crypto, copy the existing systems, or be something new all together. It doesn't even have to be free, they could add in a small transfer tax or whatever. The point is that any person or business should be able to send money to any other, for any reason. At the very least within the country.
If the answer is "no for these reasons", then this probably shines a big light on why FedNow is not serving the same use case.
Is that satisfying? Not really. Is it possible? Yes.
There were some bills on the subject, Republicans opposed to a CBDC to demonstrate their libertarian credentials:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1919...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1430...
HR-1919 passed the house, but it's not clear if "they" intend to bring it up for vote in the Senate.
People have submitted comments to the gov for using XRP as a mechanism, but AI tells me that FedNow is not killed or being replaced.
For the sake of reducing complexity in an already very complex world, I'd rather that it be illegal to require an email address to sign up for an account (or, alternatively, make it illegal to require an account for things like making a reservation at a restaurant) then being provided with an email by the USPS.
Doubly so given the interactions that I've had with digital services provided by my country's government and the bad (and in several cases extremely bad) experiences that I've had with them.
To be clear - I don't object to e.g. an address from the USPS complementing my existing email - I just don't want to be forced to use it for anything due to it being given some special properties that normal email providers aren't.
No because these things are genuinely useful. As much as people lament that we are going cashless, it's very convenient to be able to just carry one card and it's genuinely useful to just give my email as an identifier when registering for stuff.
Regulating their necessity means forcing people to accept cash and then using this as a reason why MasterCard and Visa should be allowed exist. In practice if something is that ingrained into daily interaction, then it should have something like the common carrier rules, set the fee to a static percentage of the transaction and that's it. The current 50% profit margins rent-seeking approach is just inefficient.
I think my argument is harder to make for payment processors, but in the case of email, it is preferable to not need an email address to create an account (even if it's convenient to have the option), and have other identifiers that can be used, like OAuth using an existing account or phone number, for instance.
Or, like I said, even better if you don't even need to create an account to participate in a one-time transaction (instead of a service relationship) with an entity.
The One Digital Identity Service To Rule Them All is always vulnerable to mass hacking. We need to connect it with something slower, something more private, and the interface to that slow identity needs to be something that already has a branch open in the middle of nowhere.
Public-private partnerships like chartered banks, and outright cartels like Visa MasterCard, are much more fruitful mechanisms for this sort of civil liberties abuse.
This site would be slow, the code base would be unmaintained, it'd get enormous amounts of spam you have to sort through to get some important tax document, and it would be down all the time. Think the line at the post office but for server up-times.
Similarly if the mint maintained a payment processor then they'd just create a legal monopoly (like the USPS did) and ban new processors. Not only would they be worse than VISA and MasterCard, but they'd make paypal and venmo illegal. Don't forget the USPS bans competitors from being cheaper than itself, and this is exactly what would happen if the Mint had its own payment processor.
Ok but this one is good. And it works because it’s a tool they need to generate revenue
But still, atrocious site. I can't use the back button or it logs you out; logging in is like a 5 step chore, it's unintuitive and looks like it's from 2005. I can only assume it's unsafe and doing simple things like checking your balance take 20 minutes. There will never be an app and I'm sure they will continue to do no innovation on the customer service side.
Fantastic. Really fast pages, simple forms, no Js. trendy is not what I want from my government service site.
> There will never be an app
Good. I want more websites and less apps on my phone. That also helps me trust the security more.
I know a librarian who spends an inordinate amount of time helping the elderly and tech illiterate members of the public with creating emails, because they're necessary. However, you can't create emails anywhere without a phone number these days - a post office option would fix that.
Email already gets enormous amounts of spam, and the only reason most don't see it is because private service providers like Google expend resources filtering them out. Why would a business not be able to charge for premium filter services on an email they don't host? Not to mention that private email services send you ads.
To be clear, I'm not saying we should shut down Gmail tomorrow, but having a free public email service option would allow many people to use internet infrastructure they don't have. It's an accessibility problem that should be addressed in the public's interest as well as shareholders.
The US Digital Service made a number of good web services for the US federal government while it lasted. They didn't close at night.
There are many times where governments do a bad job of things, and times where they do a good job. They're just institutions made of people, but they have no other default orientation. Describing faults in some non-existent service you're just imagining, as though they would obviously happen, is frankly a bizarre thing to do.
May I suggest: consider getting involved in the governance of your world. You could meet the many humans who are already doing so, working to improve it, and learning something. You can actually do that! It might surprise you how much good work is being done.
You might also then be able to help prevent others from implementing your worst dreams, instead of treating them as obvious or foregone conclusions.
Particularly hard in today's climate where so so many people are empowered to say no, or to come in and add their own pet complications/expenses to a project. The meta-governance of staying to mission, to relentlessly caring about value optimization (in the pursuit of public good) is fraught with failure modes. Yet still it feels vastly less dangerous and expensive than shopping the work out, than governments perpetually seeking to do things it itself doesn't know much about & can't do.
We've had decades of nihilism that sees this juncture of difficulty & says: maybe we shouldn't have a government. But some day, I hope, maybe, possibly, we'll redisocver the spirit of makers and doers, and the eternal jibing critically can give way to a some will & make happen.
Don't get me wrong. There are cases when it makes sense, but only when it is certain that there is no way to make it better, or when making it better would be a waste of resources. And neither is case here.
In my country, we have, what is essentially, a centralized email for communication with authorities. Taxes, permits, trials, it all goes there. There is no spam, you can set it up so that reminders about unread go to your normal email. It's not perfect, but it saves me hours of time I would otherwise have to waste in line.
So try for something like this. Instead of just giving up.
Anyway, I agree that government provided services functioning as you described would be intolerable, but disagree that's somehow inevitable. Rather than expecting government services to be unaccountable monopolies of the "line at the DMV" archetype, what if we expected effective and valuable baseline services of the IRS FreeFile archetype? Or models like unemployment benefits and FDIC insurance, where the government quietly provides citizens an umbrella without limiting access to alternatives?
I strongly resonate with gp's sentiment that when services like email or payment processing become requirements for modern life, ensuring access to them becomes a government prerogative. We're in agreement that it must be a net improvement, not trading one monopoly for another.
The DMV often gets singled out as an inefficient system that is emblematic of the failure of public option, but I assure you as someone who's had to deal with a privatized version, you're not getting better service and in fact the fees are much more expensive without recourse or oversight.
The answer to a bad system is a good system. Adding a middleman who is only interested in extracting as much money as possible is rarely the improvement the consultants would have you believe.
That’s a disingenuous take. USPS legally cannot be undercut on certain types of postal services but in exchange they must serve EVERY permanent address without price discrimination.
No private company has to do that, nor would any sane profit maximising company want to.
I’m not sure how the federal government would deal with fraud on the payment side, either. The US does not have a strong system of identity.
Assuming this is a good idea, what is my email address going to look like?
Am I going to have to be xx_toast_xx@postalcustomer like at yahoo? or will it be my address ... if so, what about the other three adults who get mail at my address; do I have to change my email address when I move? Will it be my real name, but if so, what about the other hundred people with the same name as me? (Which isn't that bad, I know lots of people with a way larger highlander list) Will it just be my social security number and we can pretend duplicates don't exist?
What qualifies someone to be an everyone for this purpose?
* Allow any legal transaction (so if another payment processor refuses you, you have a backup)
* Allow an account for any legal entity (so no more debanking)
* By setting rates for savings and mortgages, it would provide a soft range for other banks to move within
* The state would only have to guarantee its own bank. If other banks crash and burn it won't take down civilisation
pros:
- privacy. Senders have zero idea where you actually are. mapping to physical addresses is performed by the post.
- no need to update addresses in a million accounts when you move, your email points to the new physical address automatically (no idea how that works in other countries, but here you can set automatic forwarding for at most 1.5 years after you move).
cons:
- goods being sent to gmail addresses
There are ways to design around these glaring issues but Bitcoin is just a worse product for many transactions (and it's not like payment processors are a particularly good product to begin with).
The real unsolved issue for cryptocurrency is between chair and keyboard. People make mistakes, people are afraid of being robbed. Your average person does not want to be their own bank. You can have a bank or payment processor manage your money for you, but then we're back to the regulated world where Visa and Mastercard can determine what games you're allowed to buy.
The only time I have experienced this being true is refunds, they usually take a bit longer to clear.
When I pay for something online or in person the payment is cleared within seconds, and I get a notification from my back that it has went through.
The actual solution would be a fungible and private coin like monero where any of that is impossible by design.
"Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand"
(For the people who don't click the link to read the article.)
But it's hard to say. Mastercard is now saying that they never said or did anything. So where did the outrage come from? Someone must have done something.
It sure is tragic that benevolent and majestic Mastercard is having their name thrown into the mud over this. Coincidentally, it sure is convenient that they have a number of middleman scapegoats who can take the blame on their behalf.
There's even a (non-public) list of keyword banned terms.
Even the (rare) categories of content that have been legally determined to be non-obscene (e.g., werewolf erotica [1]) can fall under banned keywords (in this case, “bestiality”).
It’s a stupid extralegal system and ought to be destroyed.
[1] https://time.com/archive/7118599/california-prisoner-fights-...
As far as I'm aware, the Collective Shout letter caused a "formal card network inquiry" to originate from both Mastercard and Visa. I did not have access to the actual inquiry, but my assumption is that it wasn't "we see this content, take it down" and more like "we saw this letter, look into whats going on before we do our own investigation and fine you"
>Each of these companies maintains its own terms of service and each of them can block a transaction by themselves. Additionally, intermediary companies that handle card transactions are mutually and individually bound to the terms of every Card Network, so even if you never do business with Discover or American Express, you must still obey their rules if you want to accept Visa or Mastercard. For online businesses, there are no alternatives: you will do exactly what they want, or you will not do business at all.
>If you are banned from processing payments, you will not be informed why or by which point of failure. "Risk management" is considered a trade secret in the industry. You have no right to know, you cannot sue to discover what has happened, and you also have no right to appeal.
Did Mastercard threaten Valve? Or did Valve precomply?
a) they are worried Mastercard might randomly decide it does and punish them
b) it's convenient to be able to blame someone else
c) someone somewhere said something and the rest of the orgs isn't aware or over-interpreted a statement
Vague rules like this are great to dilute responsibility. It can both be true that Mastercard didn't tell the payment processors to force the issue and that the payment processors strongly thought they had to.
The payment processors did not cite any law; Valve selling those games was not illegal. Instead they cited Mastercard's rules, which say that they cannot submit transactions that Mastercard believe might damage Mastercard's goodwill or reflect negatively on its brand. Those rules also say Mastercard has sole discretion as to what it considers breach these rules, and Mastercard gives a list of what it deems unacceptable:
https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...
> 5.12.7 Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions
> A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.
> The Corporation considers any of the following activities to be in violation of this Rule:
> 2. The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.
The payment processors threatened Valve first. Mastercard doesn't need to threaten Valve or even contact them at all to force its will on them: it just needs to threaten its payment processors, the same outcome is achieved. Valve did not remove games from sale until threatened. If they did not do that, and instead initiated some kind of fightback, they would most likely find themselves completely removed from all payment processors, with no recourse. If you want to call that "precompliance", so be it.
Do we have a statement from Valve saying as much?
> In a statement provided to PC Gamer, Valve said that it had tried to work things out with Mastercard directly prior to removing the games, and suggested that Mastercard did have at least an indirect influence on the outcome.
> "Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so," a Valve representative said. "Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution.
> "Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand."
Like yes, there is a problem with Mastercard. But I want to know this isn’t Valve having complied with some activists trying to cover their tracks.
So everyone would have to be pretty invested in this show for it to have originated from Valve?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg...
> Some types of pornography (both real and fictitious) are technically illegal in Australia and if classified would be rated RC and therefore banned in Australia. This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (such as golden showers) and/or indicators of youth (such as wearing a school uniform).
https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/pornography-la...
https://www.kptlegal.com.au/resources/knowledge/pornography-...
If it was about the laws, at worst Valve could block Australian users from buying adult content and that would be it.
From the Valve rules:
6. Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available2. Collective Shout aren't weaponising Australian laws in this case - those only apply in Australia. At best they could get games banned in Australia by drawing the state censor's attention to them. What Collective Shout did was weaponise American corporations fear of negative publicity by calling them repeatedly and threatening them with negative campaigning, and as a result got games banned in countries they don't live in, over and above the say-so of the people who do live in those countries, and the laws of those countries allowing them to purchase such games.
Which is more likely:
1. Porn-hating, sex-hating, LGBT-hating activist group from Australia bombards Mastercard with complaints that Valve and Itch are selling adult games. Mastercard reminds its payment processors not to bring shame on The Mark. Valve's and Itch's payment processors tell them not to sell adult games.
2. Porn-hating, sex-hating, LGBT-hating activist group from Australia bombards Mastercard with complaints that Valve and Itch are selling adult games. Valve and Itch agree with these harpies and remove their revenue streams and support for developers (because they hate revenue and hate supporting their developers; they'd much rather align with moral prudes from Australia in order to lose money and abandon the people who make them that money), then they sneakily pin the blame on Mastercard. Valve and Itch also use telepathy to know Collective Shout's desires, which they agree with, to ban games precisely at the time Collective Shout are calling up Mastercard, in order for it to be Collective Shout -> Valve/Itch rather than Collective Shout -> Mastercard -> Payment processors -> Valve/Itch
Thank you, this is the context I was missing.
If Mastercard cared about this stuff then processors like CCBill wouldn't exist. The absurd amount of money that porn brings in on the internet would dry up over night.
This was a decision made by paysafe and paypall and so far they are the only ones not getting the blame pinned on them.
Itch: Our processors told us to do it.
Mastercard: That is correct, we weren't involved.
Half of Hacker News: MASTERCARD AND VISA!!!!!!
The other half: VALVE AND ITCH!!!!!!
Paysafe and Paypall: Lol
If you think that, please explain how the payment processors didn't say anything since Valve started selling adult games in 2018... and only a few days after Collective Shout specifically started targeting MasterCard and Visa (not PayPal or Paysafe)... the payment processors used by Valve cited MasterCard's rules to Valve?
It's also MasterCard that set the rules. Valve can always get another payment processor. They can't get another payment processor that is not beholden to Visa and/or MasterCard.
Payment processors that handle adult material exist but they charge a premium rate. These companies could switch to CCBill as quick as they could code it up. Exactly the same as what OnlyFans did. They would have to explain to their entire customer base across the board why they have to charge more though.
Also, look at https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce...
They absolutely targeted paysafe and paypall. Paypall was the very first on their list, I wonder why that is. They knew the processor is the weak link.
After 10 years in the POS industry, I can assure you it came from their processor. The only card network I have ever seen take action like this is AMEX and they have have separate processing. Processors involve themselves in their customers' business constantly for risk assessment. Collective action like this is enough to make them ask, "Should we treat this as a video game vendor or as adult industry?" It's that simple to tip the scale.
Also, it doesn't make sense that Itch did it themselves. Why would they throw their vendors under the bus instead of just pulling the titles? Or are we supposed to believe they facilitated collective shout just to pull a couple of low value titles? I can't see any angle here that doesn't border on conspiracy.
OK, I read the link. They targeted Paysafe and PayPal AND VISA AND MASTERCARD AND DISCOVER AND JCB. All of them, in no particular order. Why did you not mention those?
Why are Valve's and Itch's payment processors, instead of citing their own policies, citing MasterCard's policies?
If "MasterCard doesn't care" then section 5.12.7 "Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions" of MasterCard's rules, that specifically lists out transactions MasterCard prohibit processors from performing, specifically citing the percieved risk to MasterCard's brand... that's a really weird way for MasterCard to say they "don't care" about those exact sorts of transactions, which Valve's payment processors have been facilitating for Valve since 2018... until now, when a media campaign has put them and MasterCard, Visa, Discover and JCB on blast.
If MasterCard "doesn't care", let them show it by completely removing section 5.12.17 of their own rules. They made those rules, and those rules say they care, no matter how much you say they don't.
>(not PayPal or Paysafe)...
As to paypal's policy...
https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2%8...
>We don't permit PayPal account holders to buy or sell: Sexually oriented digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium. Examples of digital goods include downloadable pictures or videos and website subscriptions.
Yeah it's a good question, why would they cite mastercard instead of their own policy?
It's entirely anecdotal, but in my 10 years of experience dealing with a multitude of processors and payment gateways... that's what processors do. Their very first instinct is to make things someone else's problem. With maybe the exception of First Data, this has held up consistently for me. Of course a lot of our high dollar business was through First Data so who knows what other people's experience is.
You are still completely avoiding the fact that processors that can handle this stuff exist. Sure Mastercard should probably change their rule, but that isn't going to change the situation.
That is why Itch is looking at their options:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/itchio-are-seeking-out-new-...
And secondly, let's say Valve moves to a porn-friendly processor (Itch has said it's looking for one, not that it's found one). MasterCard clearly has a rule, right there in black and white, saying don't facilitate this particular type of porn. How do you think it will look if for any potential processor, and MasterCard, if Valve switches processor and continues accepting MasterCard payments for games in direct contravention of MasterCards's given rule, while the world's press, and the angry lobby group, is watching?
I feel I've been screaming at a wall for a week now. All this rage and it's all directed at the wrong corporations.
If MasterCard/Visa don't want these transactions, stupid, their loss. But at least let me use a payment method that works & doesn't have these morale restrictions?
So I do actually believe Mastercard when they say this, but holding them accountable anyway is probably for the best. They're likely the single group with the most influence over the regulators.
Which is a pretty messed up situation.
Also, the FCC does not directly set standards and instead responds to complaints from the communities in which the broadcast is available. So it’s conceivable that in an environment where nobody cared, you could do this at any time of day.
For background,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan... ("Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association" (2011) ("ruling that video games were protected speech under the First Amendment as other forms of media"))
I don't think there's any government involvement necessary here - Mastercard has some censorship apparatus (which they claim to be necessary for their brand's reputation), and they used it (apparently through pressure from an Australian group) towards video games.
This is really bad but I don't think it makes sense to believe a government was ever involved here. Of course, there should be laws put in place to regulate mastercard into a common infrastructure. They should not be able to deny processing a legal payment because of nebulous "brand reputation" reason.
In general? Absolutely - search 'Operation Chokepoint'.
There's a great summary in the middle of this (very long) article under that header: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
Mastercard could simply refuse service for those games in particular instead of demanding (through proxies) that the games be banned from Steam. There's a clear antitrust violation.
You can hand wave around well they are a monopoly or some related argument but the government does not see it that way. Visa and Mastercard for decades have censored adult sites on their network. At the end of the day I suspect they would be happy to take the fees but they are the ones underwriting the risk and there have been cases over the year in the US at least that challenge how extreme you can go with Adult material. Even today there are certain categories that are much harder to get setup for processing.
Edit: to be ultra clear, I would love more competition in this space but at the same time there is no argument around free speech here.
Constitutional rights are also civil rights - businesses may not violate them nilly-willy in this specific manner which causes damages to people.
Now, I happen to think that, pace Dershowitz, adult content does not fall within the scope of free speech. The entire purpose of free speech is to allow the truth to be to expressed. Free speech takes an attitude of pragmatic permissiveness toward certain varieties of what are objectively bad speech as the price for that to happen. It's a choice that was made in American political history, but even here, the bounds of what is legally permitted under free speech have not remained fixed for various reasons.
Adult content is nowhere in the vicinity of this notion of free speech, and certainly not its moral purposes. There is no right to produce or to view adult content. There is no right to anything that is objectively unethical, and both the production and consumption of such content is unethical. Gov'ts can choose to take a permissive stance toward such activity for prudential reasons (for example, historically, while prostitution was categorically condemned on moral grounds, gov'ts took a permissive attitude in some respects, because they felt that banning it would cause still greater problems), but they have the authority to criminalize it.
So, given that it isn't a free speech issue, I have no problem, in a free speech context, with private companies banning such content from their platforms or from being the subject of transactions passing through their systems.
Severing either of these two links would be enough though.
1. Government pressure only triggers a First Amendment issue when it’s actual, not hypothetical. Courts require clear state action or coercion.
2. Mastercard acting on its own isn’t censorship in the legal sense, it’s a private company making content-moderation decisions. You may not like that power, but it’s not unconstitutional.
If you want structural reforms, like regulating payment networks as common carriers, that’s a policy question, not a current free speech violation.
Imagine that the government instituted a private organization that had the power to cripple any business, with no recourse, and had control over it. The first amendment does not literally prohibit this, yet this would have clearly been a violation of the first amendment in spirit.
It's like if a tier 1 ISP only peered with networks that peer with networks that censor XYZ. Allowing for these kind of agreements leads to censorship and is why net neutrality is important from the government.
This typically comes up when someone thinks they're getting better transit service from a tier-1 than a tier-2. They're not. A tier-2 ISP can have better routes, since a tier-1 will refuse to deliver your traffic anywhere that requires them to pay money. Some places are just unreachable from tier-1 ISPs.
Famously, for over a decade Cogent has refused to receive packets from Hurricane Electric without payment because idk profits, and Hurricane Electric has refused to pay them because it's a tier-1-ish, so you just can't talk to Cogent customers if you're an HE customer and vice versa. (I think HE eventually relented by paying a third-party to forward packets to specifically Cogent, even though they have tier-1 status to everywhere else)
But even in the context of the First Amendment, freedom of speech does not only apply to the government. For example, net neutrality laws prevent ISPs, which are generally private companies, from restricting Internet traffic on free speech grounds.
To the extent that it is legal for a payment processor to censor speech, the only reasonable conclusion is that the law is wrong and must be amended. Large corporations are much more similar to governments than they are to private so individuals, and should be treated as such.
Net neutrality was about common carriers (ISPs) due to their chokepoint role in internet access. Payment processors are not classified as common carriers and are not subject to those rules.
If you want laws changed to regulate them like utilities, that’s a policy argument, not a free speech violation under current law.
This has been happening for years already, this is not an accident caused by a crazy lady from Australia complaining to the right people. She simply took advantage of Mastercard already engaging in censorship and challenged them and their payment processors to take on an even broader interpretation of Mastercard's obscenity rules.
"Mastercard finds out there are a lot of gamers out there, makes an attempt at damage control." would be more appropriate.
[1] - https://archive.ph/zXKuD
Who in heaven’s name associates a credit card company with the image/ethics of the transactions it’s processing as long as the businesses are legal??
What I think of when I hear Mastercard? A plastic card with numbers on it, connected to my bank account and offering me some added protections/insurance.
Which is why we need them to be legally required to process all lawful transactions, so that they cannot be singled out for it.
That’s because practically no one gets gas and buys groceries with it.
All the porn of the world wouldn’t be a drop in the sea that is MasterCard.
https://www.amazon.com/Streetcar-Named-Desire-Blu-ray/dp/B07...
Why is Mastercard processing money for this movie that contains a rape scene?
Same deal with GTA and GOT
> A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.
I didn't expect they had such clear rules expliciting they can ban any kind of transactions they don't like or would make them look bad, regardless of the legality of it.
I just don't see the argument that a payment processor being able to process payments legitimately gives them reputation risk. I don't doubt that people write in to MasterCard to claim it does but people write about everything.
And carrying large amounts of USD cash does have a negative reputation, even to the US government. Nevermind the reputation of cryptocurrency.
IIUC, the problem here is the colluding behavior. Steam can't just "drop" MC and use Visa for the transactions as the banks must abide by MC's rules even when MC isn't the payment processor just to be eligible to be a bank for MC.
> A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.
Create amorphous rules, enforce them as you feel like, then blame others for breaking the rules...
Unfortunately, laws like EU AML law go the opposite direction, where banks are allowed to close accounts only if they deem them "too risky".. this is not good.
If I remember correctly a big part of Valves heavy investment into linux was Microsoft wanting to lock windows down more, and now in 2025 gaming on linux is a viable alternative to windows.
Cash handling isn't really the problem with this suggestion
I don't think Valve could feasibly implement this at their scale - especially if this method was the _only_ way to acquire the games in question.
How it works is you purchase a product online and it gives you a barcode that can be scanned at any major convenience store. You go to the store, scan the code, hand over cash, and the content you bought is instantly unlocked once the payment is confirmed.
I believe Steam did support bitcoin at one point but decided to end usage over because the price fluctuations made it to unpredictable on their end. Maybe the landscape has changed though.
Valve knew that there would be price fluctuations. Everyone knew that, and knew how to deal with it. They just priced the games in dollars, with a conversion to the Bitcoin value at the moment of sale.
But what Valve did NOT expect was that the Bitcoin blockchain would suddenly grow so popular and congested (which was a result of massive publicity from events such as Steam accepting Bitcoin). So suddenly, to Valve's surprise, the average fees to be sure that a payment would soon be processed on the blockchain fluctuated wildly upwards during that period, up to tens of dollars. The Blockchain congestion and high fees were exacerbated by technical and ideological arguments about how the Bitcoin network should function. The "small block" faction won, but Bitcoin quickly became a laughing stock as a method of payment, because second layer solutions to the network congestion weren't ready.
The high fees were a huge problem in themselves for Steam customers, and there were other support issues caused by Steam customer difficulty understanding how to use Bitcoin (and who can blame them?). Customers were angry because they had paid for a game, but their payments were delayed for days unless they paid an indeterminate Blockchain transaction fee which might be more than cost of the game they were trying to buy.
After a few months of that chaos, Steam dropped Bitcoin. So did many other retailers.
Ironic, Bitcoin payments work much better now and fees are lower, but it lost of a lot of goodwill from retailers like Steam during that period, and most of them have not come back.
I don't know. On the base layer, payments are all just transactions on the Blockchain, like any other. So it's not easy to see whether a transaction is a payment or an "investor" speculating, or something else. Then there's also other layers, like Lightning.
My guess is the relative percentage of retail Bitcoin payments, compared to speculative transactions, is now lower than 2017, when Steam accepted Bitcoin. I don't know if absolute amount of payments has reduced. Maybe?
You could look at historical charts of average Bitcoin fees[0], which gives you an idea when retail Bitcoin payments are practical, and when the fees are too damn high. Fees often got above $4, sometimes much higher, in 2024 for example, which would unacceptable for something like buying a game from Steam. Though, still, that doesn't show what impact Lighting is having on retail payments.
[0] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
And for crypto they can just accept Monero. Steam accepted Bitcoin years ago, but stopped due to high fees and network congestion. Monero fixes that + makes it private like cash, and has been the de facto cryptocurrency for years now.[1]
[1] Random example https://xcancel.com/NanoGPTcom/status/1951300996329537625#m
Whether or not Valve would want to encourage people to pay with crypto and expose their customer base to its volatility is another matter.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...
There are plenty of chains that can confirm transactions in a couple seconds, and if you're concerned with volatility, just use USDC/USDT. There are crypto payment processors that handle all of this and allow payment across a range of chains and handle the volatility so that the merchant doesn't need to worry about anything crypto and just receives fiat.
So either those poor games need to be kicked out, or everyone has to switch to cash/app overnight. The transition process has to be easy enough that the dumbest addict you have seen in worst fast food restaurant place can complete in few clicks. That has proven difficult for many, and sadly the former options are usually taken.
This would be harder - it seems - for something like OnlyFans where payments and censorship are all one soup shared among all content.
Unfortunately until some regulation is created to solve this problem Visa/Mastercard will continue throwing around their weight at the whims of whoever.
They’re payment processors, for crying out loud. Their entire grift is taking a slice of every transaction processed, ergo, the only restriction they should ever have in processing payments is whether or not the transaction is legal under the law, full stop.
If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games), then don’t be a payment processor. They’re a business, not a person, and therefore their “preferences” regarding content are irrelevant.
Pornography and adult content is fine—the real issue is that gaming storefronts refuse to moderate their platforms for child pornography and rape material and would rather kill their entire NSFW catalog, all while painting themselves as the victims.
> If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games), then don’t be a payment processor. They’re a business, not a person, and therefore their “preferences” regarding content are irrelevant.
Businesses are composed of people whose preferences matter. No business should be forced to serve pedophiles and rape fetishists.
And is there any law about roleplaying rape? It's common in romance novels and online videos so I don't see how it could be illegal.
> Some types of pornography (both real and fictitious) are technically illegal in Australia and if classified would be rated RC and therefore banned in Australia. This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (such as golden showers) and/or indicators of youth (such as wearing a school uniform).
Fictitious violent fetishes and BSDM would likely be illegal in Australia.
The problem is that they didn't properly identify which content it is. "Does it involve a school girl outfit giving the indication of youth?" isn't something that they can filter on.
I could see something in the future where when someone puts up phonographic, they can't select all for the countries it can be sold in and instead need to specifically affirm that it is content that is legal in each of the checked countries.
However, Steam and Itch don't currently do that. So when pressure by Collective Shout was moved from Steam and Itch to Mastercard and Visa, Mastercard and Visa almost immediately put pressure on their downstream processors which in turn put pressure Steam and Itch. Since Steam and Itch couldn't filter the "just illegal in Australia stuff needs to be removed from being available in Australia" they appear to have removed all NSFW content until it could be reviewed.
I believe the key thing in this chain is that Visa and Mastercard are very risk adverse. While they do make a lot of money, on a per transaction basis any merchant that is a problem is a very small drop in the bucket compared to the legal consequences they could (and have) face.
Lest we forget.
Sure in the end people rallied to him but it sure must have sucked.
But yeah. Texas.
Go proselytize elsewhere.
It's not. Look up the PROTECT Act of 2003. It's sad that we live in a world where payment processors of all things have to do the government's job.
You dislike MasterCard's and Visa's actually legal actions, your sole recourse is simply not to engage with them. Best of luck!
This is why companies shouldn’t be allowed to engage in politics or lobbying: a handful of for-profit entities are abusing their capture of western finance to push personal agendas regardless of popular opinion or actual legality.
What, might you say, do these companies (among others) have in common? What comes to mind when you see them together?
* IBM
* Volkswagen
* Hugo Boss
* Bayer (IG Farben)
You can always come up with something horrific enough that it seems reasonable, even necessary, for platforms to block it, like actual terrorism or child porn.
But then, there's always an activist group out there who really wants to ban something that most people feel is only mildly distasteful but not worth a platform-level ban and will abuse processes to do it.
And there's enough people for each of those cases who have incentive to obscure exactly which category things are actually in. More than enough for it to be hard for any platform to sort it out for sure.
So do we eventually end up with either an actual Government takeover, or everything banned that's more edgy than Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?
I am looking forward to the day when they shutdown and everybody realizes this.
However, a lot of games add their own DRM and/or protection scheme that complicates things.
EDIT: technically there are two distinct component: the actual DRM, called steamstub, and the steamwork library, that does not work without steam but it is not considered drm. Both can be easily bypassed/emulated.
I understood this in terms of Live Service games, but did not consider Steam's ability to shut down their own platform and kill my locally installed single player games with it (Again, I'm seeing its possible and seems easy to bypass usually, but the principle of the matter)
None of the games I have in my library work like that, but online some people suggest that some games work even without Steam, once installed.
Your point, however, still stands.
I would like to test it for myself to confirm it.
Google turns up this Steam curator that lists games that run without Steam and are DRM-free out of the box, though it seems far from comprehensive: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38523697-DRM-FREE-GAM...
The PC Gaming Wiki has a couple of better lists it looks like: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g... and https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_...
Steam shutting down and taking your library with it really doesn't change much except you lose that nice delivery platform with good integrations (achievements, workshop mods, multiplayer integration, automatic updates) for games you're active in. For the 90% you were never going to touch again it wouldn't be noticeable, outside the annoying reminder you were never able to resell them. The other 10% just reverts back to "pirate it" which is about here on my scale:
"find that legal physical copy to play with" < "pirate it" < "click button on Steam"
If they don’t do this and it’s all just lip service, then it makes a strong argument for ethical piracy at that time.
I have sold a few items on Steam because I don't care about cosmetics in games. I'm also lazy and because of that "sat" on items for a while that appreciated. I mention this because Steam credit is very fungible: it can be easily converted.
Steam also makes it very easy to redeem credit, gift, etc.
I believe you can buy Steam cards at most places Xbox cards and similar are sold as well.
Also in the early days of Bitcoin buying and selling of digital Steam assets was one of the most popular things.
Every definition of gambling I've seen includes some variation of "winning a thing of value from a game of chance", and while loot boxes for in-game rewards skirt that (the thing you're getting is typically described in the fine-print as having no monetary value), Valve's user-driven marketplace is setting a real-world value.
Put another way: EA FC's card packs or Genshin Impact's gacha spins are worth nothing outside of those games, but I've sold Counter-Strike skins to pay for a decent chunk of my Steam Deck.
You'd have to onboard hundreds/thousands of banks and terminal providers so they accept/give out your card.
I excpect the underlying technical stuff isn't that hard compared to getting people and companies to actually use it.
Gaming is the business bigger than movies, music and books combined and Valve is Google of games.
Valve is not Google of games, the app stores Google and Apple has dwarfs steam sales and the individual game consoles are similar size as the steam store.
> I'm paying with my phone anyways
Right, since the phone ecosystem is large enough to be its own payment processor, unlike steam.
Also Google Play store might have more consumers and or sales but they are of worse quality. It's scummy, it's exploitative. The whole system is propped up by whales decieved by gambling mechanics and deceptive ads. It's nowhere close to real world economy. Valve is much closer. Despite using Play Store since it came to existance I never paid for anything on Google Play because I don't trust it enough to add a single payment method there.
And what in your mind is the thing banks will be begging Steam to be let in on? This reads like payment processing fan fiction.
I don't trust Paypal, at all, because its brand is damaged beyond repair, but I would put enough money on Valve account to do all of my online shopping with it if Valve did even just what Paypal does (even without connecting Visa or Mastercard directly).
Even if 100% of Valve's user base cared as much as you (they do not), why would Valve take on the massive risk of connecting to its users' bank accounts? Of having to collect on debts? etc.
Of course.
> Of having to collect on debts?
Why would they need to do that? "Credit" part of credit card is completely irrelevant when it comes to payment systems. It's a trick to milk the customers. Why would Valve lower themselves to that level?
My point is, with crystal clear, pro-consumer reputation Valve could be real alternative to gambling industry of Google Play store, payday loan business of VISA/MasterCard and gym membership style of extortion of other services. And betting on consumer was a recipe for success for Valve so far.
Why would they try? Because it's always good to 10x your revenue.
I don't pay with credit or debit card for steam, I can use Blik, which is paying with my phone or one other payment processor, but I'm not in USA. This is USA problem.
It's perhaps a good idea. It's likely that not very many banks and terminal makers and payment processors really matter. It would be a little delicate because the ones that matter would be pressured or at least would feel pressured NOT to participate on threat to their currently main business.
And the project doesn't have to become mainstream probably, just accepted "enough".
A better reason is that it's not really Valve's battle. They have plenty of other business. They don't need to fight this war. A company like OnlyFans, yeah perhaps they do - but they are likely much smaller.
Valve is in a situation that helps: they charge separately for each item. Some that the credit card networks are okay with and some that they are not. So they could support two regimes on their site: some items could only be paid through the Valve new card network (and gift cards and bitcoin), while other items could be paid through all the above plus the legacy credit card networks.
Valve (and/or OnlyFans) then gets paid for trying to enter the very lucrative payment network business. And gets to use these separate charges / two regimes of payments to distribute content that would be too dangerous within the current single payment framework.
(Visa employee count: 30,000+)
In the US that means either dealing with ACH at scale, which is a challenge, building a new card networks (which is hard) or only using alternative payment methods such as bnpl or crypto.
Each of those will limit your buyers, which as a merchant is a tough business decision.
Which is why someone has big interest in keeping it this way as in Europe practically every country solved this issue a long time ago and people do daily shopping completely omitting Visa/Mastercard. They try to fight back without much success.
And most of the alternatives are either government controlled and thus subject to different censorship concerns or private (for instance bnpl) and subject to the same.
That is to say people seem to be dancing around there being some fundamental right to transact. Thats not one of the traditional rights and not one that is codified most places (anyplace?).
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nYJaDnGNQGiaCBSB5/accountabi...
Steam games' availability is per-country. They could've removed games for Australian users only. NSFW games are not shown to Chinese and German players on Steam since forever.
This whole thing came about because of the Australian campaign to remove rape games consistent with law. Payment processors could be found liable for processing payments related to illegal activities. Steam anad the payment processors could have made it region specific, but didn't, probably for PR reasons.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_i...
Also, Steam Direct didn't update their policy on game content from what I see. Doesn't look like Steam fought back. Seems as though Steam has never supported games with rape, incest, child exploitation, etc.
Paypal exists because it broke the law, was prosecuted, and the outcome of the prosecution fined them heavily but also grandfathered their existence.
Anyone who wants to make a new payment processor likely has to take a risk of going to prison.
The reason mainstream websites don't use CC Bill and it is used almost exclusively for porn, is because they charge a lot more than Stripe and the more mainstream payment processors do. There isn't really a ban on this kind of material, provided the platform hosting it is willing to use alternative processors, so much as a price increase.
Even with Pornhub and OnlyFans debacles, they never hosted content that can't be found elsewhere on sites that allow you to pay with Visa and Mastercard. The reason those platforms were targeted was never the content itself, but non-compliance with rules that professional studios have always had to abide by requiring they keep copies of government-issued ID of all performers and provide those to any viewer who asks for it, in order to be able to prove they aren't accidentally hosting content with children or otherwise non-consenting performers.
Ultimately, if a website wants to host content with a guy taking a shit on his twin underage daughters, they can do that, and you can pay for it with Visa and Mastercard, as long as they use something like CC Bill for processing and they keep adequate records enabling them to prove the "underage" characters and not actually played by underage performers, and the people involved aren't actually related. Or, maybe more precisely, you can have real twins in a scene together, but you're then limited by byzantine country-by-country laws I have no personal knowledge of regarding what they are and are not allowed to do together that counts as sex.
The Internet is where nuance goes to die, so this all gets distilled down to "Visa and Mastercard don't allow you to buy porn" by the time most people find out about any of it.
Could also hit the iOS-Android bird with the same stone!
There's no escaping the politics here. You can't enforce antitrust without hitting the billionaire class directly, and those people know how to influence American politics in their favor. Just look at what happened to the "click to cancel" rule post-Trump, something that is unambiguously pro-consumer and exactly the type of thing the FTC should be doing.
Not exactly. Visa was named as a counterparty in a class action against Mindgeek for monetizing child porn on their website. They lost, and there have been subsequent class actions.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-...
Ultimately the ban was undone in exchange for onlyfans limiting the type of content available on the platform. So effectively, payment processors dictate which type of sexual activities, performed by consenting adults, are OK to depict and sell. Why? Why do they have that power?
That was because the government was prosecuting Pornhub for breaking the law (rape with real people, unlike these games).
If it was indeed Collective Shout's pressure campaign that led to Valve and itch.io being told by their payment processors to remove games, then this is how it went:
Collective Shout -> Mastercard -> Mastercard's head of brand risk (or equivalent role) -> Mastercard's business partners -> Valve and itch.io
Mob bosses order hits, wise guys carry them out. The mob boss has clean hands.
Keep the pressure on Mastercard.
We need to stop these side-channel attacks on democracy. If a government deems some media lawful, you shouldn't get to de-facto ban it by going after publicity-averse private companies that provide hosting, payment processing, etc. https://protectthestack.org/
Clarifying recent headlines on gaming content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760843 - Aug 2025 (24 comments)
Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 - July 2025 (586 comments)
Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44685011 - July 2025 (890 comments)
Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44679406 - July 2025 (250 comments)
Games: No sex, please. we're credit card companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675697 - July 2025 (52 comments)
Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44667667 - July 2025 (323 comments)
Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new censorship rules - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44636369 - July 2025 (162 comments)
Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606184 - July 2025 (905 comments)
This isn’t as accurate as you might hope. I can pretty much only buy hobby-related things on Steam but I can buy just about any non-perishable household item on Amazon.
Game Buyer (Steam) -> Stripe/PayPal -> MasterCard/Visa -> Valve -> Game publisher
That's at least three middle men, and presumably all of them collect fees. I wonder why in the year 2025 there isn't a more direct way to pay for things.
This makes a strong case for Bitcoin - no matter if you consider it a ponzi scheme, or the BTC price to be overinflated, you will not be able to deny it is truly censorship free.
1. Specifically a stablecoin running on the network
https://www.bitcoinsensus.com/news/altcoins/eu-to-restrict-m...
English in Japan is more of a customer support tool than a language. Proficiency is improving in some places, but on decline at large, below already atrocious status quo. This means the size of English-speaking audiences for actually Japan-centric news is small and not the first priority, not small && more important. Extremely little of whatever happening in Japan appear on mainstream English social media, let alone regular mainstream media.
If that much was not obvious to whoever pulling strings on this ongoing thing, I think there may be a chance that lack of observable responses after their earlier actions led to a misplaced confidence that gaming is a tiny top-down market and consumer resistance is nonexistent.
The responses were significant enough that it elected an equivalent of senate for third term and got former PM Kishida make a hand-wavy assurance on video even just few days before this one. It was almost certainly just a lip service, but also not nothing. How would anyone interpret that as a situation safe to escalate further?
I can't believe I am about to say this: Bitcoin fixes this.
So for example, when backpage's speech was unlawfully suppressed by the US government via payment processors cutting them off in Operation Chokepoint, they successfully adopted Bitcoin.
... and then Kamala Harris aggressively prosecuted them for 'money laundering' for the evading the payment processor blockade, even though her own internal staff report said they were guilty of no crime and were a treasured asset of law enforcement in the fight against human trafficking ( https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-governme... ). So aggressive was the prosecution that they caused a mistrial by flagrantly disregard of the court's orders, then prosecuted again leading the the suicide of one of the founders following a decade of vicious harassment by the state.
uh ... so maybe not the best example.
Or maybe it is the best example: The root cause in the abuse by payment processors is the US government leaning on them to abuse their subjective discretion to suppress lawful activity that the government is constitutionally prohibited in interfering with. This is both what underlies the schizophrenic response by mastercard, which likes money and would generally just prefer to process everything profitable, and is also why Steam would be taking a huge risk to route around them with alternate payment means.
What people are pissed at is a card payment network abused for moral regulation.
I'm trying to find a good analogy. Perhaps if someone in your town built a giant meat grinder in their backyard, and as a test run they requested the vilest and most heinous criminals to be sent to them, you'd still see a private entity getting to grind the people they want as a serious issue.
Not wanting to spend a second on that issue, just because of who got sent there, would be quite a position.
We can then also agree that a game where you beat someone into a bloody pulp with a bat is equally disgusting. Why do we treat rape and murder differently?
What your kids are exposed to is your responsibility. Don't burden the rest of society because you can't be bothered to set your own boundaries.
It is to those who enjoy playing them.
Are you suggesting that playing a game involving incest is somehow unacceptable, while a game with graphic murder is fine? It's a strange moral line to draw, and despite what you may think, your views are not shared by everyone.
Mastercard don't care you want porn, or games, or whatever. Neither does VISA. They like money. They want money and want people to move their money so they can siphon off some of it for their own pockets. Almost nobody is going to avoid using a bank because their card provider let some other people buy rude games on steam.
The payment processors don't care. They want you to send money through them so they can take their cut.
Steam doesn't care. The people making the games don't care. They all just want to sell stuff.
The only thing that impacts this really is chargebacks, which iiuc are much more common with adult stuff.
But payment processors can't guarantee what mastercard or visa will do, and players like steam (and they're huge, this is not about tiny store issues) can't guarantee what payment processors will do and given the potential downside - blocking all sales - people need to be careful.
While I can see how these situations come up, it's also absolutely insane as an end result because I just want to give *my money* to someone else. I've ended up using crypto before for buying things, not for ideological reasons, but purely because I could buy them and then give them to someone else for the "flagged as risky" goods/services because I couldn't pay for things using my money and my card.
I think this makes no sense, like "we makes less profits from adult stuff because of charge back, so let\s give up on this profits". Anyway this companies did not use this excuse so why do this old excuse is resufecing now if they did not use it.
Now seriously, you brought some old excuse here for some very inteligent reason, explain please? Do spouses will read that the guy bought something from Steam and she will then conclude the dude is playing very adult games? The excuse does not work as far as I can see, so explain your thoughts or explain why you are just pasting random excuses and then act like a redditor
I clearly don’t understand your issue with what I wrote, and won’t with more accusations of being like a redditor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_i...
Do I mind that MDMA Date With Hitler was taken down ? No, I don't believe it's a massive loss. However, the way it was done, through payment providers threatening to shut off access to the entire payment system because of their rules, is incredibly dangerous to the whole world.
Or the content was never supported by Steam, per their policy. You can check Wayback machine for support for my position. Dod you have any evidence of Steam's motive otherwise?
Given that fact we have two options: either they decided to change their approach to content moderation and remove games that previously passed all their checks, with these games being coincidentally the same that were requested by Mastercard; or they decided to remove every game requested by Mastercard regardless of Steam's own policies.
The legal situation with VPNs and traveling between regions is the same as with any internet service.
[1] https://steamcommunity.com/groups/foruncut/discussions/17/41... [2] https://steamcommunity.com/groups/foruncut/discussions/17/39...
Also, Steam Direct didn't update their policy on game content from what I see. Doesn't looked like Steam fought back. Seems as though Steam has never supported games with rape, incest, child exploitation, etc.
Were Steam selling it to kids?
And yes, that's a problem that they're dealing with right now. Bellular News : Steam Faces Financial Obliteration: Others Are Already Dead https://youtu.be/AlDkL3DndtM
The law being talked about in the video is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 / https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act...
That said, not all NSFW content is allowed in all jurisdictions. Australia and Japan (for example) have laws about particular content that differs from US laws.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_i...